Alex Salmond has backed an ambitious public fundraising campaign for £4m to complete a national Robert Burns Museum in the bard's birthplace of Alloway.

Alex Salmond has backed an ambitious public fundraising campaign for £4m to complete a national Robert Burns Museum in the bard's birthplace of Alloway.

The National Trust for Scotland (NTS) said the Burns programme was the "largest, most ambitious project the charity has ever undertaken".

Delays to the project mean that tourists travelling to the country for the 2009 Homecoming Scotland celebrations who were meant to enjoy the new museum will instead be tapped for cash to help complete it by 2010, the NTS confirmed.

The charity yesterday launched its Put On a Pound for Rabbie campaign, which aims to encourage businesses to add a pound to the cost of meals, concert tickets or hotel rooms and pledge the excess to the Burns museum, in order to raise the remaining £4m by January 2010.

The appeal comes after the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) warned that charitable giving is likely to be hit by the UK's downturn, with an impact on donations likely to show up around six months after the start of the economic slump.

However, fundraising experts said yesterday that the bard's popularity and the high profile granted by next year's Homecoming Scotland events made the £4m target a "realistic goal".

Gregor McNie, manager in Scotland of the Institute of Fundraising, said: "Charities are being more careful in taking on capital appeals but, given Burns's national profile and the Homecoming Scotland events next year, the £4m target has a strong chance of success."

The NTS originally planned to complete the £21m museum project in time for the Homecoming Scotland celebrations, timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of Burns's birth. But problems with fundraising and a delay in transferring assets held by the Burns Monument Trust in Alloway led to the deadline being put back to 2010.

The First Minister said yesterday: "Robert Burns is Scotland's favourite son and it's important that we continue to celebrate his work, which is why the Scottish Government is contributing £5.5m towards the National Trust for Scotland's Burns Museum."

The postponement of building work on the museum, which will eventually replace the existing Tam O'Shanter Experience in Alloway, has provoked dismay among Burns clubs, who were last month informed that a proposal to close the Burns Cottage for two to three months next year to complete work on it had been abandoned.

Margaret Skilling, president of Alloway Burns Club, said: "The National Trust were thinking of closing the cottage in the summer of 2009 but realised that if we were going to be having a lot of visitors to the Homecoming events, it wouldn't be a good move."

However, David Hopes, the NTS curator for the project, said that although the cottage is due to close for several weeks towards the end of next year, there had been no plans to close it for a longer period.

The charity has already raised around £3m and has nearly 1400 names pencilled in on a scroll of donors who have given more than £30 each.