 All right. Hi, everyone. My name is Priya Chia and I am the Associate Director of Content at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Welcome to our first webinar of the year, New Year New Perspectives. If you're joining us in the chat, feel free to introduce yourself as someone has already started and let us know where in the country you are joining us from. I am outside Washington D.C. and Alexandria, Virginia. In case you don't know, Preservation Leadership Forum is the professional membership program of the National Trust. This webinar series is made possible by members of Preservation Leadership Forum and we're really thankful and grateful for those of you who are here today. Today's webinar is a roundtable discussion with new leaders of local, state, and national preservation organizations focusing on new trends in the field, the role of preservation nonprofits, and the vision of the future for preservation. But before we get started, here are a few technical logistics for you. We'll take questions from the audience during the webinar. Please make sure to send them using the Q&A panel that is located at the bottom of your Zoom screen. We won't be accepting questions that are submitted through the chat, so just make sure to use the Q&A panel. The closed captioning function is enabled for this webinar. And then following the program, we'll send out a recording of the webinar directly to the email that you used to register along with any links or additional information that we mentioned we will share during the session. Our panelists today represent organizations from the National Preservation Partners Network. So I'm going to hand this over to Samantha Bosshart, the chairperson of NPPN, to tell us a little bit more about that organization. Thank you so much. I'm greeting you guys from Sunny Palm Beach, Florida, and I'm so happy to be a part of this. We're so fortunate that everybody who's going to be on this call is a member of the National Preservation Partners Network. And for some of you, you may not be familiar with that organization, but we are a membership-based nonprofit dedicated to strengthening the capacity of our partner organizations and the collective historic preservation movement. And we do that with training, network, knowledge sharing, technical assistance, and in-person convenings. And in fact, we will be having a convening at the end towards the end of June in Arizona. So I hope that you will consider signing up for our newsletter and learning more about us and potentially visiting us in Arizona. We have several affinity groups. These are held typically quarterly, and those include affinity groups for leaders across the country to gather and talk about different topics or how they are related to one another. So we have an affinity group for big cities, local organizations, fundraising development, new executive directors like some of the people that we are going to hear from today, programs in education, rural preservation, as well as easements. So again, a really opportunity, great opportunity to learn from other people in the field and what they're doing, what's working, what's not, and what issues everybody's facing. Last but not least, we are actually looking for our new executive director at the Partners Network. So if you're interested in learning more about the Partners and or interested in this great job opportunity to really take the organization and its next chapter, which we're excited about, please visit prespartners.org. So I'm going to turn it over to Adrienne Scott Fine with the LA Conservancy. Thanks, Samantha. I really appreciate that and nice to see you. And I echo everything Samantha just said. MPPM is really a fantastic organization. So if you're not a part of it already, please consider joining and being part of the larger network of preservation nonprofits out there. So again, hi, I'm Adrienne Scott Fine. I am the President and CEO for the Los Angeles Conservancy and happy to be here. Our goal today is relatively simple. We want to have informal roundtable conversation. And what we're going to strive to do, and I'll ask my fellow panelists to please go ahead and add your cameras and voices. But we want to have a candid, diverse perspective conversation. We're going to talk about how our work is evolving, also how we're responding to changing conditions, and also what we're most excited about in these new roles. So including myself, we have four nonprofit organizations and leaders who are all relatively new in their positions. Yet we all come to this work through different directions, different lived experiences, and different work sectors as well. And also that we all are not the same in terms of nonprofit, historic preservation organizations. There's lots of different types and flavors, and also those types of constituents that we need to respond to. But to give you some kind of comparison contrast of the four organizations that we have here today in this conversation, this is sort of a breakdown. We have organizations that were established in 1956, 1978, 1987, and 2007. All of us are advocacy and education base, but in different ways. We have rural, urban, west coast and east coast perspectives. We have annual operating budgets ranging from between $250,000 a year to $3 million. We have a citywide, a countywide, a statewide, and a national organization. And we have staff sizes ranging from three persons up to 17 persons. And lastly, we have memberships ranging from 200 persons up to 4,500 persons. So clearly, we are not all the same. But in my experience, and I think my fellow cohorts here will probably share that we have very similar circumstances and challenges and things that we're dealing with depending on what size organization we are, or our focus in terms of what we do. But let's go ahead and get started and first welcome everybody. Happy you're here. Let me start asking you all, my fellow folks here on the panel, by sharing a little bit background on yourself, how long you've been in this position. And most importantly, why you wanted to take on this leadership role for nonprofits. And maybe we'll start. How about Marissa, do you want to start? Sure. Nice to see everyone. Thanks for being here today. And thanks for the invitation to be with you. I'm in Providence, Rhode Island, which is the traditional homelands of the Narragansett and the Wampanoag Peoples. I joined Providence Preservation Society in mid-October. So I've only been with the organization for a few months, but have been longtime collaborators with the organization. Saw that the former executive directors with us today, and that's wonderful. And I had partnered with Brent and with a lot of the staff for years. I was at Brown just a few blocks away for years. And for me, this sort of transition point, I came really out of academic practices into preservation work. I'd been working on preservation and heritage from outside. And a lot of what compels me to do the work overlaps directly with issues of social justice and equity. And I think for me, it felt like this organization and also the broader field was at a point where those issues were becoming much more central to the work, as opposed to sort of marginal and peripheral. And so I think as that kind of eclipse happened, it felt to me like a really good time to get to kind of be in practice and try to make some of the changes in a city that I'm committed to and really love. Jenny, do you want to go next? Sure. Thanks, Adrienne. Hi, everybody. My name is Jenny Budenburg. I'm executive director of Preserve Montana. And I've been in that position now for nine months tomorrow. So tomorrow is my nine month anniversary. I've worked in Historic Preservation for 20 years now, primarily in advocacy, but I took a little bit of a break to work for local government of the city and county of Denver for five years as a preservation planner and developing an adaptive reuse program for the city. And I'll be honest, I wasn't sure that I wanted to be a nonprofit executive director. I worked for the National Trust's Denver Field Office for 11 years, and I worked alongside and with a lot of nonprofits across the country, and especially the American West. And I saw, you know, how difficult the position can be. But then I effectively started serving as an unpaid executive director for a growing nonprofit in Colorado, as I was serving as board president. And I kind of caught the bug for the position. I learned that I wasn't half bad at it. I liked the work. It was very multifaceted, challenging, fulfilling, and the impacts were just really incredible. And working alongside some really wonderful people was really, really fulfilling. Preserve Montana has been around for 35 years now. I'm only the second executive director that the organization has ever had. So the opportunities to grow the organization, to diversify its programs and outcomes for the benefit of people in communities across Montana is really vast. And to lead that type of work is incredibly exciting. It's also really daunting. But it's exciting. And the people here are great too. I would say that, you know, one of the big draws for me to this position was the staff, the board members, the partners to be able to work alongside these folks to do the good work that Preserve Montana does is really quite exciting. Thanks, Jenny. How about we? Hi, everyone. Thanks, Adrian. My name is Huey Pham. I'm the executive director for Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation, or API HIP, for short. I'm based out here in Seattle, Washington. But our staff, as of earlier this week, is bicoastal now with another in Virginia and another peer in Washington as well. And I've transitioned from my role as a board member to executive director of API HIP exactly five months ago today. And so I actually took on this role because I was encouraged to do so by my mentors, my colleagues, other board members in the field. You know, as a relatively young member of this cohort, you know, I think if my peers had told me to wait three or six more years to get more experience, like I would have listened to them. So it really speaks to kind of looking to senior leadership to giving trust to the next generation of preservation practitioners and leaders. And I look forward to bringing in my intercultural, interdisciplinary, multi-generational perspectives to the work. And I follow a long lineage of leaders for API HIP, including Dr. Michelle McGall-Long, who served in my role as a volunteer executive director position for nearly a decade. And so there's those transitions that is really strong and really at the front of my mind when I'm doing the work at a daily operation level. Next week. And then I will, I'll respond as well. So again, my major has got fine. I'm the newest of the group here. I've been in my position a month with the Los Angeles Conservancy as a president CEO. However, I've been with the organization for about 13 years, previously directing our advocacy efforts. And we are a citywide, but certainly a countywide organization. So we have 88 cities plus the county that we cover about 4,000 square miles. So it's a large area in terms of the organization. I can really relate a little bit to what Jenny said. I also was with the National Trust for about the same time that Jenny was in a different part of the country and worked with lots of nonprofit organizations. And I've seen how hard running a nonprofit actually is. But I also, through my time at the Conservancy, I've grown to love this organization. I love Los Angeles, very much Los Angeles and the work that we do and the places that we get to protect and save. And it was an opportunity. And I really care about where I want to see this organization go and working closely with the board and staff to make things happen. So that's in a big part of why I want to step into this role. And I think it's just an exciting time and preservation in general in terms of the field is changing, we're evolving. And I think there's a great opportunity as well as a challenge for us at the nonprofit sector to really make a meaningful difference. And I think that really leads into maybe the first question I would like to kick off with us as a conversation with the idea that preservation is changing. What are you most excited to tackle in this relatively new role in an organization that it's not brand new? We've been around for a while, all of us in terms of our work. But what do you want to change or evolve into in terms of the work that you're focusing on or taking on? So I'm not going to point to any by specific, but if you want to just go ahead and start chiming in. I can jump in with this one. I think with API HIP, we always apply a Asian Pacific Islander lens to some of the larger topics that preservationists are talking across the board and across the country. So when we're thinking about how affordable housing is related to historic preservation, a lot of the conversations and campaigns that communities across the country are approaching API HIP for are displacement issues in Chinatowns and our ethnic enclaves. If we're talking about climate response, a lot of our communities or historic neighborhoods are built along coastlines and waterways. And then thinking of the wildfires of Maui last year that is still trying to recover from and then emerging histories when we're thinking about like, oh, mid-century modern is historic now or architecture of the 70s or 80s are reaching their 50 year mark. We're thinking about the same with the Southeast Asian migration wave in post fall of Saigon as you know, Hmong, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laos are coming to America through the 70s and 80s. And are we prepared to recognize those histories at a regulatory level with national register or even at a community preservation understanding of like, these are the places that we have migrated to and we are still here today. How do we recognize our contributions in our presence? I can jump in. Mine might sound a little drier, but I am most excited about building new tools, incentives and policies in historic preservation to address all those amazing topics, you know, that we just shared. Coming off of working at the local level, I really feel like that's where the rubber hits the road with preservation. You know, local organizations, Adrian, like the work you do with LA Conservancy, there can be so much impact there. I think a lot of our tools, our incentives and our policies are dated and I know there's been a lot of emphasis to improve upon those. But to have those in our pockets, to do the work that we want to do to really touch upon those greater issues, I think is really key, especially as our societies are changing. And to me, I always think of the work that we do in advocacy as a way to empower people, right? Like we are here as nonprofit organizations to empower people and organizations to advocate for historic preservation. So having those tools and policies and incentives is a really important thing. And I don't know if this will come off well or not, but I want to make historic preservation common, you know, like it's not an extra. It's not a burden. It just is. It's a common thread of everyday life, you know, with clearly understood benefits. And I think in some areas that's understood a little bit better than others. But always that kind of the crux of what I do is, you know, how can we get to everybody to help them understand what historic preservation is and that it is there to be beneficial. There are all these wonderful things that come of it. So I think that's where I'm seeing sort of the evolution and how Preserve Montana, which I see is a very resourceful organization. We've been pretty successful at doing projects and doing them well and getting our hands dirty. And I can see us doing more of that moving forward. I don't think it comes across off or anything in terms of the same common. I think it's also another way of saying what increasingly we're having a conversation about, you know, is ensuring the work that we're doing is relevant and connecting to the things that people care about, which are a lot of what you were talking about. We and I think certainly Jenny, too, is that that's the shift that I'm seeing in terms of our work that we're doing. And that's for me probably the one thing that I find the most exciting because you can just see the people that traditionally have been left off, both in traditional forms in terms of places that we have recognized or designated or even included. But also the people that were connecting with it traditionally didn't think preservation was for them or part of their community. So the more that we do that, that's really gratifying to have those connections with community members that traditionally haven't been having been with us. And I think the work that is happening in so many different ways with the way we're talking about preservation in different ways, like NAPC with their messaging guide. Cindy, I think you're on the call, which is great in terms of thinking about how we communicate better around preservation or what Bonnie's doing with the relevancy guidebook in landmark Illinois. I mean, there's just some really good things I think are exciting in terms of this field right now. Yeah, I agree with everything that's been said. I think, you know, in some ways, I come at this work as an historian and someone whose work and interests are really interdisciplinary. So for me, when I think about preservation, I sort of see it in a constellation of practices, all about, you know, that relate to public memory, the landscape, how we, how questions of power really shape the landscape, both in terms of architecture, the design of the landscape, what we value, you know, preservation. So, you know, ultimately, it's really about making choices and deciding what has value and how we define value. So I think, you know, what I'm really excited about is an opportunity to be doing this work at a time where there's increasingly kind of openness to acknowledging gaps in archives, missing stories. And so the ability to kind of be doing this at a time where there is that acknowledgement, I think there's a lot of energy to try to widen, you know, widen all of the stories that are told. So there's that, I think that's happening. And then there's also, you know, this isn't just preservation work, but we're sort of all working at a time where these kind of community connections are really frayed. So the potential for preservation, heritage, cultural organizations to be places that build community and build some of those networks through the work we do, for me, is something that is, you know, really kind of inspires my work. And then Jenny to your point too, I think there's a lot of policy work, you know, especially, I think, coalitions to be built with environmentalists with thinking about sustainability, how preservationists and people who are really focused on climate change can work together. There's sort of a whole world of policy and work to be done, I think with new coalitions that hopefully can shape some of those outcomes too that I think are really unfortunately there, but but also exciting to be able to maybe be part of some solutions. So I'm curious, since we're all relatively new in our positions, and I'm guessing there are probably others joining us that may be new or contemplating jumping into the nonprofit ED role, I'm curious, did any of our predecessors leave you with helpful advice? Of course it did, but any good advice that you want to pass on or that now that you've been in your position for a little while, that you think is worth sharing? I don't know if there was specific advice so much, but I guess I would share that my board has really provided me with a great deal of freedom and flexibility to make this executive director position my own, which is really wonderful. I think with any transition of this type especially, so my predecessor was in the position for about 21 years and as I'd mentioned was the very first executive director and I'm the second, you know there have been some growing pains as we all kind of get up to speed and understand personalities and all that kind of stuff and that's you know very normal given the circumstances, but I would just say that given my nine months in the position so far that you know really having open and frequent conversations with board members, staff and stakeholders of course is key, like no surprise there. The one thing too is exercising patience, which is not one of my strongest suits, hopefully you guys do a little bit better, but you know it takes time to establish yourself in a new identity for an organization, so just having some patience and doing that I think is really key. Yeah I think a lot about patience too, Jenny, where I think some of that pressure or expectations whether it's self-imposed or otherwise to perform, to do and to get active with your new role, right? And so I'm very fortunate to have my predecessor stay on an official capacity as a senior advisor so that there is like a direct contact and recognizing that you know we have different skill sets, we have different relationships in the field, but the thing that bonds us together to carry on the legacy of API HIP's work is that intense care for our communities, our audiences and our partners that make the sum of API HIP, right? It's not just the board, it's not just staff, it's not just people who sign on our newsletter, but like the people that the mission represents and making sure that we have intense care over their history, their heritage, their resources and making sure that we empower them through historic preservation in the right direction. My predecessor is here today and is also a dear friend and I said this at something else when I first started the job three months ago, but I continue to text him often and reach out to him, so it's wonderful actually to have the former ED stay in the same city and also be a friend and be so available. And I think the surprise coming in for me having known this organization as a collaborator, a partner is the intense responsibility that so many people come with expectations that Providence Preservation Society has deep, deep expertise in so many, I mean more fields than we have staff people. So there's sort of an expectation of deep expertise running up against questions of resources and how many people are on staff and so I feel that sort of tension and also the responsibility really of that expectation within what is actually a very small organization. And I can also share that one piece of advice that has definitely come through just in a month is that there will be lots of people that come forward with lots of ideas about what you should be doing as an organization in this new position and so that's already happened and so I think that's part of the balancing act which leads me to I think the next piece of conversation I think if you work well to kind of chew on a little bit is this idea of how do we balance the reactive which is kind of inherent to the work that we do with the proactive and also understanding the issues that we're dealing with from housing to climate change to whatever. So I'm just curious how you're thinking about or how are you already tackling that in terms of your new role in your organization? I can go first because I don't have any answer. So that just puts more pressure on Hui and Jenny to have have an answer on that one. I mean if that is a question I am asking lots and lots of people so that's a question that I have been asking you know past executive directors we have many people who are in Providence who have been involved with this organization for decades and then we have a lot of new people who have come into the organization who see different things and they have come in for different reasons. So I mean that's the kind of question that I'm asking and trying to assess and of course that comes back always to this question of resources and I think the only other thing I'd throw into that as I myself don't really have an answer yet and I'm really struggling with that challenge is we often prioritize, we humans prioritize what is visible in some ways and so whether that means you know saving a building as opposed to doing policy work that isn't quite as visible you know we all tend to privilege the visual over some of those things that are harder to see and so wanting to also unpack that a little bit understand when impact doesn't necessarily mean saving a place but you know when do we still show up if there's no hope of saving a place because we show up for our partners because they've shown up for us so there are a lot of there are a lot of you know there's a lot of complexity to that question which I'm going to pass the bar off to Jenny and we and who are going to now give a wise answer but I'm still very much struggling with that question. For me I see some of the proactive things and I think when we got the draft of the questions it was kind of split between like advocacy and educational outreach program work and so the way I've been thinking about it since you've asked that question I haven't articulated before in my own mind but I think that when my organization invests in educational and outreach opportunities which we would call proactive right it's not something that we're responding to we think of it as an investment towards the advocacy work that we would have to do later right so like if we're introducing a general public to a historic site or to a heritage tradition and they see it through a historic preservation lens when that building is up for sale or has a demolition permit on it two years five years ten years later there's still a grounded a grounded community around this is like oh yeah like I I thought about how this place is important to my community or to my heritage we can apply some of these things that we learned a while ago to this rather than like uh there's no there's nobody cares about this building there's no community around it we put a petition out we put a letter of support out nobody signs on to it we have to do the teeth pulling work of educating them from the ground up about why this building is important or why this historic site is important right and so any of that educational introductory outreach or some might even call fun work at the beginning I try to frame it as an investment towards easier advocacy work later on and so that's that's kind of my justification when it feels like oh I gotta you know focus so much on on this emerging problem that needs a high level support right now or it's like well let's not forsake some of our um our general public audience building uh next generation kind of kind of outreach work as well yeah it's definitely a balancing act I would say every day I feel like I go through a triage you know of what needs to be tackled um but I think Morrison way you know say it very well there are a lot of different ways that I think we are doing proactive preservation work maybe we're just not acknowledging it enough you know the partnerships we're building the outreach and the education that we're doing that's all laying a really important framework so that when something big issue pops up you know we're ready to tackle it where we need to be in that more reactive mode so yeah maybe part of it is just us you know recognizing that and celebrating that work a little bit more and saying we have been pretty proactive um at preserved Montana I will say we do have a program that I think is really quite proactive we have built up a restoration and training program which is our largest program right now that consists of skilled craftspeople who actually go out and do rehabilitation maintenance work on historic properties across the state so in that way we are you know proactively saving properties they're not necessarily endangered they may just need maintenance they may need some work you know to keep them up to snuff and as part of that we also do workshops too to train anybody who's interested in learning about you know uh shingle roofing replacement or historic window repair so that they then can take those skills to their home or wherever else if they want to turn it into a profession and we're also hoping to build a core which preservation core which will allow students to work over a several week period of time on a number of historic properties across Montana and help rehabilitate and save them through preservation carpentry skills so I know a lot of different nonprofits and preservation organizations are also focusing on that work too even through you know revolving property programs you know investing and property development so those are also ways that I think proactivity is happening in the preservation world yeah I guess in asking a question I and I'd be curious to your thoughts of this but I mean I always equate sort of education and advocacy as one in the same they're just different approaches to getting to the same end result and there is a proactive and reactive nature to both of those components but part of it is like being more intentional on our work versus just having to deal with the thing that comes in at us where we have very little control to try to manipulate it because we're we're not in control of the situation and I think in the circumstances where we are sort of planting a seed on an issue maybe a big issue early on it's led to good things down the road which is sort of the awareness building appreciation understanding that this heritage or these places have value that when they're at risk will be a better situation down the road we've done that around legacy businesses and we've done that around modernism from 1960s 1970s architecture and you know this year and next year we'll be really focusing on the housing issue around where is the nexus between preservation and housing and where do we provide strategic value and how do we help in this very complicated big issue especially in places like Los Angeles but I think the more we do that we also hit the target of being are we relevant or asking the question is the work that we're doing is it relevant to the people in our community or the constituents that we serve as a non-profit organization so I guess that's another way of looking at that same question about are we you know how do we balance all these kinds of things at the same time so I throw in another topic and I'll just a one word fundraising who loves it who's who who can't get enough of it are already in their new position and who was afraid of it going into this new role because it's inherently a key function of any non-profit leader's position is to fundraise so I'm just curious more about like what's your experience been with that as you started down this path now one's willing to jump into this that's that may be telling yeah I think where am I in the spectrum in the middle like you know I fundraising is is fine I you know I it's fine I'm not most excited about it but but of course you know that's that's sort of most a lot of the job I mean I think when I think about it even just in the past three months what I have found that's really great about these organization I inherited is that there's a real diversity of programs and themes that we that pps works on and so Jenny to your point we also have a young building trades program that has both the workforce intensive and do-it-yourself sort of segment of classes even in doing that you know if you have a diversity of the kinds of activities you're doing what I found is that leads to obviously a diversity of the potential people who connect with that work and find it meaningful so that's one thing that I think I have found is it's a question partially of because you know the fundraising in a sense is really like a partnership and so in an ideal situation you're doing a thing that a partner is already really invested in and you find each other and through kind of the the support that they can give to to these programs you know they're also getting something out of it but the question is in some ways how many different kinds do you have enough different kinds of programs that you can be actively engaging people who have different priorities especially today where climate of course is a priority for a lot of a lot of people who are giving and and so so is direct service and so sort of thinking about how an organization a preservation organization can be doing some of that work and then also kind of working in partnership with donors and individuals and foundations who have made those their giving priorities is kind of the key. Yeah for us I've been trying to think about the mantra of like you miss the shots that you don't take and with staff capacity and effort to work reward ratio in mind you have to have the belief that there are funds and funders out there that want to support your mission right and so I think you can't be a pessimism you can barely be a realist while working in non-profit work right like you have to hold a little bit of optimism to one for your mission that you know a better world is out there and two that there are people waiting to fund you you got to find them and to to move that forward otherwise you know it's just a downward spiral right or your your do you losing too much program time to do fundraising time and that there's that fine balance and that goes back to like that effort to reward ratio. Yeah I don't mind fundraising and it comes in a lot of different ways right shapes and forms I mean you could do grant writing to you know raise funds you can do individual asks you know of donors and foundations sponsorships earned income is actually a fair portion of our budget which is also helpful and I would say that you know and this may go without saying that having a diversified revenue stream for a non-profit is really important and one of the things that me and my board have been really thinking about is sustainable fundraising really looking to build an endowment you know that actually is giving us some pretty good return moving forward because it is difficult to find those unrestricted funds when you have great programming and projects that you're working on it's relatively easy if you can if you can tell that compelling story and share that and make that sales pitch you know then you can find those funds relatively easily but when that project or program moves on and you still need funding to you know keep the organization going you know finding those other revenue streams or those unrestricted revenue streams is really important so yeah I think way was kind of getting to this if you don't ask you don't know I mean that's kind of I think a main element of fundraising is you just got to make that ask and see if you know you can interest people but there's lots of different ways of doing that one thing we're also investigating too is our membership program and I know this has been an ongoing conversation for a lot of non-profits you know how you should frame a membership program should you have a membership program and we've been considering that at Preserve Montana too and right now you know we are an advocacy organization as all of you are here on the panel here today and many people you know in the audience and membership brings that really important constituency when you are advocating to be able to lean on that number of people and those people to really advocate for a given issue so for us membership makes sense but I would love to see and learn more about maybe some creative and innovative membership programs that are out there that can help with that fundraising and revenue stream and also continue to build that really critical support for the organization on an advocacy front yeah I think that's a critical question I think a lot of non-profits are facing right now it's about the membership and if that's sustainable long-term in terms of maybe where you had a membership level at one point can you keep it at that same level I think it's also a question of maybe younger generation doesn't necessarily prescribe the idea of being a member they like to support an organization in support specific programs or events but they don't really want to be a member necessarily they don't see the same value in that that maybe someone else you know maybe of a different generation might have looked at that model we as an organization have a you know we fluctuate but we're around 4,500 members and at times we've been much larger in terms of our size but that's a critical mass both from a revenue but also certainly support that we hopefully can mobilize when we need the least to educate and communicate with in terms of pressing issues and needs in our community so it's important to us it's also a connection in terms of our work and many of those people have been members with us from the very beginning so it's a really critical piece to that I'd be curious if others are re-evaluating or rethinking kind of membership models since you bring that up Jenny yeah for API we don't have a membership model but we're considering it and we're trying to make it meaningful relevant and up to date with you know as Adrian alluded to next generation membership or engagement or even you know older generations like if they are opting out or if they are putting their resources and attention in in different different avenues like how do we address those so it's definitely it's definitely in our consideration as our development plan for the next few months but we don't have one yet and but it's it's very attractive since a lot of other preservation organizations do have that but they range in and success rate right yeah I'm finding coming in our membership rates stay amazingly the same which is you know both you want to see it grow a little bit more but also to be honest given what everyone has been through over the last few years a lot of organizations have really lost people so I think Providence Preservation Society absolutely hasn't our membership is quite loyal and in some ways when I think about the things that I'm more worried about or more focused on it's for us right now it's not membership for some reason I'm not I'm not quite sure why it's it may also be the longevity of the institution and how connected generations now feel to it I mean we have members who literally you know literally there their parents were members and were involved and so there's just a very deep kind of personal connection that a lot of people have to the organization and I think that has helped sustain the membership we're almost at that time where I think we can take some questions from the audience so I would encourage you again everyone if you have a question put it in the Q&A function and there's a couple really I think good some meaty comments meaty questions that we can chew on a little bit here and I'm going to go with one from Vince Michael I think it's nice to see you I can see you but nice to hear from you in terms of a question but he's asking about the question have we bumped up against organizational culture that resists modernization or maybe change and wants to keep doing things the way we've always done it just be curious certainly probably more so for you all than myself that have been at the helm a little bit longer to to be able to answer that question I mean I can say that with my board right now I think we're really excited to see some change for the organization as I mentioned the predecessor had been with Preserve Montana for 20 years and here's an opportunity to kind of do a refresh right and I think we have some things that have worked really well for the organization but we also have some opportunities to have new programs new projects new vision moving forward so I haven't really run into that issue too much where somebody doesn't want to really make a change they want things to kind of stay the same if I'm understanding the question correctly I think Preserve Montana is really in a position to re-envision its work and its relevancy in Montana and how that might contribute nationally yeah I think at PPS you know 2021 a new strategic plan was adopted that is really powerful it's pretty much why I came to the organization it is sort of strongly on the side of taking a new look at Preservation's history at questions of equity at questions of inclusivity the language is pretty strong I think it you know so I am it's why I'm with PPS but all to say in some ways the challenge some of the you know some of the pushback or the tension that that created within a sort of the organization's long-standing members happened a couple of years ago in some ways I feel like I have kind of benefited from the storm you know the storm that that kicked up really went on for a couple of years and I think now to be honest too you know the culture changes around around a plan like that and is it doesn't quite feel to many long-time members as radical as it felt maybe two two and a half years ago so in some ways I feel like I've kind of walked in after some of that some of that storm kind of has kicked up and is now in some ways feels like it's subsiding a little bit yeah I would say fortunately for API hip there's a lot of trust in some modernization new perspectives like I mentioned I'm relatively young from the even from when I was a board member and letting me be the executive director I think there was a lot of trust in that I would bring in those new perspectives but I've definitely been on boards and other organizations that have a harder time doing that and you know sometimes it just takes like a hard conversation like looking at dwindling numbers or low fundraising or missed opportunities and say like well you know those could be a result of our refusal to try new things utilize new tools engage new audiences right and that's that's why I try to think back to but it's hard not to frame it in like the ultimatum to your your senior board members right where it's like you have to you have to frame it in a right way and present them with with data and and correlation right it's a delicate dance in terms that I also think I can't necessarily chime in on this question I asked myself but I will throw out that I think again just this idea of change is good and one thing that when our longtime leader again I know Jenny yours was there 20 or 21 years so Linda Dishman the Conservancy was with us for 31 years which is a long time to be an organization and in some ways organization kind of taken on the identity of Linda and that was like how do you extract that and you know move forward and then that's not uncommon with a lot of preservation organizations certainly I think we've seen a change in leadership for a lot of those within the last five 10 years and that's part of the challenge with the new ed stepping into that role but the other thing that we took advantage of with her leaving was that we'd always had on our strategic plan goal to establish an endowed fund to be able to provide grants to support preservation projects throughout the county and this was an impetus to be able to one honor her legacy at the organization by fundraising to actually establish that fund and we're very close to meeting our million dollar goal for that which has been great in terms of that so I think it's also there's change that comes with new leadership but also the change with the past leadership and how do you use that in terms of an opportunity as well and also with all of us being new there's new opportunities that come with that too in terms of how we frame that within our organization and our communities as well so I'm looking at another question is how do we engage younger younger generations younger members younger folks in terms of wanting to be engaged in the work that we do since we tend to skew older in terms of as we talked about membership before but sometimes just our demographic that our supporters that tend to be with us are of a different generation so maybe we that's a good question for you you are our youngest ED in the group here so maybe you can give us some wisdom on that point yeah and it's funny too because my staff that we recently hired are even younger than me right so in this role I'm thinking a lot about working with Gen Z as they enter the workforce as they engage with our content attend our events support our causes with their time and their resources and so I think a lot of times when we have this kind of conversation it's like what do what do we need to do and then the first answer is like well just ask them and then the second and then the second thing that is often missed is like well then do or at least try to do what they're asking for right because it's like sometimes we hear things that we don't want to that we don't want as an answer right and we're like oh well at least I asked it was like well you can't expect the results to follow up if there's not actual an action step right and so um like a very easy anecdote that you guys might not want to hear and maybe I didn't even want to hear was uh we know that uh Facebook is dying Instagram is middle of the pack and then a lot of the content that Gen Zers and other and new audiences are on are on TikTok right and so so we saw an increase of a thousand percent tenfold of our engagement from posting our daily API everyday educational content just from posting on TikTok compared to Instagram right and so those audiences are in or in or cross and now we have that growing audience of like people engaging with our work that might not have otherwise if we stop to like well we just want to do Instagram we don't want to do the extra work of posting it to another site like you know it's a hard conversation and you have to allocate time resources but like if that is the answer that's coming across all your reports all your articles that's saying like this is where they are you got to meet them where they are right um so yeah that's my my rambling answer my question for you is what's after TikTok so we can get ahead of that um because it's a it's a lot of investment to get on each one of these so but I hear what you're saying for sure in terms of that um question about uh how much time do we spend on our fundraising as opposed to our other types of preservation work and I think that will probably vary for all of us in lots of different ways in terms of the size of our organizations and how we distribute our workload but getting some insights on that that might be helpful here I mean for me I think it shifts depending on the time of year we all just came off of end of year giving so we probably were putting a lot of our time into fundraising things are starting to kind of you know even out a little bit now for preserved Montana I am the main fundraiser we don't have any development staff um right now the board is starting to step up more to get more engaged with building relationships with donors and donor prospects some feel comfortable making asks some not but that's another resource that we can tap into um and some of my staff write grants too um but I guess if I had to put like a percent of my time on fundraising it's definitely at least 25 percent I mean I touch fundraising every day um pretty much that I'm in the office in some shape um or form so it's it's a it's a pretty big piece for sure um you know if I had some development staff maybe that would be different and maybe that percent's not exactly accurate but it's it's a pretty constant thing I was going to guess about the same number I mean of course I've only been in for three months but that's you know yeah that's sort of my that was my approximate guess too is about 25 percent yeah for for us it's kind of influx just like Jenny said where it's it's not quite a percentage um and it's a lot of times chicken or the egg right whereas like do we do the programming and show how successful it is and ask for funding or do we get the funding first so that we could implement it correctly from the start right and so we're always navigating that and there's not a consistent answer yeah uh I I this question came up with our board uh when I was talking with them about this position and I think it's really you know you're in some ways you're spending 100% on your fundraising in all honesty in terms of it's always in your mind and thinking in these positions about the work that we do either programmatically or specifically development work you know where is is there a fundraising component to this to support the program and the organization so I think that's part of it um at the certain thing we do have a development um you know department with three staff that is focused on events and grants and major gifts and plan giving and all kinds of things which is great um but I I kind of see all of us at the nonprofit but the entire staff as fundraisers um I'm not sure everyone sees them that way but that's why I would like to kind of rethink and help people understand what the bottom line is is the more money that we can bring in and help support our programs we can grow and do more and be more impactful and meaningful in terms of the organization that we are so um that's probably not the most realistic 100% but it's that's what I think we're often thinking about and probably what's keeping us up at night sometimes about you know will we we raise the the bottom line in terms of that particular event or program that we're trying to hit for here so I think we have time for maybe one other question and I think it's really maybe a question for Jenny um so come off mute again uh but it's question and you're the only one here that really is representing a rural perspective so how is it being at a nonprofit rural uh historic preservation organization in terms of the work that you're doing and all the things that we've talked about how does that relate maybe to maybe our experiences or how is it in contrast yeah um well Montana as you know covers a lot of area and has one of the smallest populations in the country we have 1.3 million people across the entire state which Adrienne how many people live in the city of Los Angeles alone a lot I don't have the current number so it it is hard the resources you know um both monetarily uh people lies um it does present a lot of different challenges even geographically getting across the state to different projects to work with different communities as a struggle I mean you've got hours to get you know to the east side of the state so it does present some um different approaches and I think statewide organizations in general you know I mean when you're looking at the geography you cover um statewide just present a different kind of scenario especially if you're working in much larger larger states um you know the one thing about rural preservation though is that there is a fair amount of interest and support in it in terms of that kind of equity perspective and making sure that rural communities aren't being forgotten about you know that they're getting as much as tension as urban or other areas of the country so in some ways rural preservation benefits from that kind of greater level of incentives or support from grants and other types of funding and just interest in general um but yeah it can definitely be tough um I mean I'll say the organization that I sat on the board of in Colorado was also in a rural community it was a site specific project though it was a historic theater that we were doing a major rehabilitation of um in a community of less than 5,000 people but it was also surrounded by communities that had a great deal of wealth a lot of tourism so I think it's very situational when you talk about you know rural and what's that impact on preservation I think there are similar challenges in other places different challenges you know similar opportunities you know different opportunities as well um but yeah I mean it's it's all challenging and engaging work and I think there are a lot of good things that are coming out of rural areas the one other thing I would say is coming from the city and county of Denver where I worked for five years most previously or most immediately there is still replicability of what's going on in urban areas and how it can be applied in rural areas too and I think we often don't look at that closely enough but especially when we're thinking about local policies or other tools I think there are things that can be done in both places in very similar ways that can come you know have good outcomes at the end of the day so I don't know if I answer the question exactly correctly or what they were looking for just to say that there are different opportunities you know different challenges but there's also some similarities that you can draw between urban and rural areas as well yep thank you and I think that's our cue that we're done so thanks everyone great um so we just have a couple of closing things just as a reminder as we wait for the slide to pop up we will be sharing a recording of the session in a follow-up email via the email you used for registration so keep an eye out from that I also saw a bunch of I have a bunch of links that the panelists share with me they they wanted me to pass along so I'm going to do that as well in that follow-up email but first I wanted to tell you about our upcoming webinars that we have um the first one in February of February 13th which is part of the AACHF conversation series um and I hope you'll join us for that we also have a government um our government relations team has put together a great panel on affordable housing and then our first forum members only book talk which will be with Rosa Lohinger and um Elizabeth Lysius talking about Rosa's book dwell time and if you're a forum member and you haven't yet gotten the link to register for that email us at forum at savingplaces.org and if you're not a forum member and you'd like to join I'll make sure to include the join information in the follow-up email uh we also have uh coming up on April 3rd and 4th the Pass Forward online symposium which is focusing on um how to mitigate and adapt to changing climate um it's a two-day symposium we hope you'll join us um the information for that is also uh going to come in the follow-up email um and I will also try to quickly drop the links before this closes out but I might not be able to but just keep an eye out for that information in the follow-up email as well um and finally thank you everyone our speakers uh Samantha from MPPN, Rhonda who's been on the back end sharing the slides for coming today um and all of that information actually about the webinars is on this link that's on the slide um and you can contact us at forum online at savingplaces or forum at savingplaces.org both email to work so thank you everyone have a wonderful rest of your week um it's so great to hear from everyone today. Bye everyone.