Site Coordinators to Meet

Here's a news items that would otherwise get lost in the overall crush of events. We have scheduled a meeting of all our site coordinators with the Richmond staff for Monday, March 31. We operate our properties through a number of mostly part-time, modestly paid folks based at each site. Only two are full time employees. Not surprisingly, given the Board discussions the last two days, those are Historic Jamestowne (Ann Berry) and Cape Henry Lighthouse (John Starling). The John Marshall House benefits from part time attention of two full time employees. We combined museum operations at the John Marshall House and The Richmond History Center (RHC) a couple of years ago. One of the main efficiencies we garnered from this was having a full time customer services representative (David Nickels) based at the RHC but providing scheduling, oversight, training etc. for a common pool of docents. Thus the folks who interpret the Marshall House are fully versed in the RHC and vice versa. We also are fortunate to have Doug Welsh, who works roughly two days a week for us and three days a week for the John Marshall Foundation. Doug provides on site oversight of the grounds, the physical inspections and maintenance of the building as well as being a skilled docent and promoter. Most of the others, whom I will introduce to you in subsequent posts, are part time, seasonal. As you know, many of our properties close completely during the depths of winter. Next weekend, with the beginning of March, Bacon's Castle and Smith's Fort will re-open on weekends only. Scotchtown opens with a full schedule on April 1. Thus a meeting at the end of March is a fitting time for getting ready for the re-opening of the properties.

This meeting will bring the site personnel up to speed on procedures and reporting as well as new membership initiatives and other aspects of daily site management that they perform on our behalf. (Maybe we should set up a separate properties blog for a focused ongoing discussion of just site issues!). One of the items for discussion will be to solicit their ideas on expanded and alternative uses for their sites. Most of these folks have been with APVA and their particular site for an awfully long time and have insights that we would likely not. We`need to bring them into the conversation. These are the front line folks that most of the Board never gets to meet, but are vital to the financial and brand success of APVA as long as it is in any respect a property based organization. You would be proud to know them. They are fiercely loyal to their site and the APVA (often in that order) and work for far less than they are worth.

I want to keep these relatively short and focused to allow for comment and discussion, so I will stop this now (besides, Bill Maher is on TV!). See you in cyberspace! - Louis