PROPOSAL TYPE
Traditional Panel
SEEKING
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
RELATED TOPICS
- Digital
- Museums/Exhibits
- Public Engagement
RELATED TOPICS
Small history organizations (historical societies, museums, and more) often face challenges with funding and with staff time. Here, our panel will delve into how to efficiently and creatively manage resources to ensure you’re engaging with your audiences to your full capacity.
Description
I would like to be matched up with other leaders from small organizations to put together a panel or workshop on this topic. My experience is over 10 years leveraging a small budget and a small staff to grow our presence to over 150 public programs annually, and a very engaged and robust audience (both in person and via social media). I’ve presented on this topic as they keynote at a local history conference and would love the opportunity to work with others in the field to develop this into a very robust program. Being able to present on this topic would also mean my organization would permit me to travel across the country to attend this conference.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Mary Zawacki, Schenectady County Historical Society, [email protected]
ALL FEEDBACK AND OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY JULY 7, 2023. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
I think this is a wonderful topic and hope you are able to find fellow presenters. If not, but you are able to attend the conference in Salt Lake, perhaps propose this as a dine-around topic to meet others in similar situations and then build on that for a proposal for the next conference.
I think there is always interest in how to make working in smaller organizations more optimal. It’s a great topic! I wonder if you will touch on paid internships, partnerships with higher education institutions and community organizations, as well as any grassroots collaborations that you would recommend.
Your interests may pair well with Gordon Daines’s proposal “STUDENTS, SMALL CASE EXHIBITS, AND THE POWER OF HISTORICAL THINKING” (https://ncph.org/phc/2024-topic-proposals/learning-through-the-act-of-creation-students-small-case-exhibits-and-the-power-of-historical-thinking/). For example, how might small historical agencies work with public history courses and high school-aged school programs to leverage grant funding? Students can gain hands-on experience and increase relevance for the historical organizations they collaborate with.
Hi Mary, this is a great topic! With the vast majority of history museums in the country being small or micro, the need to wear many hats and leverage resources and partnerships is crucial. I have a couple of suggestions for small museums in Utah who might be possible co-presenters. I also think asking the Utah field services office might be useful as well since their work is specifically about providing training, resources, and networks with an eye to capacity buiding for small institutions. I’ll contact you directly with some names.
The Texas Archive of the Moving Image would be interested in participating in this conversation. We are a small, virtual only history organization that sees more than 200 million uses of our content via giphy and more than 50,000 TikTok followers. We are constantly looking for new ways to engage and grow audience which helps us to expand our collection of crowd-sourced archival media.
I like the topic as small organizations, which often present history pertaining to a small local place and allows for educational opportunities for all in the community. Have you contacted and discussed this topic with other organizations outside of a historical field?
I believe this is a great topic as i am currently serving as the Vice President for the Genealogical Society for Hispanic America-Utah Chapter. We often struggle with increasing membership, locating presenters for monthly meetings, etc. I did join the organization as a potential site for recruiting oral history narrators. I look forward to attending this panel.