Unknown Speaker 22:03 Hello and welcome to our final session of the day the directors Roundtable, I'm Betsy Edler the executive secretary for the Ohio local history Alliance at the Ohio History Connection and I will be being your tech host for this evening. It's not quite evening yet. If you've been with us all day, you are probably deeply familiar with our with our with our introduction with our technological technology introduction slide but we'll go through this again. We are recording this event recordings will be available on the Alliance website a couple of weeks after the after the conference, please go ahead and ask questions using the q&a option. You can use the chat to share comments with each other or resources. Remember to select everyone in the chat otherwise only myself and the other panelists will see your comments so you'll want to select everyone. And then closed captioning is available for this webinar. In order to activate that you will go to the CC button at the bottom of your screen and choose Show subtitles. All right. That is the end of my presentation. So now I will introduce to you Dante, whose last name I just realized I don't know how to pronounce from the Armstrong Air and Space Museum. Unknown Speaker 23:28 Well, you know, when your first name is Dante, how often do you need to refer to your last name right. But thanks a lot, Betsy, boy again my name's name's Dante Suntory I'm the executive director for the Armstrong Air and Space Museum, and I want to welcome everyone to our final session today, the directors roundtable. What we'd like to do for this session is pretty much just have an organic discussion about issues and hear from different executive directors from varying types of organizations across the state, that was one of the feedback we got from past sessions, and given the challenges of the past two years it seems like it would be a really good perspective to hear that and hear what some of the directors have had to said, have to say about what they've done in their different institutions, as we've gotten to where we are now, so please use the q&a for questions. We're going to have some discussions, I'll ask some prompts to kind of get things going, but we really do want to hear, what are some things you guys want to hear about too. So to get things started, I think I'll have everyone introduce themselves. And we'll start off, Kelly and Kelly you could introduce yourself, and I think everyone could turn on their screens and then we'll just kind of go around and do our intros and then kind of get started. Unknown Speaker 24:45 Hey thanks Dante. My name is Kelly claying, it's actually k l i n g. So, if you see it written differently it's with a L in there, but I am the director of the Wood County Museum here in Bowling Green, Ohio. I've been the director for three years, and I've been with the organization for 18. So that we've seen a lot of ups and downs, a lot of challenges in the last 18 years but I'll tell you the 2020 was definitely took the cake on that one. Unknown Speaker 25:19 Thanks, Jennifer. Unknown Speaker 25:21 I'm Jenny Highfield I'm the president and CEO for national personalities library we operate at first lady's National Historic Site here in Canton, Ohio. I've been here at first ladies now almost four years coming into my fourth year. Unknown Speaker 25:38 Thank you, then that leaves Rachel. Unknown Speaker 25:41 I'm Rachel Barbara with the Auglaize County Historical Society. We're here in West Central Ohio, and my office is located in one of our four sites. We have four sites and eight buildings, and what can add is the county seat of Auglaize County and that's where the offices and I've been with the Historical Society for 15 years. Unknown Speaker 26:04 Thanks. Alright so, I think to get started, I think one of the topics that a lot of people think about when you think about the challenges we faced during the pandemic has to do with finances so maybe we can start off by just sort of discussing some financial challenges. One of the things that strikes me is that different organizations are dependent on different types of revenue streams to different extents like a place like the museums very dependent on admissions and store sales, the things that you get from that direct visitors, other institutions, maybe its membership or something like that but why don't we start off just talking about what what were some of the revenue streams that were severely affected by by the pandemic. Unknown Speaker 26:50 I could go ahead and start for the Wood County Museum. We operate out of the former county pour farm, which is a county owned buildings so in one regard we were lucky, because things like utilities and building maintenance are funded by county tax appropriation money, so thank you to our commissioners for giving us that type of security. But everything else we do, is completely reliant on membership admission rentals and events, all of which were canceled. I'm sure it's same with all of you. So we cut our budget, our society budget, almost $30,000 to try to be able to maintain what we could. Luckily for us, we had successful membership renewals, we had a successful annual campaign, and we were able to get grant funding from a several different sources throughout Ohio. And that's, those three things are what saved us and 2020. Unknown Speaker 28:07 Jennifer, you have something similar. Unknown Speaker 28:10 Um, well, So, our funding sources are we have federal funding sources, but we do have our revenue streams that come in from tours and retail and so forth. So, of course all of all of that ceased. For us it was a little different so our federal funding state so we were fortunate in sort of same as Kelly you know we're in federal buildings so the lights were able to maintain we didn't have to worry about all of those things. But a lot of our grant funding sources state funding sources change do they drastically cut those budgets, or they shifted where they were giving so we had, you know requests out for some of our foundations and their funding then shifted to direct needs and getting boots on the ground to serve the communities that they were serving. And so that meant, you know, dramatic shifts in what we were doing like Kelly and our budgeting and so forth and figuring out what we were going to do to be able to sustain ourselves, Unknown Speaker 29:08 reach out with the Historical Society. Unknown Speaker 29:11 Well, we have an annual appropriation from our county commissioners, we have some in person fundraisers and events, and membership, those are our primary sources of income, we do certainly do a lot of grant preparation but those are mostly for projects, rather than operating income, I remember. I'm sure everybody has a similar experience, but our board meets on the second Thursday of the month so that second Thursday of March of 2020. When we started realizing that we were going to have to be canceling events, including our fundraising events. So we, you know, the panic didn't set in right away because, just like everybody else, we thought well this will be over in a month or six weeks or whatever. And as we moved further and further into it, we realized, well, we might be looking at spending down some of our savings or doing something with some of our investments. And, you know, it yeah I got a little bit scary, I think that what really helped us out, was the Cares Act funding that was made available by Ohio humanities. We did receive stimulus funding from our county commissioners, which we were very grateful for. And just recently have received, sharp funding so those things really helped us keep a balanced budget. Unknown Speaker 30:37 Yeah, that's a good point, Rachel, everyone, you know, we kind of almost remember, day by day that second week of March, 2020 things changed from, hour by hour, it's one of those. You talk about different moments that you experience. And that's a shared experience and everyone kind of remembers where they were when the pandemic became real. And the weird thing is that it was a different time for different people depending what part of the country you were, but it was that same thing where it was like, and that wasn't a decision at that point we were, we had to shut down, we had to do this. It's a crazy time but, but, similar to that, it was, we all kind of remember looking for sources and hearing about this announcement and you got to apply to this and so there was a lot of scrambling to try and, you know, apply for some of the, the government relief and then as other programs developed to have some more time to develop. You know COVID related grants came later on. What were some of those. That's what was some of that support that your organizations were able to go after, were there any, any that stand out as a particularly. Oh wow, this really, you know, this, this, this was, we were able to get this because of some you know creative approach or something because I think everyone applied for ptps and things like that, not to, you know say that wasn't important. But, you know once in a while you hear about some other support that fits in what you're trying to do and and helps with COVID and it just marries everything. Unknown Speaker 32:18 Well, and I should have said in my introduction to that, I got to see the pandemic visa free museums, not only from the Auglaize County Historical Society but I'm on Dante's bore to Unknown Speaker 32:30 oh yeah I suppose to do that for full disclosure. Unknown Speaker 32:35 So, you know, we I'm, I am the sole employee of the Auglaize County Historical Society and the first that the organization ever had so very small compared to the Armstrong Museum, so you know we would try to be working out things here at the County Museum and then I'd go to zoom board meetings and we'd hear what was happening with the Armstrong, so it was really interesting contrast, I think, you know, for us, the it was the, the money from the commissioners because you know we were competing with a lot of small businesses, and I hate even using the word competing, but you know we had to make our case for why it was important that we received this operating funding, and you know it was very gratifying that the commissioners responded in the way that they did, because they had the opportunity to to fund lots of different people and you know I think in all of our approaches we just tried to be as professional as possible I know I heard that comment from the county, you know, we had a printed spreadsheet and they weren't notes on napkins that you know, they understood they felt like this was a reasonable offer to make to us to give us this money because they felt that it would be in good hands, Even though we were not the typical applicant that they were seeing for the funding. Unknown Speaker 34:01 We have the luxury here in Wood County that our property, we have a 50 acre site that the museum sits on. So we were able to shift some of the things that we do to both online formats and also utilize our outdoors. We actually took exhibit panels that weren't currently on exhibit and hung them on the porches, and then through social media encourage people to come and tour the site. Use picnic tables for social distance lunches and they could actually see some exhibits, as they were walking around, and I think that helped we had some humanities funding, and being able to show that we could still offer the same things like our educational programs and our exhibit, just in different ways. We were lucky in that way we could sort of pivot in that direction and use the outside. The same way we use the inside. Do you see that to Jennifer. Unknown Speaker 35:01 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that you hit the nail on the head and I'm sure Dante is gonna probably go into like how did we, you know, how do we address some of those things but we saw the same thing it was about being nimble and flexible and how you can demonstrate that then to funders like we still are viable we're still, you know, providing something to the communities that we serve, you know, Here's how we're doing that and here's why it's still important so yeah I absolutely saw that became like the key, the key takeaway for every request that we made was, was exactly that. So, we can still operate, we can still provide our you know our resources, here's how we're doing that. Unknown Speaker 35:42 Yeah, I think, because as Rachel put in making our case, that that's one of the challenges where, you know, you know, you know, cultural institutions are important but you can see how in the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of focus went on to be, for obvious reasons, you know, health sector and things like that. But, in the general sense it was all part of that economic relief because you look at the workforce, just in the state of Ohio alone, of how many people are employed in this sector and, you know, and not to mention how important it was to have institutions like this for people to go back to when things opened again. How long were folks closed actually I mean, the museum here opened in late June 2020 Soon after the the governor released the guidelines that allowed for museums to open. I know some institutions, you know, couldn't open right away and, but just curious. Unknown Speaker 36:47 We opened back up the first week of July. Unknown Speaker 36:50 Same. Unknown Speaker 36:52 We are still not fully open, so because we are a federal site, we unfortunately or fortunately follow federal state and local guidelines so first federal guidelines Trump, all of those and so the current administration actually has more stringent regulations on, on those sort of things than the previous administration did so, we are still only occupying 20% 20 25% of what we can do here so we're still limited. Unknown Speaker 37:25 So what were some more of the things you did to adapt, like Kelly mentioned, putting the ex to the interior. The exhibit panels outside. What were some of the other things you did to adapt when we reopened as we know, year ago we had things like capacity limits and other very strict, not strict in the sense of severe but strict as far as defined ways to operate. There's a lot of switch to virtual, and we could talk about how we adapted programming, both in terms of, you know, physical in house visitor experience and, and anything else Unknown Speaker 38:07 we we'd never done a Facebook Live program until the pandemic. And we actually don't do public programming with presenters, we don't. We can't do that on site, so we're at always at a library or church or a hall or something. We had two programs under our belt before everything was shut down, and we're trying to figure out what to do. And one of our past presidents had told us that she knew how to do a Facebook Live program, and the previous year she had done a public presentation for us, And I said we want to take that presentation, and let's make it our first Facebook Live program, and she agreed, and it was very popular. We couldn't believe how many people watched it, and people from all over the country, which of course was a new experience for us having folks everywhere, watching our programs. The program was following the Donner party, she had created it as a heritage tourism experience so we used it to explain to people how you can have a really positive experience wherever you travel and learn about history and how to go about that in a very organized way. So, but it was kind of ironic that it was, you know about the Donner party, it was, I think the sub theme was, you think you have a bad. Look what they went through. But, you know, hundreds of people watched it, and we can believe that. And so, we've done everything since, virtually, and I think the most people who ever watched a program of ours, it was on German immigration, it was more than 8000 people. And, you know, we could have done that program live in a church hall, and never had more than 50 people. And the great thing too, and this also speaks to the financial issue is that, especially early on. Everybody knew what the situation was so we had presenters who didn't want to be paid very specifically said don't pay me you saved your money for something else. We had always used the speaker's bureau from the Ohio Humanities Council, and even those folks, you know, who are used to a specific honorarium, that they said don't worry, you know, pay us what you can pay us when you can, but we're just glad to help out we're, um, we're glad to be presenting this information to folks. And so that has worked out really well for us. We just did a program, a week ago on the inter urban Electric Railway in west central Ohio and no 600 people have seen it, and you know that that was very eye opening to us actually our Facebook followers have more than doubled since the beginning of the pandemic, and we did not expect it and it was a kind of a steep learning curve, I'm not gonna say we didn't have our technological issues every once in a while, but I feel like we have it down pat now and I think we will still certainly continue to use a lot of virtual programming in the Unknown Speaker 41:21 future. Unknown Speaker 41:26 Jennifer, do you have any. Unknown Speaker 41:28 Yeah, actually we are a lot like Rachel we, we had robust programming that we would do here on site. But, you know, like Rachel, you know, an average program might be 50 to 70 people a really good one might be a little over 100 So like everybody else, we went virtual and our first few programs we had about 100 people in this program. Same thing with okay so we're connecting with an audience well because of the nature of what what we talk about here with First Ladies, you know, we knew we had a national audience from other work that we did that we weren't really connecting with the national audience in programming though because our programming was always based locally. So when we started doing all of our programming virtually, you know, We started having hundreds of people attending our programs live, and so we got to the point where we maxed out our zoom capacity and then we maxed out our zoom capacity again and again. And so we had to continue to grow that and then we started a YouTube channel where we started recording the programs and putting them on there so like Rachel you know we have some programs that have 10s of 1000s of views and, you know, the amazing part for us about that was when I'm gonna step back for a second when we first got started, there were, I think there were six of us six museums here in that region who all reached out to support each other like what are you doing, how are you dealing with this, what are you doing about this business. Well we all decided that we were going to have this social media presence together as well and so we all picked a day of the week and at noon every day of that week we all presented programming at that time and so it was this great collaborative effort of, you know, all of these organizations who aren't even necessarily similar me can't Museum of Art and master Museum of Art McKinley museum Denison ourselves, Hall of Fame. I mean, we're talking about completely different organizations but coming together to try to build an audience even together virtually, and the presidential sites did the same thing came together to try to build this partnership and so. So for us, I don't know. Now looking now where we are you know we do anywhere between five and, You know, some months about 10 virtual programs now a month. And you know we have speakers and presenters who are providing those programs for us. I don't know that now our conversation is not, you know, when will we be back, you know, in person it's will we go back and who what will go back in person because we have this amazing national audience now that is just hungry for programming and wants to connect with us and we want to obviously keep that connection. Unknown Speaker 44:20 Kelly, do you have anything, I mean you guys, I know you're doing virtual too. Unknown Speaker 44:26 Yeah, we've done virtual as well. A little bit different approach with our programs. We partnered with the Wood County Committee on Aging, and the North Baltimore library, so they actually had the technology, and we just provided the content, along with it so we were kind of doubling the audience's for all of those organizations, by combining our efforts to get those programs out there and they're on YouTube, You can watch those now as well. But we did that was a little bit different, was we didn't focus as much on the the programming, as we did on the social media itself, giving people that opportunity to sort of chime in. Whenever and not have a specific time to attend a program. What I noticed, especially early on in the pandemic was that people, the general population, like they wanted, comfort, and social media was showing all of these things like, Oh, when I was a kid I used to play with big wheel or I remember this kind of music, what was your favorite band. People wanted to feel comforted by those memories of things that you made up your youth through your family we saw a huge uptick in genealogy research, people started cleaning out their attics and things like that. So we used our social media to really kind of tap into that we took our entire photo collection and put it on exhibit so over 1000 photos, called people places and things. Now, I know for several months no one saw it, but we use that as sort of the backdrop and digitize some of those photos, and then the staff really everybody was kind of all hands on deck to research these photos and write up social media posts, and we picked you know people that were either notable or forgotten in Wood County, or you know, why is this street, you know, Wooster street so one of the major roads in Bowling Green, why is it named that. And then talk about, Mayor Wooster and how, how the name came to be. Other things like drive in movies we have pictures of a drive in movie theater and then it didn't matter if you were from what county but people started tapping into the social media saying, Oh, I remember the first movie I saw on the driving was, you know Empire Strikes Back, or whatever. And I think that was really important to it's just giving people the opportunity to kind of tap in when they wanted to, and they weren't committed to a whole program, necessarily, but they could just sort of pop in periodically, and they could sort of take that trip down memory lane with us, and I felt really good about that and I think Rachel you said your social media doubled ours as well. It's grown exponentially. And we're seeing so much more dynamic interaction from people as well. And that's been really cool. Unknown Speaker 47:44 Yeah, we've seen that too, looking at the growth of our social media engagement. Some of our most engaged social media posts happened, you know, in the past year during the pandemic and eclipsed social media posts that happened during the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 in 2019. So, which was incredible to see that virtuals obviously a big theme a lot of places. Switch to virtual started at virtual components I think someone just said that virtual is here to stay. I think we all see that but what are some other examples that your institution, did in terms of like processes programs, operations, whatever, something that if it wasn't for COVID You wouldn't have been forced to examine or re examine and change, and then it turned out that it's something that, you know, made sense to do anyway. Unknown Speaker 48:45 We participated in Ohio, open doors. Last September, we had done that previously at some sites, but you know what everybody was in couraged to do with Ohio open doors was, you know, do virtual tours or outside sites. So we had a virtual tour of our historic theater downtown but then we went out to Fort Amanda, which is an O HC site that's managed by an adjacent park district, and we created a competition, about. Picture yourself at Ford Amanda, and which was especially popular with kids and families who would go out there and we had some beautiful pictures for demand I didn't know that these spots existed and that seemed like a really popular thing to do. And we'd also never I don't know why we never did this but for National Historic Preservation month in May. We had a photography competition, and we had dozens and dozens of entries and beautiful, new ways of looking at our historic buildings and Auglaize County, and that was one of the themes of the National Trust for Historic Preservation about how, how history provides us with with comfort and inspiration and so we plugged right into that. And so that was another popular thing so we were enabling people not only to, you know watch programming that we had on Facebook but to get out of their house, and you know in a safe way and experience the beauty of architecture and the beauty of nature. Unknown Speaker 50:34 Same for us I think utilizing the grounds, was something that we kind of had always talked about amping up the outside, but this really gave us the push to do it. And one of the things that has come out of it gave us the opportunity to really hone in on interpretive signage for all of the outbuildings. We have about 16 outbuildings from the infirmary, and then also buildings that are original to our site but are still important to Wood County history like an oil derrick and a blacksmith shop and a log cabin, and coming up in the next couple of weeks, we should get the final signage, so that people could actually take a self guided tour of the outside, and still get a really great experience, even if they don't come in. That's something I wanted to do since I started working here so it only took you know, 15 years, We finally have the opportunity to do that. And I think that's going to be a lasting legacy for the site for many years. Unknown Speaker 51:42 Are these like four color interpretive panels or what, what have you put outside. Unknown Speaker 51:47 Yeah, they're going to be, you know, a couple feet on a metal stand, full color. Very simple, though, with our new branding and logo, and some, some photos but mostly a snapshot of the history of the building, and giving a little insight to the infirmary some fun facts like one thing I never knew that the infirmary, almost didn't open because getting water to the site was so difficult, and they actually had to pipe in water from the well almost a mile away from here. Just to give the residents, water to wash clothes and dishes and feed animals and themselves and bass. You know that's just mind blowing to think you can't get water in your institution so you have to pipe it in from a mile away. So I'm learning to, which is really cool because we have really delved into our own history, and we're going to be able to share that now with the public, both inside and outside. Unknown Speaker 52:55 Jennifer was anything in your operations or procedures anything that COVID made you kind of reassess and think of differently in a better way. Unknown Speaker 53:06 No, I mean like, like Rachel and Kelly, you know, we too had to reexamine our outside space we operate in a downtown space so we don't have, you know, acres and things like that to work with. We do have a really pretty park. And we noticed even, Even when we weren't on site working that that became utilized so much by the people that were coming into work and so forth so they could go outside to eat or to get out of the office not wear masks and things like that so actually it was a great resource for us because we ended up getting funding to help do work on the park to restore it in the city is in conversations with us now about doing something more significant with that area so that it can be utilized by it. For us, it really was so much of the work that we do though is not necessarily here right. So for us, we had to re examine how we work on, you know, we work on film projects or helping authors write books or, or read people who are doing research for, you know, PhDs and things like that or other exhibits for other institutions and so forth. We had to re examine how we were going to do all of that and how we were going to provide those resources so if our change to business was more an internal change to business because we, I think it was Kelly who said, you know, we had to start to digitize so much where, where people would come to us in the past to get things we had to start to quickly digitize so much of our archives, and so forth so that that all could be provided as resources for those that were still trying to work on projects and things during the pandemic. So that has become still now a big bulk of our work is looking at that is how are we going to, how do we digitize all the work that we have, so that we can make it even more accessible to people. Unknown Speaker 54:58 Yeah, that's, that's a big chore you think percent how to digitize all the stuff. Yeah, that's just a reminder everyone out there if you have any questions just drop it in the q&a where it doesn't have to wait to the end, we'll just, you know, answer questions that comes up. Switching now to Unknown Speaker 55:22 my downtime, can we talk about our unusual experience at Halloween. We have a huge Halloween parade in Wapakoneta and draws 1000s and 1000s of people. And last year, to make it work. It was a static parade at our fairgrounds, so that instead of having floats the travel the streets, the floats stood still and people drove through the fairgrounds to see, you know whatever was displayed so the Armstrong museum participate in that. And Tom take and talk about that and we have two story log house, and a log Smokehouse on the side of the fairgrounds. We have never participated in the parade because it always involves you have to find a trailer and you have to find a tractor and you have to find 20 kids that aren't already in some other float and. But what we did and it wasn't the most you know historically accurate thing we've ever done but you know we attached cobwebs to the building and the spooky candles and a little skeleton upstairs and then I found a couple of high school kids, and they dress in a very ghostly manner and one of them washed clothes, and the other was sweeping or working at working at a plane. And if you remember Dante you know the parade was supposed to be the static parade was supposed to be two hours, and it was three and a half hours because our kids in the car and drove through, and that I'm not, you know, I think they're gonna go back to the regular format for the Halloween parade this year but it's certainly, you know, forced us to think about this event differently. And, you know, the the parade was gonna go past the log house so we had a choice of, you know, do we want a dark building, or we do we want to participate, and, you know, for the fun of it, for the, you know, for the enjoyment of the families and that's what we did and, you know, Dante do we normally have an event at the Armstrong museum but, you know, the Armstrong museum participated as well. Unknown Speaker 57:42 Yeah, I think there were things that happened during the pandemic that were their own kind of special. But you wouldn't want to do it again. My daughter was class of 2020. So her high school senior year, as anyone out there who has, you know, a child who was in that class of 2020. Everything just went sideways, we know what happened everything and didn't have a graduation but the town put together a parade, and it was really fun, we drove through the town. She's standing with her gown in the sunroof everyone's, it was just a great thing and my son is couple years older. It sound like boy I wish I had a parade and she's like, You got to graduate. Normally, you know, so the parade was nice. It was wonderful, but I don't think there was a kid there who would want to have a parade instead of the traditional graduation. So I think the pandemic pandemic did see, you know, saw a lot of organizations, institutions get creative to kind of create a special kind of nice that work then and you know you wouldn't want to start you want it to be. The new thing, right, and there are examples where the pandemic created something. Hey, why aren't we doing this all along, you know, but, but yeah the the Halloween prayers that example that to have one thing too, with, and I know that different stations have different kinds of, you know staffing plans I think some staff some volunteers, but what we're I mean obviously there's some direct impacts in the pandemic on staff, volunteers, you had to close you had to shut down people didn't know if you're getting a paycheck or if you know, if they were sick, what do they do and all that. But what were some of the, you know what were some of the challenges and impacts on, on, on with that, with the the teams that we all had. Unknown Speaker 59:42 I'll start with that. So, you know, because we're in federal buildings. We have federal shutdowns that happen to us. Thank God there won't be one today might not have been with you today. And so, you know we're used to having to move off site to work and so forth and like everyone else who thought well how long, because for us, we can't go back to the buildings I know a lot of people is like well we can go back in and grab stuff and as we need that when it's a shutdown for us we're shut down, we are not allowed back into the building, not only to our offices but to our collections our archives and everything and so we were literally carrying boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff out of our organization in order to be able to function to work, and so forth. And at that point we had to say goodbye to our volunteers and interns which we still have yet to have the ability to have them return. And we are so dependent on those volunteers and interns for all of the research projects that we do. And, and so that's been a challenge for us as you know is trying to navigate how to transition, you know we had some universities who were like well can you transition our interns to virtual internships, you know, how does that work and what does that look like, you know, we were trying to figure that out with volunteers can we have you do projects from home, what does that look like, how do we do that and so forth so that became, probably the biggest sort of challenge and eye opening experience for us was how to navigate those things, how to keep people engaged even our volunteers now there's a concern I mean it's been, you know, many, many months so you overwhelmed over a year and we've not have volunteers back on site, Will they come back. Are they are they out there so you know and and the toll that takes on our staff to write so we don't get to see each other and work together and so forth. So I know for our staff, we found that workplace which is through Facebook, and it's the ability you can share. You can talk like we're talking now you can chat, you can send documents we can do all sorts of things through that, that became a saving grace for our organization not only for contractors volunteers and staff, because it was the ability to sort of work in this wonderful space it was free, and it was easy to use, and so it became sort of that thing that kept us together and kept projects moving forward. Unknown Speaker 1:02:21 At what county were a little bit unique in the sense that we have county funded for county funded staff, full time, and so we were fairly confident that we weren't going to lose our jobs. It seems pretty stable than the society has two part time employees, those were the ones I was most worried about because one was development, and it was really hard for development coordinator to get donations. And then the other one was a technician that primarily works on site to keep the site up and running so, but again like kinda like I said earlier, we build both of those employees were able to think of new ways to do their job and utilize the social media aspect to still be a part of the organization and have enough work to get them through until they could actually come back so that we were lucky that way. But you're right, Jenny, with volunteers, gone, they were just gone. And it took a lot we're just now starting to get volunteers back but we have one of our fundraising events is starting in a couple of weeks, and we are not even at a third of where we need to be for volunteers, and the staff have taken on much of that responsibility. I don't know if that's, people are afraid to come back, or if it's just the climate of volunteering, then once you get out of the habit, you're not into it, but I think that's going to be the biggest struggle, moving forward is how are we, who are we going to have to alter the actual programs that we offer, just because we don't have enough volunteers to help orchestrate them. Unknown Speaker 1:04:18 Yeah, and Rachel, I know you said you're the only employee but your volunteer engagement with Historical Society. Unknown Speaker 1:04:28 Right, Well, and I live, I live two blocks from the museum. So even in the, you know, strictest part of the shutdown it, you know, I could just walk here and do things and actually do things I wasn't getting done normally, you know, catching up on some things, in terms of the volunteers, it's for me it's a little scary, in terms of our docents you know our docents tend to be in their 70s and, you know, I, I love them and I wouldn't want anything to happen to them so we tried to be as careful as possible when we did reopen in July. And certainly, do what everybody else did you know mandate the mask wearing and have the sanitizer and run the fans and all of that, and we didn't, we have not had any docents who've refused to come back, you know we've had some projects we were in the middle of, of, what do I say revamping an exhibit about the courthouse here at the Wapakoneta Museum, and really just sort of by having people work in shifts. You know, we were able to, to get things done that way so. But we, I mean, we still haven't had any live fundraising events so I don't know what that, what the test is, and normally we have two bus trips, somewhere in Ohio when in the spring and in the fall, we were up on September 23 We were going to pick up that bus trip that we were to have had in April of 2020, and then things got a little iffy again, and with with our demographic that goes on the bus trip because again it's retirees, we just didn't feel comfortable doing it. And so, but yes between the people who come to our events and the people who volunteer are often the same demographic so we're just trying to be as careful as possible with them so that they don't feel like we're asking them to do anything that is remotely unsafe, something that would make them uncomfortable, Unknown Speaker 1:06:44 one. Just one question I have for everyone is just been as as an executive director. What did you find, or what stood out as the single most stressful aspect of leading during the pandemic. I mean for myself out to just kind of start, it was, it just, you start I started feeling an overwhelming sense of responsibility that I didn't feel before and not that I didn't feel a sense of responsibility, but it became very overwhelming because all these decisions are impacting doesn't, it doesn't families, not just your own family and your own family there's, you know there's question marks with that especially we think about spring of 2020 and the institution everything but that's the thing I kind of remember was that that kind of that overwhelming sense of responsibility. Unknown Speaker 1:07:50 Yeah, for me during the actual like early spring and summer of 2020. It was the budget, I was completely obsessed with how are we going to make this work, how are we going to get enough income to offset our expenses. And that was the biggest challenge but coming out of it. I would say that shifted to more of the staff morale, and how are we getting back to normal, we're sort of being a one hand, expected to be back to normal yet, we're not under normal circumstances, and I feel like this year. The staff is really feeling that sort of conflicting back and forth between trying to be operating at that level, we were before, but not having the resources, whether it be volunteers or time or energy or mental capacity even just to keep things moving along, so I would say both of those things for for us were the challenge for me were the challenges. Unknown Speaker 1:08:58 I would agree exactly with what you said Kelly but it is this conflict between what was normal, what's happening now and where we are in the middle of it, like I said with the bus trip, you know that was a standard on our calendar, and we haven't done a bus trip since 2019 and peep it was also one of the perks of being a member. And although our membership roles had stayed steady, you know, you think well that was a benefit that was a specific financial benefit associated with being a member and be able to go on a bus trip for a reduced fee and you know, how long will people stick with us if we don't have those kind of perks. So, yeah, I know exactly what you mean just trying to figure out. It's where we are now I think that makes people confused makes people uncomfortable about what happens with our programming. What happens with our people. Unknown Speaker 1:09:59 It's that nonprofit mentality of get er done right like that we all have that no matter what we have to get it done, no matter if it takes extra hours and it takes extra time we have to figure out, Yeah I went Dante it was that realization, like, you know, my decisions affect somebody's livelihood, their kids, their whatever right that, that's you're making those really tough decisions, you know, the, the very very start of the pandemic, it was also overwhelming because, You know all the other executive directors would start to come. What are you doing what are you doing what are you doing and you know and I think for, not that I necessarily found that overwhelming but it was overwhelming, but we all felt like we don't know what the answer is right we don't know what to do. We don't know what the answers are and. And I think everybody was waiting for somebody to step out in front and say this is what we're doing folks and how we're going to handle that and so I felt that pressure for sure but I think, I think, like you said, it's, it was a staff fatigue. Now that you know of trying to figure out, You know we got used to working partially remote fully remote partially remote. What does that look like now, are we always here are we going to continue working with some flexibility in that, you know we have families who have children who, you know that was a big concern I know in my conversation with other executive directors of, what are you doing for your families, you know, as a women's organization we heard over and over about how women, more than, more than anyone women, you know, the burden of this was being put on the shoulders of women and how they had to take care of their families and how they had to be flexible during this and, you know, and what that look like and I think, you know, as an executive director, I certainly felt that in conversations about my own staff but about other steps about even advocating for that, have you thought about that you're, you might have staff members or volunteers or someone who now have children at home that they can't go anywhere right they're kind of stuck so even if you're calling them back to work, what are they going to do and how are they going to manage that and so. So yeah, I think my biggest lesson learned from that was, I'm the worst at self care, and I really started to appreciate how important it was to do little things to, to take care of myself and to avoid you know, fatigue and stressing out, you know, I started working outside, I sat in my garden and worked I set up a little, my desk became literally our patio table, and I set it up so I could work out there I we got even to make sure I had the internet strength always out there so I could be on all my meetings and everything and never lose it so. So yeah, I think that probably was probably a lot of lessons learned from that too. Unknown Speaker 1:12:49 Yeah, the self care that's that's important for anyone at any it's easy to get. Just, just too hyper focused on what you're doing and you know they're not eating a good meal or not getting enough sleep and I probably put on 30 pounds since the pandemic. Unknown Speaker 1:13:11 Because everybody worked different hours to write don't say I mean I don't know about the rest of you but and I'm sure other people were on here, you know, I would have staff members who were eight o'clock at night I'm getting messages and I'm like, aren't you like, get off like, Get off. Stop, because I think that was hard to when you were at home it was like when do you stop when you start, you know, I had to start reminding people like you're done, like put it away, it'll be there tomorrow it'll be fine. It'll be there tomorrow, so. Unknown Speaker 1:13:40 Yeah. Um, one thing also to I guess it was kind of that you saw a lot of coverage during the height of things about a year ago or something like that. For those of you who have had to deal with enforcing any kind of measure like masking or something like that, did, did you have any incidents with that, or any. Now, Unknown Speaker 1:14:12 we had a, you know the handful, I'm going to say a handful, there were a couple of visitors that didn't want to wear masks, but for the most part everyone showed up prepared we have again county resources so we have masks and sanitizer and they put up barriers in the gift shop. So we were able to provide all those things in the big buildings large enough we can provide social distancing too so I think I was lucky I was worried about that because I thought we would have people just raising the fit but it really wasn't an issue for us. Luckily, knock on wood. We still have a county mandate that masks are required. And I don't know when that will be released. Unknown Speaker 1:15:03 Yeah we it. Yeah, the stuff that got on the news where, you know people are supermarkets or big box stores or, you know where I think we didn't really encounter that we were ready for we're kind of wondering what would happen or, you know the most I can remember is maybe reminding someone more than once to wear their mask and not just, you know, take it off after they got in, but I think in general, like you're saying, people come, they visit the museums they visit cultural institutions, because they want to be there, it's not something like they have to shop and buy food, and they do their homework and they know what to expect and generally that audience is, if they're not doing it anyway they kind of understand it so yeah you do that's one of those things as an executive director that keeps you up at night is like Oh Is tomorrow going to be the day. Well, I get a Karen. But I haven't seen that. Unknown Speaker 1:16:03 I think if anything else, it was a I you know I looked at it as it was a great time I saw so many organizations, you know, training or retraining staff on how to, you know handle difficult situations with visitors and really looking at that again and, you know, for me I looked at it as a plus I think somebody organizations maybe never had those conversations with staff, all staff and let alone frontline staff and so I thought it was really good that we saw that and you know it was unfortunate of the why we were all looking at that, but I thought it was really good that people really were taking time to think about that and how to navigate those difficult situations or difficult people. Unknown Speaker 1:16:46 Yeah, Looks like we got about five minutes so I don't know if there's anything anyone wanted to bring up they didn't get a chance I want to make sure you got that opportunity. Unknown Speaker 1:16:58 There's something I wanted to mention and you kind of touched on it earlier Dante and. And that's how sometime. Well, good things come out about things. And when we had our World War One exhibit a few years ago we had a guest speaker that talked about how technology that we use in aviation today. Today, stemmed from how they had to put together planes in World War One, for necessity, and we're still using that technology today, and I think that was really powerful, and I tried to hang on to that. And so when we went into this pandemic. I tried to really pay attention to what good is gonna come out of this, because we know we touched on it today. Good things better practices better technologies are different ways of thinking, all of those things are going to fuel us moving forward. And so that's kind of my takeaway, and I'm still exploring it but I'm trying to really hone in on what those positive things are going to be moving forward. Unknown Speaker 1:18:11 Anyone have any other final reflections. Unknown Speaker 1:18:20 I'm with Kelly on that you know we, we had a wonderful opportunity we during the pandemic we were to open the first upgrades. Nevertheless, but the first collection and pulling together all the collections of First Lady portraits and it was opening at the National Portrait Gallery in DC, and it was a spectacular exhibit filled with amazing artifacts and images and so forth. Wonderful programming and speakers that was going along with it and the epidemic hit and we didn't get to do it and so it went up, they went up and sat in an empty museum for that entire time and I think that was really hard for my staff as we work through that and their staff as well as, you know, they were trying to deal with those challenges. But, you know, as time went on as Kelly said you started to adapt and figure out well, like, okay, let's just, You know stop looking at this as you know, is this a moment that it could be and let's make it the moment it should be. And so, you know, we had programming lined up for that we can still do that, you know a lot of people have done virtual exhibit tours, why can't that be done, you know, we're working with a huge institution who has the capacity to do a virtual exhibit and so forth like let's make those things happen, we can still get this out to the world and probably I feel like it got out to way more people than it ever would have because they're probably many of the people who never would have gone to DC for just that exhibit but that got to experience that, So, so I think that, you know, while it was tough, while we all you know certainly were down in the mouth for a lot of reasons about things, you know, learning to adapt it just showed again how nimble and flexible we can be as cultural institutions and how we do have the ability to figure it out and and make the best of it to move forward and I think it sort of showed our own strengths, too, right, of what each of us could bring to the table and how we could bear all of those burdens. Unknown Speaker 1:20:15 Yeah, I couldn't agree more of what both of you have said, you know, it was certainly an opportunity to you know sit in the corner and mourn what we couldn't do or just look at it as an opportunity and I think that, especially early on, you know, not only an opportunity to educate people, but to help them feel connected with one another, and maybe be a bright spot for their day, one of the projects I didn't mention before was that we did postcard of the day on Facebook forever and we have a huge postcard collection. And so it wasn't just looking at the front of the postcards, but the messages, because we, we tried to talk about here's how a way to stay connected don't know if you haven't written a note in ages. Here's your time and we find the postcards with these most lovely little messages and beautiful handwriting that we don't see anymore and and post both sides of that postcard and people just adored it. Because, you know, like we, as we've said before, you know reminded them of something in their past it, maybe took them back to a difficult time but they saw yeah we we overcame that and here we are today and whatever challenges we face, you know, we'll get through them. And so, yeah, we just tried to use it as opportunity and of course it's not as if it's over. We're still trying to make these opportunities for all the folks who our audience yet, Unknown Speaker 1:21:51 so. Thanks and I know it's, it's 501 but the last thing I want to say is I would be remiss, and I'm not just saying this because Rachel's here but the support of the board was really, you know so critical, especially as early parts of the pandemic. You know we have an all volunteer board and you know two weeks from the pandemic we're having a board meeting everybody's there, making you know, making decisions. Give everyone update on what's going on. And these are all people have their own their own issues that have to do with the pandemic, you know, our treasurer was at the time was the middle school principal and we know what happened were happening in schools in March of 2020 and you could just go down the line. So, I think we all, I think, I think we probably all can agree that that board support was, was, was so important and it was critical, really. Yeah, well, okay, it's 502 so I don't want the first day of the virtual annual meeting to go too late. But, but I hope everyone enjoyed participating and hearing whatever had to say I appreciate Kelly Rachel and Jennifer for your time and look forward to seeing everyone at the sessions tomorrow. Unknown Speaker 1:23:17 All right, thanks so much. Thank you. Unknown Speaker 1:23:20 Thank you, bye bye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai