Mar 1, 2010

Ok, I’m ready for some warm and dry weather! The past several months have been either too cold or too wet or both for my liking. It appears my observations are also borne out by a chill on the Museum’s recent financial statements.

Prior to December, Museum attendance and revenues were doing very well in light of the current economic conditions but then December hit and things started falling apart…the first day of Market Days was greeted by cold and wet weather, then rains impacted our normally large visitation during the holidays as well as our holiday day camps. Of course, as you know, the weather during January and February has been equally interesting! When our visitation drops, so does our retail and membership sales and renewals.

So, with this as a backdrop, you can imagine my elation when we finally had a warm, dry and beautiful day for our recent Saturday Matinee of the Arts event and over 2,000 people visited us! Clearly, people had not forgotten us!

Actually, I knew all along we had not been forgotten due to the wonderful donations we received in response to our year-end annual fund appeal. The generosity of our donors and supporters this year was just amazing and exceeded the year-end donations of a year before. Thank you again to all of you who included the Museum in your giving plans during the holidays! You really allowed us to keep going when the weather was doing its best to slow us down!

I would be remiss if I did not say that our 2010 annual fund campaign is underway and if you missed making a gift at the end of last year or would like to make another gift, we can definitely put your support to good use to benefit our community! Given we are still in the throes of the economic slowdown, our We’re In It Together program is still keeping Museum services available to those who cannot necessarily pay for them. Donations to our annual fund help to support efforts like these as well as our other conservation, preservation, and education activities.

During the past several months we have been working hard to prepare for a switch to a new software platform for the entire Museum that should give us much greater abilities to communicate with and serve you. You will probably begin to see some effects of this switch when you next visit the Museum or when you receive your membership renewal information. However, as we electronically transfer our membership, education, volunteer, and donor data to the new system, there is a small risk that we might lose some data. If this does happen and you stop hearing from us, please let us know immediately and we can restore your records.

Finally, I also hope you will mark your calendars for March 13 and 14 and make plans to attend our 49th annual Pioneer Breakfast and the Tallahassee Jazz and Blues Festival. Where else can you get an all-you-can-eat, homemade breakfast for only $7 for an adult and $5 for a child? Then you can enjoy the great music and wonderful weather at the Jazz and Blues Festival that starts at 11:00 am on Saturday continuing through to 5 pm on Sunday afternoon. This year, we will also be providing a beer tent for our adult visitors during the Festival. Hope to see you all then!

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