BrandingFire Blog

National Trust for Historic Preservation

I found another interesting blog from the folks at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It’s called Show Me the Money and it’s all about federal grant opportunities that may help out organizations active in historic preservation. It’s a worthy read for any group needing money.

As a side note, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has really embraced blogging as a way to communicate important information to history sites and garner feedback from readers. Their willingness to open up to this process (as opposed to shutting it down and trying to control the conversation) is astounding, inspiring and should be applauded. They are really living their mission to the fullest online and I personally thank them for their leadership in the wired world!

I ran across a nice site called Cultural Heritage Tourism run by (again) The National Trust for Historic Preservation. On their site, they list the Five Principles for Successful and Sustainable Cultural Heritage Tourism. It’s worth a read. The third principle - Make Sites and Programs Come Alive - really hit a cord for me.

Image via WikipediaThe National Trust for Historic Preservation has a really good blog and last Friday they posted about how important it is for historic sites to create a business plan. They also published a nice, concise list of resources to help you get started.

You might be wondering how important a business plan is - especially if you’re a not-for-profit. The answer is simple… VERY! But it’s not just the plan itself that’s important, but the process you go through in creating the plan. It really makes you study your market and think about your mission and audience. For that reason alone, I also encourage organizations to create their own plan. You can get outside help, but I don’t recommend you outsource the whole process. No one understands your organization and it’s mission quite like you do and the process of “getting your hands dirty” (so to speak) is very important.

I encourage you to head over and take a look at their resource listing!