BrandingFire Blog

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!