Grant Writing...

We are in the middle of the annual grant writing marathon. It is not the most exciting task to complete, but in some respects, very satisfying. The task of looking back over the last year's accomplishments can be a good thing. It makes one truly realize the amount of work that is done at a small museum by our volunteers.

Instead of doing a total 'guess-timate' of the volunteer hours, we asked each of our volunteers to keep track of his/her hours. Our Volunteer Coordinator, our answering machine, and e-mail has been utilized to gather all of the statistics.

There has been an effort to write down all of the museum task/ job descriptions that our volunteers are asked to do. It is much easier to find a volunteer if the job is clearly described and there is a beginning and an end. There is a fear that once one falls into the bottomless pit of volunteerism at the museum, one is doomed to be there for life. There are examples where this has happened, so the fear was not unfounded.

Bravo to everyone who was brave enough to take on a task at our museum last year. We accomplished so much.

The total number of volunteer hours hasn't been tallied yet, but even the preliminary numbers are amazing!

There are a lot of other museums that are also grant writing, noting all of their volunteer hours, trying to present their museum in the best possible way, wishing they were doing anything but this activity, hoping that the results will be successful and profitable, and dreaming that next year's grants will be a little easier to write. Sigh....

Good luck to you all!