A 19th Century portrait of Frederick A. Muhlenberg is flanked by Joseph Melrose, Jr., President of The Speaker's House Board of Trustees and Allison Weiss, Executive Director, on the left; Mongomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel and Congressman Jim Gerlach (PA-6th District) on the right.
Brought to you by Jennifer Hill-Murphy
I don’t know about all of you, but I have had a hard time ridding myself of Thanksgiving’s turkey torpor; I found that imbibing thimble-sized glasses of sherry was the wrong way to remove it. My apologies for the long interval between the last blog entry and this one.
Fortunately, I and many other holiday revelers were given the stimulus to re-focus our energies by way of The Speaker’s House’s Annual Meeting, held last Tuesday, December 2, 2008. Superbly organized by the Board, staff and volunteers of The Speaker House, the Annual Meeting had an action-packed agenda, filled with exciting news, ideas and challenges. It was capped by presenting awards to the first recipients of The Speaker’s Choice Awards – U.S. Representative Jim Gerlach (PA-6th District) and Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel – for their dedication and tireless efforts to make The Speaker’s House into an inspiring and educational institution.
But in today’s entry, I would like to write about the Annual Meeting’s central item, one which many of us were eagerly awaiting to hear about: progress on the strategic plan under development by The Osiris Group. As previously mentioned in this blog and on The Speaker’s House website, Phase I of the strategic planning process involved Jane Stojak and Steven Sonntag of The Osiris Group, surveying organizations with similar missions and goals to those of The Speaker’s House and conducting interviews and focus groups with dozens of people. After amassing all this data, The Osiris Group considered a variety of ideas and plans that will shape the future of The Speaker’s House and unveiled the results of the first two months of market research at the Annual Meeting, including some preliminary ideas about how The Speaker’s House should plan for its future.
Executive Director Allison Weiss introduces The Osiris Group at the annual meeting.
Reproducing the presentation here is not feasible, but I will sum it up for you in three words: Innovation, Collaboration and Sustainability. Across the board, funders, visitors, educators, members all want to see innovative programming, collaboration with regional partners, and a plan for the future that is financially sustainable.
Based on the first two months of research and community input, The Osiris Group has begun developing outlines of their recommendations. My favorite is, “Speak Out” Community Conversations, which call for making the property a site for conversations about controversial issues that spanned Frederick Muhlenberg’s time and are still hot topics today, e.g., immigration, separation of church & state, human rights, etc. This could be one part of a much larger interpretive plan, but what a great way to make the site relevant to today’s audiences while linking them to the history of Muhlenberg!
In the coming months, I will be writing more about the strategic planning process, but I do want to end with an observation I had: about 60 people attended the Annual Meeting, which I found remarkable for a cold winter Tuesday night. That The Speaker’s House has such a loyal following already, with leaders like Congressman Gerlach and Commissioner Hoeffel who are determined to make The Speaker’s House into a community asset, suggests that while we have hard work ahead of us, we have the energy, passion and commitment needed to succeed.
