Institutional Stewardship
Leveraging Board and Community Partnerships to Strengthen Financial Sustainability
Challenge: Strengthen board governance, deepen donor relationships and help ensure the long-term financial sustainability of a small nonprofit museum operating primarily through philanthropy by building an institution with the capacity to steward major gifts and partner with the Smithsonian.
Served as the staff partner to the governing board of a nonprofit museum, leading board communications, donor stewardship, grant development and institutional storytelling while helping convert a donated historic property into $300,000 in operating funds.
The institution:
The Wake Forest Historical Museum preserves the history of the Town of Wake Forest and the original campus of Wake Forest College — the “birthplace” the university left behind when it moved to Winston-Salem in 1956.
The museum is operated by the Wake Forest College Birthplace Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded that same year by twelve women of the Wake Forest Garden Club who campaigned to save the Calvin Jones House, the 1834 birthplace of the college.
By the 2010s the Birthplace Society had grown into a genuine cultural institution:
a $2 million, 7,000-square-foot museum building, thousands of artifacts, and an operating partnership with Wake Forest University (WFU) — all governed by a self-perpetuating volunteer board and, apart from two staff salaries funded by WFU, largely sustained by donors.
My role:
Following several years as a museum volunteer and member of the Wake Forest College Birthplace Society Board of Directors, board leadership lobbied WFU to create an assistant director role for me. Beginning in 2013, I served on the staff side of the board relationship. Partnering with the museum executive director, my job was to keep members informed, produce meeting materials, transcribe meeting minutes, manage board communications and coordinate subcommittees.
I fielded questions, conducted research to provide thoughtful and thorough answers, and maintained a working knowledge of the board’s makeup — who carried institutional memory, who carried influence, and the information and support each member needed to stay confident in the organization’s direction.
Over roughly ten years I also built and ran the museum’s website and digital storytelling, and eventually took ownership of the member newsletter, first as a volunteer and then as assistant director.
Measurable Results
~$1M
combined giving
by donors profiled
in storytelling
$50,000
competitive grants
written or co-written
and administered
$300,000
donated property
converted to
operating funds
10
years spent
building relationships
and developing donors
Stewardship through storytelling:
The museum’s donor base was inseparable from its story — many of its major supporters were graduates of Wake Forest University's "Old Campus" or descendants of the professors and community leaders whose history the museum preserves.
I love storytelling and intuitively favored an approach that folded this part of the job into my developing relationships with board members and donors. In one signature piece, “A Lifetime of Friendship,” I interviewed three of the institution’s most significant benefactors — board members and major donors whose combined giving to the museum, made or procured, approached $1 million. The piece that was published in the organization's newsletter told the story of the lifelong friendship behind their philanthropy.
Work like this strengthened ties, honored donor families in ways a gift receipt never could, and consistently preceded continued support: among these donors’ gifts were a historic property with an accompanying $50,000 contribution, a named auditorium, a memorial garden, and sustained university funding secured through a board member’s advocacy.
Turning a gift into capacity.
Generosity sometimes arrives in forms a small nonprofit cannot afford to keep. When maintaining a donated historic property fell outside the Society’s operating budget, I used established relationships and connections to help move the donated property toward a $300,000 cash sale. With the board's approval and direction, I reached out to a local business owner who I suspected might be interested in purchasing and restoring the historic home.
Receiving a positive response, I then turned the negotiations over to the board treasurer. In short order, our nonprofit succeeded in selling the property— converting an asset the organization could not afford to maintain into operating funds it genuinely needed. And we achieved this with the donor's approval while honoring the intent of the gift.
It remains my clearest lesson in nonprofit resource management: the value of a gift is realized through relationships, judgment and timing.
Proving capacity: Bringing the Smithsonian to Wake Forest
Stewardship builds an institution's resources; ambition tests them. In 2015, both came together when I developed the winning application to host "Hometown Teams: How Sports Shape America," a Smithsonian traveling exhibition — a national-level program landing in a small local museum.
The proposal was designed as an integrated initiative rather than a single event: the Smithsonian exhibition paired with a locally developed companion exhibit (Sports in Wake Forest). The plans included a public programming calendar, a coordinated communications campaign and a diversified funding strategy. The framing positioned the museum as an active partner capable of interpreting national content through a local lens — not merely a venue.
Once selected, I served as primary liaison with Smithsonian staff, managing logistics, compliance and adherence to national standards. Working with the executive director and board, I helped launch and execute a fundraising strategy that generated more than $42,000 to support the traveling exhibit and provide extended future funding for museum operations. I also managed grant compliance and reporting.
The board and donor relationships built through years of stewardship became the project's foundation — the same supporters profiled in the newsletter (and many others who received our regular communications) were among those who funded, championed and volunteered for the exhibition.
Scaling for success was its own discipline. Anticipating a surge in visitation, I recruited and trained more than 50 volunteers as docents, creating a sustainable support structure that let the museum absorb dramatically increased attendance without diminishing the visitor experience. Many of these volunteers continued their association with the museum long after the exhibit concluded, forming a deep bench of engaged community members who actively led tours, held workshops and staffed events for months and years to come.
Over the exhibit's six-week run, the museum welcomed nearly 3,000 visitors — an increase of more than 60% over the previous year — with measurable growth in first-time and regional audiences. Public programming drew more than 1,100 participants, and the communications strategy generated media reach exceeding 150,000 people.
The project established a new baseline for what the organization could plan, support and deliver — and a model of leverage and alignment I have applied to every institution since: find the opportunity that advances multiple priorities at once, structure it to do so, and execute in a way that produces both immediate results and durable organizational value.
Winning and managing restricted funds.
Alongside the Smithsonian partnership and donor cultivation, I pursued and administered competitive grants. In 2014 I co-wrote a successful $25,000 grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services to digitize the museum’s photograph collection, then administered the award through the reporting and compliance requirements that come with federal funding.
I later wrote and administered a $25,000 grant from the Jandy Ammons Foundation that funded the scientific survey and documentation of the historic African American cemetery at Friendship Chapel — the project that located nearly 600 likely burials and led to the cemetery’s designation as a Local Historic Landmark.
Together they represent the full grant lifecycle: identifying the funder, making the case, winning the award, and stewarding restricted dollars through to compliant closeout and public impact.
The institutional voice in a hard moment.
In March 2015, fire destroyed the 124-year-old Cullom House overnight. Situated across the street from the museum, it was a landmark of the historic district and the childhood home of one of the nonprofit’s most devoted benefactors, whose gifts had named the museum’s auditorium for his mother and who would later donate funds to create a memorial garden in the neighborhood.
The morning after the fire, I wrote and published “Saying Good-Bye to the Cullom House,” an institutional eulogy that spread well beyond the museum’s usual audience and became the place a grieving community gathered: residents phoned the museum to ask if the news was true, and readers from across the country filled the comments with memories of the house.
The piece balanced speed with care. It honored the donor family, the new owners mid-restoration, and a town in mourning, all within hours of the loss. It was crisis communications in miniature: speed, accuracy, and empathy in an institutional voice, practiced years before I did the same work for cities.
What this work built.
Six years of nonprofit leadership experience spanning governance, fundraising, grants, budgets, volunteers, collections and community trust. This continues to inform how I communicate with elected bodies, donors and the public today.
The through-line of my work in government and nonprofit institutions alike: institutions earn support when the people who love them can see themselves in the story.