Happy New Year! I know we are counting on this new year to be better than the last, and that is certainly my hope as the Board, staff, volunteers and members continue to meet and plan the museum’s upcoming 2021 calendar.
Because none of our crystal balls work anymore (did they ever?!), it looks like the best way to plan anything is to create a mix of virtual events with the intent to turn them into a hybrid of in-person and on-line as soon as it is safe to do so.
In partnership with the Granville Recreation District, the Robbins Hunter Museum hosted the 13th Annual Gingerbread House Competition virtually. Thank you to all who participated in the 2020 Gingerbread House Competition! Photo features Phillip Demarest, who won Adult First Place.
Much of our work this past nine months has been as CARES Act grant writers, with the most recent grant award of over $20,000 coming in from the Licking County Foundation. We are so grateful to the foundations and community organizations that worked to distribute these federal funds and thank everyone who played a part in keeping the Robbins Hunter Museum at the top of their lists! Of course, we will continue to pay close attention to the New Coronavirus Stimulus & Relief Package and have our grant writing A-game close at hand to apply again where eligible.
As we closed out 2020, we were fortunate to not only have the help of volunteers Tracey Fleitz, Pam Clements and the Order of the Silver Stars to deck the halls in a simple way--as we held our annual Gingerbread House display and Santa meet ups virtually; we also had the assistance of Audrey Ames, a Granville Middle School student, who helped us with our annual fund drive mailing and joked non-stop as we sent out over 500 letters to our steadfast members and donors.
Thank you so much to everyone who donated to our annual fund! We brought in over $7,000!...which, full disclosure, is $5,000 shy of our ambitious goal of $12,000, so if the busy-ness of the holidays and/or pandemic and/or politics, had you distracted, please know we certainly still welcome your annual fund donation. Click here! to be taken to our donation web page.
Again, I really can’t say, thank you enough for your continued support of our beautiful historic house museum! I look forward to re-imagining what it means to be a community and educational resource as we move forward into this coming year.
Sarah Straley Hottle