Operating Support Grant - Renewal

We will engage a consultant to craft the job description for our first full-time employee, and to advise us on staffing structure, in the last quarter of 2021. Our intention is for this new employee to build sufficient revenues to sustain our staff and organization per our strategic plan's annual goals (e.g. 3 more grants, 10 new donors at $200+, migrate current donors to higher giving levels, convert 10% of participants into donors). The new employee would begin by spring of 2022. We will work towards fully funding all Center artist residencies by 2024, including support for at least two BIPOC artist residency weeks. This fall, we begin new communications strategies to grow social media engagement, with a planned new brand and website launch at the start of 2022. We will also engage six members of the Tofte Lake Center community as ambassadors who will introduce their colleagues to us to support expansion of our support and advocacy networks. The hiring of a new employee in 2022 with a clear job description in the context of a staff structure that supports our mission and capacity needs will be a significant success indicator. Assessments will be informal and ongoing as we begin work with this new structure and capacity, with a formal assessment at the end of the year. To help measure our new team's success, we will track contributors and donations each month, implementing weekly staff conversations to target donor solicitations, and establishing monthly check-ins to track progress towards strategic goals. Upon launching our new brand and website, we will gather analytics on visits to and use of the site, in addition to monitoring social media activity and web traffic. Working with our community ambassadors, we'll discuss with each their outreach activities and the impact these strategies have had, including any direct results of new connections and engagement with Tofte Lake Center.