MAAA | Programs | Prof. Development | Texas | HELP

The Swisher County Museum was established to preserve the records and historical artifacts of Swisher County. Exhibitions focus on the county’s pioneer history and early settlements. Also featured are exhibitions on Quanah Parker, J. O. Bass, a local spur maker, and a log cabin that was originally a line camp for the JA Ranch and the first log cabin in the area. One of the most impressive artifacts in the museum’s collection is an early 20th-century home that was moved from its original location and reconstructed piece by piece inside the museum building. Local school groups tour the museum regularly, and the museum hosts a Swisher County anniversary festival every July.

Year 3 | Year 4

Year 3:
Aprong Strings

Goals:
The Swisher County Museum joined the HELP program in year three. Before their participation, they’d never hosted a traveling exhibition before. By displaying Apron Strings Director Billy Sue Gayler was hoping to raise community awareness of the museum. They are especially interested in attracting a younger audience who isn’t as familiar with the museum.

Accomplishments:
The museum was able to host a successful new exhibition that brought new people in, and encouraged participation by local residents. They held an opening reception and invited guests to bring their aprons in to share. Overall, they collected and displayed an additional 50 aprons. After meetings with HELP staff and consultant Scott Cooksey the museum is setting their sights on a larger goal: seeking a grant from the Amarillo Area Foundation to replace their HVAC system, which could feasibly reduce monthly operations expenses by one-third and ensure a more stable environment for their historical collections.

Improvements:

• held opening reception attended by over 90 people

• collected aprons and recipes from the community

• printed "cookbook" of local recipes to share with visitors to the museum

• created membership flyer to solicit donations to the museum

Year 4: Grand Ole Opry
In the final year of Texas HELP, the Swisher County Museum will work with consultant Norma Seals on their last area of training, volunteerism. This is an important issue for the museum, Billy Sue has expressed interest in attracting new volunteers since the board is currently doing the work that volunteers would be. Their goals for the year include encouraging the board and staff to assess volunteer needs annually, to improve and establish record keeping for volunteers, recruit volunteers for a photo digitization project and to establish a volunteer recognition program.

Year 4
Grand Ole Opry

Goals:
In their second and final year of the Texas HELP program, the Swisher County Museum focused on a new area of training, volunteerism. Consultant Norma Seals met with director Billy Sue Gayler to begin discussing volunteer goals. Together, they decided the museum’s most important volunteer needs would be to create job descriptions and recruit volunteers to fill those positions. These steps would help them to catch up on some of the museum’s day-to-day work and help the board and the director to focus on larger issues of planning and fundraising. They set goals to find people to help them with data entry, updating obituaries, writing quarterly news articles, and filing.

Accomplishments:

By the time the museum had its second consultant meeting with Norma, they had recruited volunteers for three of the positions they’d identified. Billy Sue initiated a volunteer recognition program and will have shirts made with the Swisher County Museum logo embroidered on them as gifts for her volunteers.

They had great success with their exhibition Grand Ole Opry. Billy Sue did an excellent job of getting the community involved; they responded with much enthusiasm. The museum held two open house receptions featuring live music by 10 local musicians. One hundred and ten people attended. They also supplemented the exhibition with musical instruments from the museum’s collection, and several artifacts were loaned from local collectors.

Improvements:

• Drafted a list of the museum’s volunteer needs

• Recruited volunteers to fill three newly created positions

• Received a $10,000 challenge grant from the Harrington Foundation to update their air conditioning/heating units

• Produced museum postcards to sell in the gift shop, thus promoting the museum and increasing earned revenue