[MassHistPres] Renaming your historical society

[Lucy Allen]

Renaming an organization should be done with a great deal of forethought, so I am glad that you are reaching out for other experiences and opinions.
Although I understand that some people may not like the word "society," we also need to consider that the public, when seeking a community's historical "society," already has to navigate through the confusion caused by having a municipally-appointed historical "commission." Adding a less familiar name to this mix may not reap immediate benefits.
I am Historian of the Barre Historical Society.  In that role I am on the Board of Directors and also an officer.  With the isolation of the Pandemic, we exerted a great effort to make our services more accessible and visible to the public.  We are continuing in this vein as it has brought very positive results.  We have an active Facebook page which I, primarily, use to disseminate information our town's history.  In our programming, we have made big efforts to be up front at community events and to find ways to engage people of all age groups and interests.  We participate in Trunk-or-Treat, Christmas in Barre, and summer band concerts.  We open our hearts and our buildings so that people can get to know us.  And while doing this, we have also had to adjust to the deaths of several of our key officers and members.
We have not changed our name, but our membership has grown significantly.  In just the past 12 months, our general membership has grown by 42% and our life membership by 10%.  Our email list has grown greatly as has our Facebook following.  We also are putting to use a large (for us) grant that we received to update our town clock.  
So, in some cases it may help to change a name, but I would also look to other ways to let the public know who you really are.  A name change may not be the best way.
Lucy Allen
lucyiallen at aol.com
 


     On Wednesday, May 10, 2023 at 08:42:54 AM EDT, David Temple via MassHistPres <masshistpres at cs.umb.edu> wrote:  
 
 There's been a trend away from the term "historical society" because it seems to connote old and fusty, not a lively, happening place.
If you changed your name to "X History Center"  or "Historic X"  or something similar - do you think the change actually accomplished anything?  Did making the change create any problems?
In your reply, please include my original message.

David F. Temple
President, Medfield Historical Society
https://medfieldhistoricalsociety.org/
Co-Chair, Medfield Historical Commission300 South Street
Medfield, MA 02052
H-508-359-2915 M-508-613-6606_______________________________________________
MassHistPres mailing list
MassHistPres at cs.umb.edu
https://mailman.cs.umb.edu/listinfo/masshistpres
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.cs.umb.edu/pipermail/masshistpres/attachments/20230510/669d1c4d/attachment.html>