CLINTON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The CCHS's goals, all derived from its mission to collect, preserve, and interpret the history of Clinton County, are as follows:

1. Collect and preserve artifacts relevant to the history of Clinton County.
2. Encourage research into local history.
3. Maintain Clinton County Historical Society owned structures and sites.
4, Recommend the preservation of other historical structures and sites.
5. Present educational programs.
6. Cooperate with other organizations interested in historical preservation.

Many of CCHS's goals can be met through the development of relationships with other historical societies in the area, as well as other community organizations. This is being done through direct contact with those organizations, as well as joint events. This is not only a strategy to deal directly with the goal to cooperate with other organizations, it indirectly improves CCHS's ability to collect and preserve artifacts, encourage local history research, recommend the preservation of other historical structures, and present educational programs. CCHS has also begun an effort to fully evaluate its collection and our its properties, to ensure their quality and their importance to county history. Finally, the organization is increasing both fundraising and marketing efforts, in order to raise the funds needed to meet these goals and to increase awareness of the county's history.

CCHS has developed partnerships with local genealogical societies, other historical societies, and community organizations, which allow the organization to develop and maintain a collection with relevance to Clinton County, as well encourage research into local history. The organization also has a volunteer member who helps individuals (often from outside Clinton County) that are researching local history. While maintaining CCHS properties through the work of the historical society's members and part-time staff, the organization also provides information and recommendations to other organizations or individuals with questions about historical properties in the county. Finally, the historical society holds regular educational programs (Second Sunday programs) that are free and open to the public. Meeting these goals is possible largely based on volunteer willingness and community support; the society will be able to continue to offer our current level of work based on that support, but to truly grow, CCHS needs to hire a full-time staff member.

CCHS recently went through a strategic planning process, and, as a result, developed a facilities master plan to ensure that the society maintains and preserves its five historical properties; began a process of evaluating its collection for quality, historical relevance, and fit with the mission; and developed a new fundraising and marketing strategy. CCHS continues to hold educational programs and continually works to provide Clinton County residents (and visitors) new information about the county's history. In the future, CCHS hopes to go from a totally volunteer run organization to an organization with full-time staff. The organization is making strides in that area, through a partnership with AmeriCorps to have part-time AmeriCorps members staff the Heisey Museum. Much of CCHS fundraising is geared toward raising the funds to pay staff members to provide tours of the 5 properties.