A Guest Blog Post by our Board Chairman, Julie Martorana
This year Brunswick Main Street celebrates its 15th anniversary. 15 years and going strong! So what will the next 15 years look like?
As an organization, Brunswick Main Street faces the same challenges our city faces: embracing our past and looking forward to our future. The past provides us with knowledge from lessons learned and a solid foundation. However, we must be willing to change. None of us can afford to remain stagnant. The best way to honor our past is to continue to envision our future, just as our founding members did when they began.
This past year Brunswick Main Street has been doing just that. We are looking for ways to build on our strong organizational foundation while recognizing the changes occurring around us. A sign of a strong, healthy organization is continually asking, “How can we improve”? And that sentiment, I am happy to report, is alive and well at Brunswick Main Street.
Our newly developed Strategic Plan charts an ambitious course for the organization into 2025. Through 2020, we will be concentrating on expanding our foundation by working to increase the capacity of the organization through the following efforts:
- Developing a comprehensive fundraising plan to ensure we have the resources to carry out our plans
- Expanding our volunteer base, again giving us the necessary diversity of resources
- Recruitment and development of our Board of Directors to ensure we have a sustainable organizational structure for the future
- Updating and documenting internal processes to support our growth and expansion
- Increasing our grant-seeking efforts to support our proposed programs and internal development
My intent here to show what Brunswick Main Street will be doing to build our organization. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the plans for our future. We have many goals in each of our committees which include the Design committee, the Promotions committee and the Economic Restructuring committee. For more information about these committees and their plans please check out our our pages HERE.
In the next 15 years Brunswick Main Street has created a vision for our downtown that includes:
1. Attracting new and vibrant businesses to our downtown corridor and strengthening our support systems for the exisiting businesses within our Main Street district.
2. Making our downtown an attractive city center that is clean, green and safe.
3. Promoting all of the wonderful outdoor recreation opportunities right outside of our downtown. Everyone should experience the beauty of the C&O Canal in Brunswick!
I hope that this look into the future of Brunswick Main Street generates hope and excitement for what is to come. At Brunswick Main Street we are motivated by the vision for our future and what we can do for Brunswick’s downtown district. If you feel this same hope and excitement I urge you to join us. It will take all of us, involved and engaged, to create the vibrant city center that will make us all proud of the town we love so dearly.