Hello to our devoted museum members, stakeholders, and community partners! As we transition to spring, fine tune our exhibits and antiquities during the summer, and ready the museum for exhibiting in the fall, I would like to reflect on the past year and offer my heartfelt thanks for your continued input, involvement and support.
We began 2020 with aspirations to outdo past years in attendance, membership, and fundraising. The year started with the most successful fundraiser in the Cave Creek Museum’s history, the Cave Creek Museum Home Tour which spotlighted the career of one of the Desert Foothills’ most treasured residents, Gerry Jones. Patrons from all over the country, and the world, participated. It was an exciting special event that engaged the imagination and cast a positive light on our community.
Unfortunately, only weeks after the highly successful Home Tour, the worldwide pandemic struck and created an unknown that the museum had not experienced in its fifty year history, and, more importantly, something the Desert Foothills community had never experienced in modern history. Concern for our vulnerable population of docents, staff, and the community at large forced a difficult decision to close our doors through much of the spring and summer months. This closure gave our staff the opportunity to carefully design new exhibiting for the 2020 – 2021 season. We held our Grand ReOpening in November with famed cowboy singer Gary Sprague and his sidekick horse, Dusty.
Goals for 2021
Location:
We engaged our Dream Team and passed a Board Agenda item confirming that we would remain in our current location and work to increase its visibility. We engaged you, our membership and non members, and increased Cave Creek Museum membership over 10%, despite the programming and fundraising restrictions associated with the pandemic.
Cohesive Environment:
Our goals included creating a more c ohesive environment between our Board and staff, and “pulling up our bootstraps” during the pandemic allowed us to join together amid some difficult decisions regarding the sale of property and the investigation of potential moves to several different locations within the Desert Foothills community, seeking to achieve greater access and display space.
Outreach:
We also strengthened our outreach in the local community through our warm and progressive Interim Executive Director Suzanne Johnson, who stepped in during a difficult time and reached out to all of our local nonprofits to engage new ideas and renew old friendships.
Financial:
We secured the largest grant available from our neighbors, the Kiwanis Club of Carefree, to help programming and exhibits for the kids that love our museum, such as our stamp mill, our new gold panning station, and the mine project. We secured paycheck protection programming (forgivable loans) designed to assist non profits like ours during this difficult time. Overall, we are in a better place now than we were 12 months ago, and are undergoing the audit that has been a goal of ours for quite some time. An independent auditor will continue to bring transparency to all that we do, so that donors feel their investment in Cave Creek Museum is a sustainable gift that will allow us to continue telling stories and preserving our precious history.
Community Relationships:
We helped create an important bridge between our two communities, Cave Creek and Carefree, by honoring Gerry Jones after he gave his time and energy for over 50 years to both communities and helped us make the Home Tour fundraiser the best ever for our museum. We honored Gerry recently by erecting a plaque just steps away from the Carefree Sundial on a boulder that he had delivered from his property high atop Black Mountain, and in my official capacity as a Carefree Councilmember, a proclamation that renamed the Sundial Plaza, the “Gerry Jones Sundial Plaza. There were nearly fifty residents in attendance and thousands viewing online and listening on the radio.
Communications and Awareness:
Through the efforts of our Media Committee, we are introducing the character “Hard Rock Harry, performed by a local actor (a former Cave Creek Unified School District teacher) to represent the museum within our Desert Foothills communities at different functions. Hard Rock Harry is designed to bring joy and positivity to every event, telling tales of pioneering days.
He may even have some “fool’s gold” in his pockets for the kid in all of us.
With that, I thank you for allowing me to serve as your Board President to help us move forward in the direction to continued prosperity and sustainability. I pride myself on community service as a life long endeavor, and must now shift back to projects in Carefree, putting my “council member hat” on and devoting more time to initiatives that require more attention and offer benefits to both communities, such as continuing to cultivate our relationships within the Cave Creek Unified School
District, important public service initiatives within fire and public safety, economic development, veteran’s services, and of course, the arts.
My last day as Board President of our beloved Cave Creek Museum will be May 31st, 2021. I’d like to thank our Board of Directors: Treasurer Bill Oelman, Secretary Reg Monachino, Christine Williams, Tom Cross, and Frank Tyrol for their service, past Board Members during my tenure: former President Bob Flach, Vice President Bill Kosanke, and Board Member Kaycee Westfall.
Thank you to past Executive Director Karrie Porter Brace and Development Director Becca Bober in understanding and helping me with difficult decisions that were made during difficult times. Thank you to our precious Docent Volunteers and Dream Team, as they are truly the lifeblood of our institution, and our incredible staff: Interim Executive Director Suzanne Johnson, Museum Program Coordinator Remington Pettus, Master Curator Elizabeth Kapp, Intern Nicole Rodrigues, and Dream Team leader Charlie Connell. Without you five, the Cave Creek Museum would not be as relevant in the museum world as it is today.
Finally, thank you to my wife Cheryl, son Noah, daughter Sophie, and son Matthew, who give me the freedom and understanding to devote time to community service.
Without their OK, I couldn’t do any of this.
There are many other friends in the community that I am grateful to have befriended. And a smile, fistbump, handshake, or hug is what you’ll get from me when I see you in person! See you all again really soon. Thank you for this tremendous opportunity to serve the Desert Foothills community. I will treasure my memories from this past year at the Museum and keep them in my memory for a lifetime.
Vince D. Aliesio,
President
