Last Saturday the William Way LGBT Community Center held its annual meeting to discuss the organization’s future and goals heading into 2015.
Among the business addressed at the meeting was the promotion of Candice Thompson from director of center services to chief operating officer, a position in which she will be responsible for all the internal operations of the center.
“I feel really excited to be a part of the center’s growth,” Thompson said. “I am celebrating my 10-year anniversary with the center in April, which is amazing to me, so I bring all of that organization history and insight to this new role.”
The position was created to allow the executive director to focus on external relations and fundraising, while the COO manages the internal operations, according to Thompson.
“This is the first time the center will have a COO, so I am really excited to make it a successful, smart investment of resources,” she said. “This position will help the center grow more rapidly and I’m excited to be a part of that. It’s going to be a great year at the center and I’m looking forward to both the challenges and successes that are ahead.”
“It’s a very exciting year for us, in addition to the 40th anniversary of the center,” added executive director Chris Bartlett. “We are doing a lot of projects that are going to move the center forward.”
This year’s program goals include: growing the archives, stabilizing the center’s permanent art collection, creating new opportunities for community involvement in program creation, expanding senior programs, enhanced coalition-building around timely topics that affect LGBTs and allies, as well as celebrating the 40th anniversary of the organization.
“The center is also a major partner in the 50th-anniversary celebration of the Reminder marches on Independence Mall,” Bartlett noted. “We are going to have an incredible year of LGBT history at the birthplace of freedom.”
Bartlett attributes the continuing success of the center to its more-than 250 volunteers who help with the day-to-day operations.
“This year, there will be even more opportunities to volunteer,” he said.
Which is part of the center’s strategy to accomplish the goals listed above: get as many people through the doors as possible, Bartlett said.
The center also touted a number of accomplishments from last year.
Among the most praiseworthy were: the nabbing of a major grant from the William Penn Foundation to expand and enhance the John J. Wilcox, Jr., Archives; piloting four new programs and partnerships; hosting dozens of art and history exhibitions that brought hundreds of visitors to the center; and becoming the primary service provider for the John C. Anderson LGBT-friendly apartments.
Expansion of the archives will commence with organizing, cataloging and shelving of the collection in the center’s reading room. It will be open to both academics and the public.
“This is a great opportunity to showcase one of the major gems of the center,” Bartlett said. “If we don’t know our history, we don’t know our future.”
The center’s financials were also reviewed, with both revenue and expenses from fiscal year 2014 slightly higher than anticipated. The organization expected expenses at $777,458 and they ultimately came to $845,127, while revenue was anticipated at $789,930, with actual revenue standing at $907,536.