BENTONVILLE : Children’s museum chooses early volunteer as its first hire
Posted on Thursday, November 13, 2008
BENTONVILLE — The Children’s Museum of Northwest Arkansas has worked from a small office on the downtown square for more than a year, yet it looks as if the organization just moved in.
Framed pictures rest against wood-paneled walls, and a stack of decorations used for a fundraiser in March sit in the middle of the floor in an office above a coffee shop on the square.
No official timeline for the museum has been set, but it is hoped that it could be built within five years. Still to be determined are location, cost, principle funding source and a variety of other factors.
The organization, which has been run by volunteers, hired its first employee last week. Holly Hook is now the part-time office coordinator after having been a volunteer since the group’s inception in 2005, a year before it received its federal 501 (c )(3 ) nonprofit, tax-exempt status.
Her main task will be to organize the nearly 30 volunteers for events, promote activities in the area and raise awareness about the organization and its goal to create the museum.
One of the activities the museum is providing is “sand stories,” where children can sift through sand to find objects like a toy soldier or an animal figurine and use their imaginations to determine why they may be there, she said.
For now, the organization is limited to providing programming at community events, but eventually hopes to be able to visit schools to provide handson learning experiences.
On Saturday, the museum will have an event at the Bentonville Public Library called “Rexy’s Jurassic Party.” Rexy is a dinosaur replica that was donated after it appeared in the 2006 movie Night at the Museum.
Kids can make puppets and dinosaur hats along with other activities.
“I think it means progress,” Hook said of her hiring and the organization’s presence in the community. “It takes our idea [for a museum ] to an entity.”
Ohio-based philanthropy consultants Hodge Cramer and Associates conducted a feasibility study for The Children’s Museum of Northwest Arkansas in 2007, which showed there’s a need for the museum.
It also concluded that a fulltime professional is needed for the project to succeed, location would factor into “many philanthropists’ decision to give” to the museum and that “solid and detailed operational, business and construction plans must be in place in order to solidify the validity of the project.”
Jim Demaree, the organization’s founder, said the museum has been seeking an executive director and has interviewed fewer than 10 candidates from outside the region.
In the next several months the group plans to hire a firm to create a strategic plan that will create a timeline of events for the museum’s development. The museum has money now to pay for an executive director and the strategic plan, Demaree said, though he wouldn’t elaborate on the organization’s budget. “If it’s the right fit for the community, the community will make it happen,” he said.
To contact this reporter: aotoole@arkansasonline. com
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