Organizing Your Downtown Program for Success

REGISTER NOW – APA-NJ Members receive a 10% Discount

Featuring Donna Ann Harris of Heritage Consulting

Hosted at the Borough Hall in downtown Metuchen – a Main Street New Jersey community since 2014.

The 60th NJ Downtown Institute for Winter 2015 is your opportunity to get up-to-speed on making the most of your limited volunteer and financial resources to help you achieve your revitalization and district management goals. This workshop is designed for business district management organizations, chambers and other municipal, county and regional leaders, whether staff or volunteers. Every attendee will leave with tactics and strategies for running a more effective downtown management organization – including a flash drive with a host of best practices, tools and sample documents included so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. People and organizations new to downtown management are also encouraged to attend.
APA 5.25 CM Credits (Pending)

Agenda – February 25, 2015:

8:15am – 9:00am — Registration, Coffee & Conversation
9:00am – 9:15am — Welcome, Overview & Introductions
9:15am – 10:30am — Unlocking Your Downtown’s Potential: Using the Four Teams to Get Stuff Done
10:30am – 11:30am — Maximizing Board and Staff for BIDS/SIDS and Downtown Organizations
11:30am – 12:15pm — Diversify Your Revenue Sources!
12:15pm – 1:30pm — Lunch in the District/Networking
1:30pm – 2:15pm — Work Planning for Success
2:15pm – 3:30pm — Advanced Volunteer Recruitment
3:30pm – 4:00pm — Be the Expert: Benchmarking Your Success

Session Details – The Toolbox
Unlocking Your Downtown’s Potential: Using the Four Teams to Get Stuff Done: Overview of the four teams and the eight Main Street principles. Briefly what do the Board, four Teams and manager do? Role and typical early projects for each team. Donna Ann Harris
Maximizing Board and Staff for BIDS/SIDS and other Downtown Organizations: What Board members do collectively and as individuals to support the organization. What staff does (and don’t do). Divide into two groups based on whether your organization is a BID/SID or not. Donna Ann Harris & Jef Buehler

Diversify Your Revenue Sources: An overview of the seven traditional revenue sources for local revitalization work, typical start up budgets for staffed/unstaffed organizations. Donna Ann Harris

Work Planning for Success: Describes the component parts of the work plan tool, its key role in budgeting, volunteer recruitment, scheduling, and evaluating the work of the four teams for the Board. Hands on exercise creating work plans for projects. Donna Ann Harris

Advanced Volunteer Recruitment: Advanced Volunteer Recruitment: How to create volunteer job descriptions. Why do people volunteer today? Most fruitful methods for individual and wholesale volunteer recruitment, creating good volunteer job descriptions, where to post, orientation and giving feedback. Hands on exercise creating job descriptions Using technology to manage volunteer efforts in the 21 Century. Donna Ann Harris and Jef Buehler

Be the Expert: Benchmarking Your Success: Why it pays to be the expert, where to find the stats you need, and how to use the information you collect. Jef Buehler and Donna Ann Harris