Changes at the National Trust for Historic Preservation

I had written about this earlier, based on changes at the Lyndhurst historic site in the Hudson Valley, in the entry "Financial Issues at the National Trust for Historic Preservation?" From the Historic House Museums e-list, an email by Max Van Bolgooey:

Regular readers of HistoricSites.WordPress.com already know that the National Trust for Historic Preservation is undergoing tremendous change. Since the arrival of Stephanie Meeks as the president of the National Trust in July 2010, the organization has been working intensely to rebrand and reform itself in a time of declining support and stretched resources.

The process has prompted Stephanie to make changes large and small over the past year, but the most dramatic ones occurred in September 2011. She eliminated four of the six regional offices, shifted the magazine from bi-monthly to quarterly issues, laid off five people at Lyndhurst (including the director), and cut half the positions in the Historic Sites department.

She is also focusing the National Trust’s work on national rather than statewide or local issues; pursuing historic preservation in a new way by hiring people outside the field of historic preservation and historic sites; developing a new logo; emphasizing earned income (one of the new positions in the Historic Sites department will be a Director of Business Development, so look for this posting); and making the National Trust Historic Sites more self-sufficient and independent. I suspect that much of this will be revealed publicly in the coming months through [the website], Preservation Magazine, and more subtly through its job listings. ...