The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum was founded in 1985 with the mission to “preserve and share the cultural and natural heritage of the Lake Champlain region by connecting its past, present and future.” The original articles of incorporation list four distinct “purposes” as the museum’s original goals: collecting historic objects; providing educational activities; conducting or supporting maritime research on Lake Champlain; and conducting or supporting research of the region.

The museum is undergoing a strategic planning process that includes a refresh of our organizational philosophy statements – our mission, vision, and values. We started this process in 2019, before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since our earliest days, the museum has focused on collecting and interpreting the objects which tell the stories of the Champlain Valley. We are stewards of the tremendous history contained within the lake in the form of historic shipwrecks. And, over the years, we have grown to incorporate a unique mix of educational programs, experiential learning, archaeological research, and a traditional museum space. In addition to our exhibits and collections, the museum has a rowing and boat building program that reaches hundreds of middle and high schoolers each year; an education team that focuses on lake health and ecology as well as history and archaeology; and a strong partnership with the Vermont Abenaki Artists Association and the indigenous people of N’Dakinna, the unceded Abenaki homelands on which the museum sits today.

Our new statements – and later our strategic plan and core documents of the museum – needed to reflect this multi-faceted organizational structure. This had been a challenge with previous statements, and our staff and board were committed to achieving that goal.

Additionally, our values statements and core museum documents needed to be relevant to our internal organizational philosophy and to the changing world around us. We wanted this strategic planning and mission-writing work – as well as all our creative processes – to have a JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) focus, shaped by values that reflect what is important to our community and to us. A key part of all our strategic work is to guarantee that all museum programs are accessible to all audiences, and inclusive of all voices. Recognizing that there are common barriers to access for many people to visit museums or take advantage of these kinds of educational experiences, the museum is committed to removing these obstacles for all visitors. 

In May 2021, the museum stopped charging admission fees and opened its doors to the public free of charge. Additionally, we have shifted to offering all educational programs (e.g. workshops, summer camps, and expeditions) on a pay-what-you-can model. The shift has been a success, with 30% more visitation in 2021 over 2019, including a significant increase in local visitors. We’ve seen a greater diversity in our visitation and program attendance as well. We intend to keep these policies in effect for the foreseeable future, and it was essential that our new statements reflect this organizational philosophy.

These goals required including as many voices as possible in the process. In September 2021, we sent out a 17-question survey to our stakeholders – including board members, staff members, volunteers, community partners, and long-time supporters of the Museum. Sixty-one people shared their input – 41% were volunteers, 30% were staff, 16% were board, 7% were community partners, and 7% identified as “other.” The survey was designed in part to inform a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis that was discussed at a strategic board and staff retreat later in the fall. In addition to the standard SWOT questions, we asked about brand awareness (how do you describe the museum to your friends?), impact (Which programs are most important to the Museum’s impact?), and social justice (What is the museum’s role and responsibility in social justice?). Together with our Strategic Planning Consultant Claire Wheeler (of Vermont-based RE:WORK LLC), a smaller committee of board and staff members synthesized the feedback from the survey and the retreat into our draft mission, vision, and values statements.

I was a member of this smaller committee which included staff and board members with varying levels of seniority at the museum and experience in the field. We were charged with condensing everything about the museum into a few short, memorable sentences that invoked curiosity about our work while still stating the cause, action, and impact of our organization. The committee met several times over last fall and winter and presented draft versions of the statements to our board and staff for review.

Both the subcommittee and the larger board/staff team used a consent-based decision-making model for the review process. Each time we considered either a phrase or a full statement, we identified whether the language was our personal preference, within our range of tolerance, or objectionable. The goal was to create statements that were either everyone’s personal preference, or within their range of tolerance. Anytime someone had an objection to a draft statement, they had an opportunity to provide feedback that was helpful, specific, and kind – always providing suggested edits rather than amorphous feedback. In the end, this model helped us develop statements that are representative of our team’s philosophy and of everyone’s relationship to the museum and our work.

As a final step in the process, the board and staff attended a joint meeting to consider how the statements incorporated JEDI values. We asked ourselves the following questions about each draft statement:

• How is it helping? How is it harming?
• Who is it helping? Who is it harming?
• Whose values are centered? How do we know?
• Whose needs are centered? Who may be excluded because of our expectations, wording, requisites, and logistics or process?
• Who made the decision? Who was missing from the conversation?

After asking these questions and editing based on consent-based feedback, we felt the statements centered JEDI values and offered opportunities for growth into the future.

The sub-committee presented final mission, vision, and values statements to the board for approval at their June 2022 meeting. The ayes were unanimous, and we are now incorporating these statements into our core documents and policies, as well as our public facing and internal communications.

At Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, everything we do is rooted in a goal of developing visitors and students as stewards of the lake. With that in mind, here are our official new statements:

VISION
Inspired, empowered, and equitable communities that realize social and environmental justice through their connection to Lake Champlain.

MISSION
Lake Champlain Maritime Museum connects all people to Lake Champlain, inspiring them to learn from the past, build together in the present, and create a sustainable future.

VALUES
We believe in the power of history: We research, document, preserve, and share an inclusive maritime history and archaeology of the Lake Champlain region. Our work is to repair the harm caused by history being told from a singular, dominant perspective.

We believe in the power of connection: We bring people together to learn from the lake and build skills of collaboration, communication, and critical thinking through equitable experiences that connect people to the world around them, to themselves, and to each other.

We believe that all people are history makers: We inspire people to see new possibilities and to build a future that realizes justice for individuals, our communities, and the environment.

The process does not stop with these words. We now must incorporate these statements and the values they evoke into the museum’s strategic plan for the coming years. We are using a similar sub-committee structure of board and staff for this phase to discuss short- and long-range goals and markers of success for all the work we do. These committees include Visitor Experience, Experiential Education Programs, Research, Development, and Administration/HR. Committees will meet over the summer months with the goal to submit a final plan for board approval at their September 2022 meeting.

A strategic plan is, at the end of the day, just a plan. To avoid mission drift – and to truly achieve the things we set out to do – we must implement the plan and evaluate our work in the coming years. To ensure that we are not simply providing lip service, our strategic plan will include concrete benchmarks for JEDI initiatives and program goals each year. Benchmarks might look like “30% more BIPOC participants in summer camps in 2023 over 2022” and “at least 50% representation from people who identify as women on the board by 2025;” or “all Revolutionary War Collections online and searchable by 2026” and “a minimum of 10 students in boat building courses each winter.” And each year, at regular meetings of the staff and board, we will plan and conduct evaluations to make sure that we’re truly achieving these goals.

We invite you, the NEMA community, to hold us accountable for this work and to share the ways you are implementing similar goals yourselves. We look forward to seeing you at a conference soon!

Patricia Reid (she/her) is the Collections Manager and Development Assistant at Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and served on the sub-committee of board and staff which developed the Museum’s newest organizational philosophy statements, adopted in June 2022.