Because the arts bring communities to life.
With $160K of support from ECCF’s Creative County Initiative, the Essex County Creative Nonprofit Resiliency Grant Program succeeded in helping forty-seven creative nonprofits weather the early economic devastation of COVID-19, and the CCI creative network continues to grow and strengthen as a result. The Essex County Artist Fund remains open for individual artists economically affected by COVID-19.
IMPACT STATEMENT
The Danvers Alarm List has already suffered serious losses from the pandemic, and these losses will worsen greatly as the season goes on. The museum was unable to give any school tours this spring and has been unable to open at all for public tours. Additionally, our two major spring events – a community open-house and a Revolutionary War reenactment have been canceled, meaning a further loss of income. On top of this, we have had fewer members of the museum’s preservation society renewing their annual memberships presumably due to the economic downturn. To date, the Danvers Alarm List has lost $10,110. On top of this, we project to lose $26,880 – more than three-quarters of our annual revenue – by the end of the calendar year. The museum will be unable to open for some time yet, and when it does we will have only a fraction of our typical visitors. Although the events the museum puts on are community-focused, financially the museum gets much of its revenue from giving tours during its regular business hours. Travel restrictions and general uneasiness about traveling will continue throughout this year – and maybe even into next year, which will drastically diminish the tourism industry upon which the museum relies. Fewer visitors means not just less revenue from museum admissions, but also fewer preservation society memberships, and fewer potential volunteers for next season.
Non-Profit: Danvers Alarm List / The Rebecca Nurse Homestead – Danvers
Learn more: rebeccanurse.org
Mission: The Danvers Alarm List is a volunteer Revolutionary War reenactment group that owns and manages the Rebecca Nurse Homestead Museum, which is the only home of a 1692 Salem Witch-Hunt victim that is open to the public. The reenactors volunteer to give colonial living history demonstrations at historic sites across New England, and host events and reenactments at the Nurse Homestead, some of which are free to the public. The Nurse Homestead Museum is open for professional tours from April to November (ordinarily), in addition to providing field trips to school groups for an incredibly reduced admission price. The museum works with a local theater company to put on a series of plays on the property each summer, hosts lectures on the witch trials, and runs a series of open-house events for the local community with reduced or free admission and programming aimed towards children. The museum’s activities are organized by the Danvers Alarm List volunteers on top of their responsibilities caring for a 350 year-old historic house, multiple outbuildings, and 25 acres of open land. The museum has partnered the past few summers with the Essex Heritage Future Leaders Program to provide projects for these students to work on as they learn skills.
Learn more about the Essex County Community Foundation
English
French
German
Spanish
