Project management

It’s late and I should be getting into bed, but at last Friday’s meeting, someone mentioned Basecamp, and that made me think about collaboration software, and that let me to Project Pier. I toying with the idea of, when I return to my CLV job, using this to keep my disparate team and client properties in touch with each other and our projects. Just toying with it at the moment.

Against the wall

Things are tough financially. They have been all year, but today the first day of what used to be the “closed season”, really brings it home. This is the point when even though all our countryside is free to access all year round, and more and more pay-for-entry places are open during winter, people have less opportunity to visit.

As an organisation, we aim for a 20% operating contribution, which is to say, that we want to generate from our operating turnover an extra 20%, which next year can be allocated to conservation projects. We’re way below that target right now, and we’ve only got the lean months to try and scrape a little of it back.

Why? Well the credit crunch hasn’t helped, but frankly, in my region, the biggest problem has been the weather. It rained, it seemed, all summer, and especially, it seemed, at week-ends and when we had an event on. Obviously we should try to be less dependent on visitor related income. But that learning point doesn’t help the present situation. My region is responsible for over half the operating contribution shortfall. What are we going to do, in these lean winter months to try and narrow that gap?

I’ve been thinking about what my team is able to do, and I’ve been charged by our regional committee and by our regional management team, to come up with a “tactical plan” in improve income. There are some no-brainers , investing in promoting the winter openings that are going on before Christmas.

This year, more of our houses will be open and dressed for the season than ever before, including Ightham Mote, where the Great Hall with be decorated with a traditional tree for visitors to enjoy from Thursdays to Sundays from 6 November through until 21 December.  At Bateman’s, visitors can enjoy a Kipling Christmas during the first three weekends in December.  At Standen, the original light fittings will illuminate the house while traditional decorations will add a festive touch, for four weekends from 29 November.  At Uppark, you can experience life ‘below stairs’ and discover how the servants prepared for the seasonal celebrations from 6 to 11 December.  And finally, from 4 – 7 December, Polesden Lacey will be treating their guests to a true Mrs Greville welcome with staff in period costume, decorations, festive music and a 16 foot tree.

But can we do more to change people’s perceptions that everwhere is closed during winter, and what can we add regionally to the adverstising and press releases that properties themselves are doing? Can we agree promotions with properties that give people 10% off on the shop for instance, and cane we market all the different offers that tea-rooms and resturants have on, under a simple to communicate regional theme? I think we also need to make sure that the properties are all doing what we may be taking for granted, devising their own appropriate offers, marketing them effectively not just with advertising, but in press releases and roadside banners.

And after Christmas, how best should we be promoting visits in January and February? We’ve already decided that the region will create a couple of calendars, one of things to do during half term, and and another for adults of all the lecture lunches and the like, and distribute them on-line at properties and in the papers (if we are lucky). We just tried a viral e-marketing campaign offering a kids go free voucher for this last half term, it’ll be interesting to see how successful that was.

One exciting thing may be happening. I’ve been banging on for years about putting our Father Christmases in his old pre-Coca-Cola costumes. Well… I hear he’s been routing about in his wardrobe…

More NT blogs on their way?

First of all, apologies for not keeping up to my aim to post more regularly than this. It’s been a week since my last post! But here’s a thing: We’re updating our regional business plan, to meet newly set targets, which reflect better the desired end result, rather than focus on how we get there. So in the last region planning group we paired up function managers (thats me) with area managers (they manage the property managers – the operational line, as we call it) and divided up parts of the plan between the pairs.

My colleague and I got the Engaging Supporters section. One of the proposed new targets there is a measure of how close people feel to the Trust (See post passim). And my colleague (note: not me) suggested every property has its own blog! “I know nothing about blogs” says he, “That’s ok, I do” I reply. So its in our proposed plan. There’s a few months of navigating its way through the regional planning group and other approvals before its there to stay, but, fingers crossed!

Gift aid

I was reviewing entry prices for 2009 today. As a charity it’s obviously important that we monitor prices carefully, retaining value for money while ensuring the income that we need to maintain our places for ever, for everyone. My region is one of the financial engine rooms of the Trust, providing one of the three big chunks of what we call our operating contribution. The situation has been made more complicated in recent years by the introduction of Gift Aid On Entry (GAOE).

Many charitable visitor attractions have claimed GAOE for years, asking visitors to confirm their admission price was a charitable donation, and allowing the charity to claim the tax the visitor had already paid back from the taxman. It requires some administration, not least when the visitor pays their money, so for a long time the NT declined to follow suit. We had no problem doing it in membership, people fill out a form already to apply for membership, so its a matter of adding a tickbox and an extra signature to that form and you’re done. Filling out a form every time to buy a ticket, especially when you’ve come to have a nice day out away from the desk is a different matter. Eventually we were persuaded that is was worth the extra hassle at the entry point and decided to do it. Then Gordon Brown changed the rules.

Claiming gift aid on the admission price was not in keeping with the spirit in which gift aid had been set up, he said. Gift aid was about encouraging people to make charitable donations, not to redefine money they were going to spend anyway. To qualify for gift aid on entry, visitors would have be be actively giving a donation (at least 10%) over and above the price of admission. 

So just as we were starting to do the whole GAOE thing, we were presented with having to achieve two processes: not only did we have to convince people to fill out a GAOE form when they paid, but we’d also have to convince them to pay 10% more than the normal price of admission.

As it turns out this new requirement was the easy part. Over 80% of our paying visitors are willing to pay the extra. But to qualify for the extra tax back from tax man, we need all those who paid extra to fill out a form giving us permission to do so, and to do it correctly. This is a lot more difficult.

So when I was reviewing prices today, I was looking at a spreadsheet that had the prices our property managers want to charge at one end, and the expected operating contribution that the wider National Trust expects us to deliver at the other. In the middle are an awful lot of calculations that basically say “if the expected number of visitors all turn up, and pay the expected price, then we should end up making what the National Trust needs from us a region” to pay fro all the conservation projects we’ll need to do next year”. Those calculations are based on just 60% of the people who pay the extra donation on top of the admission filling out a GAOE form correctly. Just 60%, but we can even manage that right now. Right now, it appears to me that properties are managing to get about 40% of the people who pay the extra to fill out the form properly.

The shortfall that leaves us with as a region is equivalent to everybody paying an extra 20p on their ticket price. Of course, we should work harder at making it easier to fill out the form. But I’m thinking, should I also just put up all the prices by 20p?

NT Shops – Love’em or loath’em?

Attended the Supporter Enagement Group today. One of my favourite duties. Before my current role I attended on behalf of the Community, Learning and Volunteering function, and its a group that has allowed me to have an impact on the way the whole Trust thinks. But enough about me, one item of particular interest was a review of our retail offer.

I don’t know what you think about NT shops. I’m ambivalent. On one hand, there’s a level of consitency about the quality of what we offer and its a source of gifts that I know certain members of my family will love, but on the other … ugh! What a bunch of twee, old-ladyish stock!

It seems our visitors reflect this dichotomy. Those who shop in our outlets love it, and they are a very succesful shop chain. But a significant proportion of our visitors hate the shop, and never go in, let alone buy anything. So how do we make the shop more attractive to them without alienating the people who love it?

The retail team have taken the bull by the horns, and I think they have come up with a pretty radical approach: relying less on centrally sourced stock, empowering shop managers and letting shops differenciate themsleves according to the nature of the place they are in. So for example, most of our shops’ stock is currently centrally sourced: about 70%. But under the proposals shops at iconic properties could source up to 80% themselves and might only offer 20% centrally sourced stock.

I think this is great, but some of my colleagues wondered if this was radical enough. Our shops our an important source of revenue, and as a charity we have a duty to make as much from them as we can, but if we expected less money out of them, would they become more engaging places?

Forever vs. Entrepreneurism

When I was writing about my visit to Mascalls, it dawned on me that it had taken two years to get to the very beginning. Contrast this with the exciting developments at Sissinghurst. I visited this property on Friday, to advise on access to the new vegetable garden they are creating which will supply the restaurant. It feels as though this project has taken no time at all. I wasn’t in on the beginning of of, but it doesn’t feel long ago that people were saying “we’re thinking about this” and already on Friday the restaurant was serving home-frown salad with a pea and cheese tart. A TV company are filming the process for a fly-on-the wall documentary to be broadcast next year,and the camera was hovering over our table as my colleague, the vegetable gardener was tucking into her plateful.

But the challenge of making the garden accessible is quite difficult. Not that there aren’t all sorts of things that Sissinghurst could do to improve access, but rather, because even after my visit, I’m struggling to understand what the end result should be. When I think about access and the Disability Discrimination Act, I’m always looking to offer equality of experience to people who might face barriers to enjoying the full experience. It seems to me that this project has progressed so fast that no-one has yet identified what the end result, in terms of visitor experience, should be. Now, in my new role. I’m asking basic questions beyond the remit of my old job, like is this part of the paid-for visit (or “within the pay perimetre” as we call it) and I’m not sure anyone yet has come to a definite conclusion.

So the Sissinghurst project contrasts interestingly with the way the National Trust normally makes decisions. We move a a glacial pace normally, and think through every decision carefully, arriving at, if not the right decision, then at least the best decision. It remain to be seen whether a project like Sissinghurst will give us a kick up the backside, or make us retreat to the comfort of our old, slow ways.

I get a letter

I wrote my first letter in my new role today. It was in reply to a comment from a visitor to Polesden Lacey who want to note her approval that she could still buy a Short Guide there. I ought to explain: a Short Guide is a large format gatefold style leaflet, printed in two colours, which was an alternative to buying a full guidebook or Book of the House, as we call them. In the South East region we stopped offering Short Guides at our properties a couple of years ago. After an experiment, during which we withdrew Short Guides from sale for a month, and sales of Books of the House went up. But I was glad to see Short Guides go for another reason. They were dreadful! Over long, wordy and worthy documents, that were a pain to read in low light. Not inspiring at all, and not free. It meant that at most properties, the only free interpretation on offer was talking to volunteers. Now, I think talking to a real live person can’t be beat. But some people do prefer to read rather than engage in conversation. Why should they be penalised?
I took the opportunity to try out somethng new at Chartwell. Its a large print introduction to the house, which visitors can pick up as they enter, carry around with them and drop off as they leave. Nothing new there. But I took the opportunity to strip out most of the words, creating a confuse introduction to the house and rooms with a 1000 word limit. It high lights just a few objects around the house as “Don’t miss” items, and left questions unanswered to encourage conversations with volunteers and deeper investigation. We evaluated it at Chartwell and it was a big hit, accessible, interesting and FREE!

Since that experiment, we’ve produced others at Batemans and Clandon Park. I love them. I’d recommend them for every property. It’s a real challenge to set – can you interpret you property in just one thousand words?

But back to my letter. Polesden Lacey kept selling the short guide because there are lots of changes taking place there, including a new visitor reception and, just released a brand new guidebook in a format that we call a Colour Souvenir Guide. These are less heavy than the traditional book of the house, in EVERY sense. More colour pictures, less grey blocks of text. They are cheaper too. They’ve been around for a few years, but the format is getting better and better. We wanted to be sure that the content was right though, and not just a cut down version of the old guidebook. So I helped the property team create a Learning Plan. I locked a bunch of property staff, volunteers and regional advisors in a room for a day, and together we identified the most important things we wanted to say about Polesden Lacey. Then we organized those things into three Themes, with an over-arching main theme, that will inform all interpretation for the foreseeable future. We used these themes to lay out the guidebook, and to commision the author. And the result? The only guidebook that the property’s very experienced Area Manager has read from cover to cover. And to think of the hard time he gave me for taking everyone away from their day-jobs for the planning session.

So, I had to thank my correspondent for her kind words about the Short Guide, but also inform her it is no longer for sale.