Connecticut Landmarks

Since 1936, Connecticut Landmarks has acquired historic homes and maintained and operated them as museums. As their portfolio grew, their operating practices and revenue sources didn’t keep pace. By 2021, with eleven historic buildings and a large museum collection, the preservation backlog had grown and the organization couldn’t support the kinds of new programming that it wanted to adopt. Following several public challenges of the organization's stewardship, the board selected a new director and was prepared to consider a wide range of changes to their operating model.

Connecticut Landmarks hired Museum Insights to conduct a holistic review of all its properties, to develop a property assessment tool, and to work with the staff and board to create a plan for change. The project began by creating a brief institutional history to understand how the organization had both acquired and disposed of properties in the past. Understanding this history set the stage for the assessment effort. To understand each property’s strengths and opportunities for growth, we developed a matrix to document and prioritize desired and potential “mission outcomes” (activities that support their mission) and “money outcomes” (activities that fund them). Each matrix had seven scoring criteria which allowed for an apples-to-apples comparison of the properties for the first time. Along side this matrix, we also developed three categories of properties, recognizing that the distinct nature of each property made a one-size-fits-all management approach ineffective. Combining this categorization with their overall score, the organization could easily prioritize resources and make decisions about the best use of each property in its care. This novel approach has received national recognition.