Boone County Heritage Museum | Application Preview
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General Information
Business Registration Number: Boone County Heritage Museum
Location: HARRISON, AR, United States
Length of Operation: 11plus
Number of Employees: 1-10 Employees
Annual Gross Income: Less than $100k
Annual Gross Expense: Less than $100k
Open to Loans: NO
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Funding Usage
1. We are converting 3 rooms on the third floor of the museum building into exhibits. The other room on that floor is storage for thousands of items, many unregistered, uninspected, and of course not displayed. We have plenty of items to display if we can get the rooms set up. 2. Our second building, the Forrest Building, is the site of our family history/archival/genealogy room. It is also a work in progress and is in the beginning phases. We need funding for shelving, storage, and possibly to digitize these records. 3. A few years ago the county moved ALL of the official county record books/binders to storage in our museum, due to ongoing water issues in the courthouse. These old, mostly handwritten ledgers, date back to 1876. Currently they are nearly filling an entire room in the Forrest Building, in boxes, sitting on wooden pallets. They need to be sorted, organized and shelved. So far they have not been touched. There is no one to do the work, and no money to pay to have it done. 4. We have applied for a grant to install an elevator in the old museum building to allow the elderly and handicapped access to the second and third floors, and allow for moving large items up and down. We have not received any money for this costly endeavor as of this date. 5. Paying someone to work more than 12 hours a week is also a need for us.
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Business Plan
1. Convert 3 rooms on the third floor of the Museum into exhibit rooms complete with artifacts and displays 2. Continue to add to data/family histories that are being housed in our Family History room in the Forrest Building 3. Properly organize and shelve county record books.4. Install elevator so that elderly and handicapped can access the second and third floors of the museum 5. Promote the museum with community awareness events, speakers, displays, etc. Previous entries explain that although our society (Boone County Railroad and Historical Society) owns two buildings, one of which is full of artifacts and records of all kinds relating to the history of Boone County, Arkansas, and the city of Harrison, we receive no steady income or public funding, other than a small city and a small county stipend (less than $10,000 total) for housing records. In contrast, the local library, which contains some records but no artifacts, receives taxpayer supported funding from the county, which is generated by property taxes. We have been and continue to be in dire straights financially. The COVID crisis added to this issue. We are in a very rural part of Arkansas, located in the Ozark Mountains near the Missouri state line. The city of Harrison, our county seat, has a population of just at 13,000. There are a few small industries and manufacturing companies along with agriculture and tourism, as we are near a national park, the Buffalo National River.
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Self Identified Competition
We have no competitors in our county. There are no other museums of any kind. The public library does house some archival materials such as genealogy and family histories. We are the only source of historical and archival information about the history of our county, its communities, and its people, dating back to the formation of the county in 1869.
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Contact Applicant
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