Over the past year, Preservation Maryland has worked diligently to keep preservation a priority throughout the entire state. However, the goal wasn’t just to keep what we had—or to defend the current state of preservation—but also to advance the cause of preservation; to gain new followers, expand capacity, and broaden the movement to embrace new challenges and opportunities.
ANNUAL IMPACT AND DONOR REPORT
The following is a letter from Preservation Maryland Executive Director, Nicholas A. Redding, and President of the Board of Directors, Anthony Azola that appears in Preservation Maryland’s Annual Report for 2017 published in March 2018.
Over the past year, Preservation Maryland has worked diligently to keep preservation a priority throughout the entire state. However, the goal wasn’t just to keep what we had—or to defend the current state of preservation—but also to advance the cause of preservation; to gain new followers, expand capacity, and broaden the movement to embrace new challenges and opportunities.
ADVOCACY
We were engaged in one of our largest federal advocacy battles in the past quarter century during the tax-reform debate that could have resulted in the total elimination of the federal historic tax credit. The organization forged an even stronger relationship with Maryland United States Senator Ben Cardin, who became a national champion in the effort to save the credit – an effort that was ultimately successful. In addition to our federal advocacy, we led the charge in Annapolis to increase funding to our state historic preservation grant programs that resulted in the first appropriation to the capital and non-capital grant funds for the first time in nearly a decade.
PRESERVATION
Our work to support the diverse and dynamic Six-to-Fix program continued with even greater involvement from our friends in the architecture, engineering and construction fields – and in the fall we were able to secure a day of service from the talented tradespeople of the National Historic Preservation Training Center for one of our threatened sites which was a celebrated first for the program.
COMMUNICATIONS
Our audience of followers and supporters also grew exponentially with the introduction of PreserveCast, our award-winning podcast that has gained a truly national following. Each week, PreserveCast along with our website’s informative and fun blog and daily social media posts engage thousands of preservationists and build our movement with every click. PreserveList, a directory of preservation professionals in the mid-Atlantic also launched and has begun to assist with diverse projects across the state.
TRANSPARENCY
We have been strategic, aggressive and disciplined – and we did all that while also investing .90 cents of every donor’s dollar directly in programs. Repeating these successes, both programmatic and financial will not be easy in the year ahead as a myriad of challenges and obstacles await us – but with the loyal and generous support of our donors we are confident we can make that repeat a reality.
Read the Full Annual Report (PDF)