Donna Guzzo
President, Executive Director
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: (904) 280-0614 ext. 1201

Alejandra Hernandez-Ordoñez
Assistant to Executive Director
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: (904) 280-0614 ext. 1205

Catherine C. Tatem
Art Programs & Outreach Manager
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: (904) 280-0614, ext. 1206

Linda Krepp
Programs Coordinator
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: (904) 280-0614, ext. 1205

Gina Fiore
Community Connections Manager
Email: gfiore@ccpvb.org
Phone: (904) 280-0614 ext. 1202

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The Cultural Center at Ponte Vedra Beach, 2022

“Strengthen Financial Stability”

Connect     ·     Engage     ·     Experience

Letter from President & Executive Director Donna Guzzo

December 2019

I am delighted to present to you The Cultural Center’s Strategic Three-Year Plan. This is a vision to connect; engage; and have our students, instructors, volunteers, guests, staff, and Board of Directors experience what the center is all about.

The foundation and principles that have directed the work of the Center are:

• A focus on students, instructors, and volunteers
• An effort to bring the arts into the life of the community
• An outreach program to benefit children with special needs

We are fortunate to be sited in Ponte Vedra Beach, St. Johns County, and to be very close to the Duval County line. For the last 25 years, we have been able to serve the beaches community. The legacy of Rhoda McKean and other founding members is the core of the Center. We are grateful that a few of the founders, including Janet Wilson, Sandy Beers, and Ellen Diamond, are still very engaged with our programs. We are positioned to maintain the Center’s legacy as a small, but mighty, institution by bringing in quality exhibits and desired programming. We continue to expand the Sound Connections® Music Therapy Program to Title 1 schools. Finally, the mission of our plan fosters relationship building.

Connect

We are committed to connecting with our community. We cultivate an inclusive community that is diverse and connects students to instructors, volunteers to staff, and staff to the Board of Directors. We foster respect and integrity. Increase awareness for exhibits, programs, and events. The staff has been trained on trustworthiness. Cultivate a vibrant center.

Engage

We value our students, instructors, volunteers, guests, staff, and Board of Directors. We will inspire others to engage. We embrace education, cultural diversity and productive dialogues. Transform relationships to build financial stability.

Experience

We set high expectations for the six values of Character Counts!®: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. It is imperative that we connect to visitors, donors, and instructors. Branding is one of the areas we focus on to ensure that every piece of communication is consistent: the website, social media, eNews, business cards, marketing, etc. When we empower and engage the staff, it will be easy to sell the experience to the community we serve.

Create a more integrated arts experience by coordinating with events and programs. In this way, we can offer a more comprehensive arts experience. As we celebrate our 25^th anniversary, I want to thank those responsible for laying the foundation, those with a vision, and the incredible opportunity to thrive for 25 years. I am committed to this plan. It is ambitious and we are all to be held accountable. Success is imminent!

Donna Guzzo, President and Executive Director

Mission

Our mission is to bring the arts into the life of the community through arts education, exhibitions, and outreach, and by honoring a donor-driven philosophy.

This plan fosters social and personal connections, engagement, and experience with all.

Vision

To be a center for everyone to experience, appreciate, and better understand the arts.

To realize the vision, we will recruit new membership and additional high-caliber instructors. We will develop a more coherent and integrated impact curriculum for children during camps and after school, selectively developing programs that build upon our existing strengths and opportunities in our county. We must develop auxiliary sources of revenue for programs and exhibits, by having donors sponsor specific programs and/or exhibits as we currently do with events.

Who Are We?

The Cultural Center is a small, independent center located in Ponte Vedra Beach. The Center operates in three categories: Exhibits, Programs and Outreach.

Every six weeks there are 2-3 exhibit openings.

There are over 175 programs per year.

The Sound Connections® Music Therapy program serves 200 children with special needs directly and 800 indirectly. This program is at five schools: Cunningham Creek Elementary, HUB school, Ocean Palms Elementary, PVPV/Rawlings Elementary, Valley Ridge Academy, and Webster Elementary, a Title 1 school.

Our inaugural signature event, Beaches, will be in February 2020. Artists and philanthropists of our community and neighboring counties will be recognized in five different categories. In addition, the Center puts on four major events per year: a spring event, a home tour, a fall event, and the Holiday Shoppes. The Center also hosts "mini events" such as Dinner with an Artist experiences, awareness events in the summer, and a couple of smaller events throughout the year.

In 2020, we will create larger events; limit or eliminate some smaller events; make ticket pricing accessible, create ways to increase revenue, increase effective, concise, and timely advertising, promote art experiences that match our mission, and have cohesiveness between exhibits, events, programs, classes, and workshops.

Priorities

In order to achieve this vision, we have identified three priorities:

• Cultivate a Vibrant Center

The center must move toward expanding our capacity, strategically seek to improve areas that prevent us from being competitive with other museums' programming.

• Inspire Others to Engage

We must play a role in building a sense of belonging. We don’t sell art or classes; we sell the experience!

• Transform Our Culture

We must strengthen our diversity, stay current with changing demographics and needs, supported by measurable metrics.

These essential priorities have specific suggestions and objectives below.

Priority One: Cultivate a Vibrant Center

As other arts nonprofits face crises and even collapse, our sound fiscal leadership and programs place us in an unprecedented position for the future. However, the Center faces internal barriers such as staffing levels, the lack of identity, branding, and membership. These barriers can be seen as opportunities also, however, we need to be forward-thinking with a unified Board of Directors and staff.

What are SMART goals? (specific, measurable, action-oriented, relevant, and timely).

SMART Goal 1. Grow Membership

Enhance Relevance and Awareness of the Center in Our Community by Increasing Membership by 15% by October 1, 2020

•  Objective 1: Identify Board of Directors members that can take on this task. They are the ones in circles in which our donors or potential donors mingle. Target additional areas, such as Nocatee and Jacksonville Beach. Increase awareness as measured by enhanced participation in Center offerings, exhibits, events, programs, and membership.
• Objective 2: Establish a subcommittee to work directly with the Membership Coordinator (Staff), to plan a membership campaign once or twice per year. We must become more strategic in the development of revenue.

(1) Address clear deficiencies in current membership campaigns.

(2) Differentiate us from our competitors. Why would someone want to be a member at the center?

(3) Connect and engage a younger demographic.

(4) Define how we sell memberships.

(5) Renewals strategy to be implemented by membership coordinator.

• Objective 3: We must work on donor retention, engaging donors to move up to the next level, and recruiting new donors.

Priority Two: Inspire Others to Engage

SMART Goal 2. Strengthen Financial and Leadership Stability

• Objective 1: Create a four-month reserve fund for the Center
• Donors – Continue to cultivate current and potential donors. Develop a plan for cold calls in

Ponte Vedra, Nocatee, Jacksonville Beach and St. Augustine. The president and executive director will initiate this plan and take managers out one-on-one for cold call visits.

(2) Sponsors – Continue to approach corporations, business owners and others to sponsor specific

             events, exhibits, programs and outreach. Target businesses in the areas we serve in and outside

             of the county. Sponsorships will be managed by each department manager, and overseen and  

             cultivated by the executive director.

• Objective 2: Proficiency: understand budgets, operations, and the outreach program. Assessing revenues and expenses, tracking programs costs and benefits and tracking metrics.
• Objective 3: Expand non-programs auxiliary sources of income. Expand and effectively manage facility rentals. New management practices will be implemented in The Market, the website, social media, eNews, communications, to be more targeted to specific audiences and events, providing more visibility, accessibility, and easy ticket purchases and donations. 

• Objective 4: Expand the Board of Directors to 21, organize committees to build engagement and commitment. Committees could include Finance, Membership, Program, Marketing, Fundraising (sponsorships, endowment, building-longer range, etc.), Events, Sound Connections® Music Therapy, etc.

Priority Three: Pursue Opportunities / Transform Our Culture

SMART Goal 3. Review and Pursue Opportunities to Expand the Cultural Center, which will allow us to better live out our mission and vision while creating a new arts destination for Northeast Florida. Character Counts!

• Objective 1: Keep focus on funding the operating budget. This is priority #1.

• Develop key donors to fund the new Center while at the same time not taking away from the existing financial stability of the Center.

• Transform our culture by integrating the elements of Character Counts!, intensive decision-making strategies, mindfulness, growth mindset, and behavioral change theories. Character Counts! will help staff, students and instructors to reach their potential and to have the ability to succeed in a non-profit environment to become engaged, responsible and productive citizens: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship.

• To be able to develop key donors we must all act in unity and be consistent with our approach and message.

• Objective 2: Review opportunities with the county commissioner for an arts campus, or other options in Nocatee or St. Augustine that may be available for new programing via satellite offices. We must continue to build a community that values artistic freedom, that values a better understanding of the arts, and encourages a productive dialogue that sets expectations high. The right size and location are associated with revenue growth; however, strategic differentiation is critical. The Board of Directors and the President will collaborate on this objective.  

Priority Four: Expand Sound Connections® Music Therapy and The Market

Smart Goal 4. Growth and Collaboration

Continue to expand Sound Connections® Music Therapy offerings as outlined in the Sound Connections® vision and improve funding sustainability.

• Objective 1: Enhance parental involvement, participation and membership.
• Objective 2: Increase donor base by 10 families.
• Objective 3: The online Market offers opportunities, but also competition. We can expand sales, auctions, chances to win, and have a volunteer in charge of running The Market.

Strategic Plan Committee 2019

Donna Guzzo, Chair                         President and Executive Director

Catherine Tatem                              Programs and Outreach Manager

Alejandra Ordonez                          Assistant to Executive Director

Matt Nelson                                       Chairman, Board of Directors

Jim Pope                                              Board of Directors

 

Location Map