Shop Talk: Q&A with Jim Donahue, Old Sturbridge Village
Photo/Christina H. Davis
Jim Donahue,
President and CEO,
Old Sturbridge Village.
Jim Donahue has been at the helm of Old Sturbridge Village as president and CEO of the living history museum since July 2007. In that time he’s spearheaded an effort to reform the nonprofit, which had hit hard times and operating deficits over the last few years. Here, he discusses his career path and the challenges and successes he’s encountered over the last 18 months at OSV.
How did you get to where you are today?
When I graduated from Colby, I took a job with what was then Fleet National Bank in Providence, R.I., as a management trainee. As part of my responsibilities at the bank they asked me to teach a Junior Achievement class. Through that experience I actually decided that I wanted to try teaching. I managed to land a job in a Catholic school in the inner city of Providence. Eventually I moved to another independent school and became an administrator. In 2000, I had the opportunity to start my own public charter school in Providence, which I did until I left to come to Old Sturbridge Village.
What do you see as the key items that you’ve been able to accomplish in the last year and a half?
I feel one of the things I’m pretty good at is helping my organization to establish very clear focus. When I was hired, I spent a lot of time thinking about what my strategy was going to be to lead this organization from a place of crisis to a place of success. It became pretty clear to me that we needed to create a performance dashboard for the organization that everybody could embrace and feel like they were contributing to in some way. We focused on two areas for measurable metrics. One was attendance and the second was fundraising.
What was the biggest change for you coming from a school setting to a museum?
I’ve learned a lot in this job and really the museum has a couple of different business elements in it. It’s kind of a funny operation that, unlike a school which basically has one business, to educate kids, this has more of a conglomerate approach. I’ve learned a lot about how to run a restaurant that I never would have learned before. But to be honest with you I never considered myself to be an amazing educator. What I thought I did well was attract people to the school who were amazing educators and then develop the resources that they needed to be able to do their jobs really well. I still find myself doing the exact same stuff I used to do in my old job.
What is your outlook given the current uncertain economic conditions?
We have seen, with the exception of our endowments funds, which like everyone else’s are riding a roller coaster, pretty consistent growth in all of our revenue indicators during the past year. We are bracing ourselves for a difficult 2009. We need to make sure that we can continue this momentum and remain affordable. That may mean that we have to operate as lean and effectively as we can in 2009. Like every other CEO I’m looking at how do we do that.
What role does the endowment play for OSV? Is it used for funding programs?
About 5 percent of the income from the endowment — which stands at about $6 million now — is used to support some programs and operations at the museum. The endowment was small to begin with so the village wasn’t heavily dependent on it. It does need to grow and we’re hoping over the next few years we will be able to do that. But we are taking an operating hit because of the market, just like everybody else.
What’s been the most difficult management lesson you’ve had to learn?
One critical lesson for me was when I was at the charter school. At the time I felt that I needed to be involved with everything and kept a lot of the responsibility to myself. I remember sitting with one of my mentors who said, “You know you’ve got to invest now to put some people around you. Otherwise the organization is never going to grow.” Once I started to get in the habit of that it was great because I had the courage and the willingness to delegate the leadership that I was holding on to and I could spend time moving the organization to the next level.
Online Exclusive: Jim Donahue on his favorite event at Old Sturbridge Village:
Jim Donahue on what he likes most about his job:
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