“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”
-Henry David Thoreau
As we celebrated the first birthday of the CAC on August 31, it’s a very appropriate time to acknowledge the “busy-ness” of our Volunteer team as a huge contributor to the success of the Center.
I am by no means a mathematician, but let’s review a few numbers that quantify our shared success now that the CAC has truly found its rhythm. This review is timely as we wrap up not only our first year in our new site, but also the end of the peak summer tour season.
Visitor counts inside the CAC have been running steady at about 1800 ticketed guests per month exploring our galleries. And that’s just a small portion of the over 10,000 tour takers stopping by the box office each month during July and August.
Thanks to Volunteer data provided by Caroline, here’s a recap of the service hours provided by our Exhibit Hosts, Education Guides, and Guest Services Volunteers during January-July 2019:
Exhibit Hosts filled 1063 shifts, totaling 3630 hours; Education Guides for Field Trips filled 263 shifts, totaling 486 hours; Guest Services Volunteers filled 237 shifts, totaling 967 hours; Insider’s Guide Tour volunteers filled 132 shifts, totaling 141 hours; and Education Guides for the Mobile Lab filled 57 shifts, totaling 121 hours. All together, 1752 volunteer shifts were filled, totaling 5345 hours.
Rather than raising a virtual glass to toast our shared achievements, let’s do the real thing. This is your friendly reminder to join us for Volunteer Appreciation Night the evening of Thursday, September 26.
This year’s VAN will be held inside the CAC to celebrate our first birthday and also to provide an up-close-and-personal sense of why our home has become a popular Chicago event venue. The festivities will be casual and conversational as we’re expecting to welcome a lion’s share of our 220 Volunteers (a 150% increase since the last VAN in Spring 2018).
While VAN is the CAC staff’s annual show of appreciation for the Volunteers’ hard work, it’s also our chance to congratulate and thank Lynn Osmond for her role in leading the organization, Constance Rajala for her advocacy in encouraging collaboration between the Volunteers and Docents, and to Caroline Duda for all she does for us, including organizing the logistics for VAN.
We hope to see you on the 26th. If you haven’t done so already, please reply to Caroline’s invitation emails.
Cheers, Bob