Newest Children's Museum Champion, Debbie McKenzie
Published
You may remember Debbie McKenzie from her recent blog post on how the Children's Museum of San Jose sold 639 memberships in one weekend. She's basically a development guru - and an Altru expert as well - so we're thrilled to welcome her to our Champions program. Get to know her in the interview below:
What’s your current title? How long have you been in this position? How long have you been in this field?
Development Manager, 14 years, 24.5 years in the children’s museum field, all with CDM (I've worn many different hats). Before that, professional photographer and a 11.5 year stint at Intel.
What’s your area of expertise?
Membership, major fundraising events (logistics, fundraising, board coordination and facilitation), e-communications. Altru – I’ve got the membership stuff down pretty solid (though I must admit the renewal process I think is truly complicated), mailings, web, online ticket sales, pretty good with query. I have a good understanding of Daily and Advance sales even though I don’t often use either one. I’m also good at pulling out the data for our annual audit. I’m about to become much more knowledgeable about BBMS as our accounting person will be on vacation for two weeks (someone else needs to know what to do in case of a double charge!) RE to Altru conversion J.
CDM has others who are the experts on group/camp reservations and facility rentals. – I couldn’t book a field trip if my life depended on it. We are still running parallel in our store, Altru and Retail Pro, but I am not much of an expert on either system, I’ve been out of the retail side for too long (I ran an offsite store for the Museum for several years.)
What is your favorite thing about the community?
I love how everyone is so willing to share their advice, expertise, queries, successes and failures!
What’s on your to-do list for 2015?
2015 is a huge year for CDM as we will be celebrating our 25th birthday. We’re in the early planning stages for our public celebration in early June. We also have our big fundraising dinner (Legacy for Children Award) slated to June 19th – the fundraising officially kicks off on Jan. 8th – I will be neck deep working with our Board to raise over $1.3M, let the fun begin!
Oh! And be sure to vote for CDM here. They can win $100k in advertising assistance!
What’s your current title? How long have you been in this position? How long have you been in this field?
Development Manager, 14 years, 24.5 years in the children’s museum field, all with CDM (I've worn many different hats). Before that, professional photographer and a 11.5 year stint at Intel.
What’s your area of expertise?
Membership, major fundraising events (logistics, fundraising, board coordination and facilitation), e-communications. Altru – I’ve got the membership stuff down pretty solid (though I must admit the renewal process I think is truly complicated), mailings, web, online ticket sales, pretty good with query. I have a good understanding of Daily and Advance sales even though I don’t often use either one. I’m also good at pulling out the data for our annual audit. I’m about to become much more knowledgeable about BBMS as our accounting person will be on vacation for two weeks (someone else needs to know what to do in case of a double charge!) RE to Altru conversion J.
CDM has others who are the experts on group/camp reservations and facility rentals. – I couldn’t book a field trip if my life depended on it. We are still running parallel in our store, Altru and Retail Pro, but I am not much of an expert on either system, I’ve been out of the retail side for too long (I ran an offsite store for the Museum for several years.)
What is your favorite thing about the community?
I love how everyone is so willing to share their advice, expertise, queries, successes and failures!
What’s on your to-do list for 2015?
2015 is a huge year for CDM as we will be celebrating our 25th birthday. We’re in the early planning stages for our public celebration in early June. We also have our big fundraising dinner (Legacy for Children Award) slated to June 19th – the fundraising officially kicks off on Jan. 8th – I will be neck deep working with our Board to raise over $1.3M, let the fun begin!
Oh! And be sure to vote for CDM here. They can win $100k in advertising assistance!
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01/02/2015 6:00am EST
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