Our New Vision

As the Issaquah History Museums celebrate their 50th anniversary, the organization also begins an immense transition process. After 22 years of service, Erica Maniez left her position as Executive Director and moved into a new role with 4Culture. The board and staff, while disappointed to lose such an integral part of the museums and their history, view this as an opportunity to reimagine what a museum is and can be to its community.

Moving forward, the board and staff are wholly committed to remaining true to the organization’s stated values. As such, we are forming a task force in order to envision what the museums can be both internally and within our community. This task force will be composed not only of board and staff members, but community members as well. We hope to engage those we have previously partnered with, along with forging new collaborative relationships.

The museums will be pursuing the creation of a more equitable and sustainable governance and leadership structure. In its simplest terms, this means refraining from hiring an Executive Director and instead finding a new, flatter way to operate as an organization. In the spring of 2020, the museums began work to understand the part it plays in relation to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. In continued commitment to learning from and with our community, we hope to not only grow in our understanding but also work towards embodying that knowledge in our own organization.

IHM is looking for volunteer community members and organizations who want to learn and collaborate with board and staff members in order to advise and create proposals for IHM’s Board of Directors. Experience, skill, and knowledge in one or more of the following areas are requested:

Finance (budgets, fundraising and development, best practices, etc.)
Facilities (state of buildings, safety, lighting, organization, clean-out)
Archives and Collection (equitable accession policy, deaccession process and review)
Operations, Governance, Leadership (learning equitable, sustainable, and flat models, creating transparency, healthcare)
Education (community relationships and partnerships, best practices/standards for online research and education, etc.)
Technology (safety, hardware and software audit, data storage and backup, best practices)

We would love to hear from interested community members who have a commitment to the above stated ideas and our organizational values. This includes organizations as well as individuals. Please contact us if you’d like to be a part of this new vision.