Minnesota Main Streets communities have been busy this fall. From Halloween to Small Business Saturday, to December holiday events, to year-end reports, our communities have been offering unique and memorable activities for their districts. It’s easy to point to the public events and cheer. They take a lot of time, effort, and collaboration – more than you can imagine if you’ve never put a public event together. But in addition to all this merry-making is a whole other laundry list of to-dos that our programs are managing.
During the busiest event time of the year, Minnesota Main Streets directors are taking care of all the unglamorous tasks that rarely get acknowledged or noticed. As such, these are the things that are difficult to fund. Duties like finalizing reports, compiling data, putting the final touches on their 2025 budgets, evaluating everything done in 2024 while planning for 2025, and handling daily tasks like answering stakeholder questions, and running committee and board meeting are as necessary as a holiday winter market to keep a commercial district running smoothly.
The end of the year is a perfect time to reflect on not only the public facing successes, but also the day-to-day efforts by our directors. At the most recent Directors’ meeting, I asked them about their biggest success this past year and their biggest lesson. This fantastic group not only cheered each other’s successes but were also thoughtful about their own successes and how they could make them better for next year. They continually credited their committees, volunteers, sponsors, city partners, and other stakeholders before (and often instead of) taking credit for their own hard work. So I will.