HEARTS Affiliate Services
HEARTS delivers creative, robust, and results-driven support for the achievement of our Affiliates’ strategic missions and goals.
In May 2024, HEARTS Collaborative Inc. (HEARTS) was granted IRS 501(c)3 status as a comprehensive umbrella non-profit designed to connect and enhance history, ecology, and/or arts-related organizations, while encouraging community engagement and bringing new life to historic sites.
Just as every historic site is unique, HEARTS offers customizable services to the community to help historic property owners, non-profits, and organizations. Affiliate services range from helping with one specific project goal to full operational management.
Whatever the goals are, we’ll create a feasible plan for sustainable solutions. HEARTS believes greater historic preservation and safeguarding through financial sustainability is attainable with strategic planning and oversight.
Our region has an incredibly vast and diverse cultural and natural history. This history is made up of many special places - some with stories we know, some with stories lost, and some with stories still being discovered and shared. Many of these historic sites have huge potential to reach much wider audiences to share this history, as well as to support ongoing preservation and public programming. Each of these special places benefits from collaboration to achieve measurable benefits to both the sites and the community.
HEARTS Collaborative is here to help and extends an invitation to connect. We look forward to hearing from you to help further preserve and share the important history, nature, and art in our region.
Our Path to Site Sustainability
Step One: Seek to Understand
HEARTS takes the time to understand the uniqueness of the site or organization and its place-based potential. Conducting research and collecting input from stakeholders, the goals of the Affiliate become HEARTS’ goals, too. Whatever the level of assistance the Affiliate is seeking, from support for a specific pressing need to providing full operational management, HEARTS stands at the ready with a collaborative team of dedicated professionals. Understanding the needs of the affiliate is the most important step to successfully reaching goals together.
Step Two: Design the Plan
Tapping into the power of place to optimize facilities usage, HEARTS works collaboratively with local partners whenever possible to develop a plan for future feasibility and sustainability. Incorporating proven strategies for operational management and economies of scale, HEARTS will design a plan that includes managing staff and volunteers, organizing events, fundraising campaign planning, systems and technology improvement, social media and other online marketing, and much more based on the needs and goals of the Affiliate site or organization.
Step Three: Implementation
Using the detailed plan approved by site or organization stakeholders, HEARTS activates its collaborative partners and other local resources to bring the Affiliates’ vision to life.
Two Examples of How HEARTS Helps
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Historic Hugh Torance House and Store
The oldest standing store in NC (c.1779) was lovingly preserved decades ago by the community and has been operated by dedicated volunteers ever since. Struggling to keep the store open and repairs made, HEARTS brought new energy to share the site’s incredible history with more visitors. Through the implementation of HEARTS’ mission and operational management, visitors went from 200 annually to more than 3000 in 2025, with funds raised for ongoing preservation projects at the historic non-profit site.
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Smithville Community Coalition
HEARTS collaborates with the Smithville Community Coalition, the non-profit leading Smithville’s Revitalization efforts to protect and preserve important cultural and architectural history in this historic African American community in Cornelius, NC. HEARTS is working on a new plan for the Smithville Rosenwald School and a new historic landmark within Smithville. More details coming soon!
HEARTS works directly with its Affiliate Members for customized solutions that best serve the Affiliates’ mission and goals. This may be a one-time project, full administrative oversight, or anything in between that will assist in achieving the Affiliate’s goals by efficiently enabling:
Financial sustainability through measurable growth in community awareness, financial outcomes, and operational goal achievement.
Creative programming that draws new and repeat guests through curated place-based community engagement events.
Facilitating school field trips, public and private group tours, community service opportunities, internships and apprenticeships, facility rentals, and more.
Access to resources such as guidebooks, videos, podcasts, lectures, workshops, best practices, funding, tax credits, preservation and conservation easements, and to regional, state, and federal programs.
HEARTS Can Help
Strategic goal planning, implementation, and supervision.
Nonprofit legal entity determination and filings.
Conservation, preservation, and restoration initiatives, resources, implementation, and management.
Bookkeeping and other back-office financial services.
Site and facilities management.
Staff and/or volunteer recruitment, training, and supervision management.
General fundraising and donation management.
Sponsorship solicitation and sponsor benefit management.
Membership, newsletter, blog, etc. development and maintenance.
Grantwriting and grant cycle tracking for preservation, education, exploration, program development, etc.
Historical or ecological preservation easement application and supervision.
Distribution of federal and/or state funds to support community preservation needs.
Nonprofit or site program development and management.
Special event planning and organization.
Centralized event scheduling to achieve efficiencies with participants, vendors, sponsors, and public safety resources.
Business and administrative technology management.
Public relations, marketing, and advertising initiative development, implementation, and management.
Digital, social media, and other web currency platform management including QR codes, photographic, video, audio, and information content.
Access to research, documentation, and the HEARTS Artifact Database.
Inclusion on the HEARTS website, a centralized searchable public platform, with a featured subpage that includes information and graphic content as well as links to direct domains, social media pages, and other publicly accessible Affiliate Member information.
Discover how HEARTS can assist your historic site or organization with reaching its strategic missions and goals!
HEARTS Definitions:
Affiliates – Organizations, historical buildings, properties, or sites qualified to receive and utilize HEARTS services through our own administrative staff and our collaborative networks.
Collections – Featured HEARTS-related organizations, people, places, and pieces of the Catawba Valley region.
Members– Individuals and businesses who join HEARTS Circle to support the HEARTS mission and vision, our programming, and our continued outreach to help save and share the special local places in our region.
Contributors– Anyone providing professional advisory and/or technical assistance to HEARTS by participating in our research initiatives, facilitating our Affiliate services, and/or through our HEARTS event programming.