The Campaign for a New Century is designed to enhance every aspect of The City Club - from ensuring outstanding programming to broadening the Club’s outreach efforts to retaining its prominent place in American history. At a time when many believe that our nation is more politically divided than ever, The City Club is proud to provide our community with a place to engage in lively, bipartisan discussion and debate. The Campaign for a New Century celebrates 100 years of City Club heritage while providing our members and friends the opportunity to ensure a second century of success.
Aside from strengthening our endowment, the Campaign for a New Century seeks to meet the following key programmatic needs:
Preserving our heritage: Creating The City Club digital archives
The stories of The City Club are those of our local and global community. Renowned world figures have shared their thoughts and experiences at our podium and their words are part of our rich history. Thousands of City Club Forums and speeches have been recorded and stored by The City Club. The City Club wishes to preserve these treasured historical recordings for generations to come. In order to do so, The City Club must properly preserve the existing recordings then digitize them to make them searchable and useful for scholars and researchers. The City Club is committed to restoring these treasures and creating a digital database of all recorded Forums and speeches. With your help, we can create a means to allow the history of The City Club to speak for itself–literally and figuratively–and to impact the knowledge of generations to come through the creation of The City Club Digital Library.
Expanding our reach: Strengthening our voice in the community and the world
While The City Club is located in the heart of the city, its reach expands beyond Cleveland and into the world. Millions of radio listeners tune in to City Club Forums each week on more than 200 stations nationwide. Efforts to expand the voice and power of The City Club include increasing our emphasis on national radio distribution, including more students in our programming, and attracting a membership that is as diverse as our community. Plans are underway to begin bringing the power of The City Club to those who don’t have the means to visit the downtown Cleveland location each week–whether they are friends in our neighboring communities or friends half the world away.
Enhance our identity: Building The City Club streetscape and creating new branded materials
Although our speakers and members are our greatest asset and our first priority, the City Club space itself is a critical part of our existence. By enhancing our space and our materials, we will impact directly the way people see The City Club. Our identity effort is key to increasing membership, increasing participation, and increasing awareness of The City Club in our community.
Building our future: Growing The City Club endowment
The City Club of Cleveland has provided four generations of Clevelanders with a place to exchange ideas and participate in America’s greatest community value – free speech. The City Club Forum Foundation has played a vital role in ensuring the viability of the club over the decades. As The City Club prepares for its 100th anniversary, it’s time to consider how we might ensure the vitality of the Club for generations to come. With this in mind, The City Club seeks to increase its endowment to $3.7 million by 2012, thereby insuring 100 more years of civic engagement.
For more information about the Campaign for a New Century please contact director of development Jessica Leary Allen at 216-621-0082 or jallen@cityclub.org.