After some issues with making timely payments in the last few years, the Main Street Washington organization is more optimistic about the road ahead as they held a workshop with the Washington City Council last week.

City Finance Director Kelsey Brown updated the council that since fiscal year 2018 Main Street Washington has had a history of missing some monthly payments and then making a transfer at the end of the year to avoid a negative fund balance. These are reimbursement payments upon an agreement in which Main Street Executive Director Sarah Grunewaldt is technically a city employee and Main Street reimburses them the full costs of employment. Brown says that as of October 1st, the organization owes the city about $22,664, which Grunewaldt clarified that they have that amount for the city, and they are working on raising a total goal of $80,000 by the end of this fiscal year.

Board Vice President Tim Elliott told the council that they are well aware of the nonprofit’s financial struggles which have been ongoing for several years, “It has been a difficult process that what worked in the past for fundraising has been a more direct contact with each individual investor which takes a tremendous amount of time from the board. Most of us on the board have other jobs and it becomes very difficult to split all that time to do that. We have learned maybe by accident a better way to do so, fundraise, and it has been more successful this year than in years’ past.”

Information presented to the council show that the organization needs to raise $25,109 to reach their goal, which includes improving upon their communication to the public about their impact to the community, holding a strategic planning session with an outside facilitator to set goals moving forward, returning to their regular calendar of events since the pandemic, and offering monthly giving for donors, with the objective of raising $1,000 monthly by the end of 2021. Since the organization’s start in 2008, they have logged 51 business startups, relocations, or expansions, 116 net new jobs downtown, 99 building investment projects, over $16 million of private investment to the downtown, 71 buildings sold, and over 22,000 volunteer hours. In discussing city reimbursements, Grunewaldt says that they will be restarting automatic payments, and she suggested that they discuss amending their agreement language to avoid future issues during their program agreement renewal in the next month or two.