Rolling on the River
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It’s the nature of annual reports to be out of date by the time they’re issued. The one the Chicago Architecture Foundation is expecting back from the printer this month–for the year that ended in December 2002–reflects the double whammy of 9/11 and the stock market drop. Just two months before the World Trade Center attacks, CAF had opened a major expansion of its quarters on South Michigan Avenue, adding about 50 percent to the size of its gift shop and a separate visitor’s center and gallery to the space it had occupied for a decade. Like many other organizations coming out of the cash-drenched 90s, it had become used to robust growth, says Bastiaan Bouma, vice president of marketing and tours. Then, suddenly, tourists disappeared, money from financially squeezed donors became scarce, and gift shop revenues dropped. Last fall CAF laid off a dozen members of its full-time staff–about a 20 percent cut–even as the tourists were coming back. “We clawed our way back a bit,” Bouma says of 2002. Total revenues were $6.5 million, total expenses $6.8 million. But this year business is robust once again. By the end of 2003, Bouma projects, 175,000 people will have taken CAF tours, led by its army of 425 rigorously trained volunteer docents. The hope is that increased tour revenue, a push for more corporate memberships, and “remerchandising” in the shop, along with the leaner administration, will make up for any continued doldrums in donations.
About 115,000 of the folks taking CAF tours this year will opt for the river cruise. As Osmond notes in a recent member’s newsletter, there’s competition for that business now: “Success always inspires imitation.” But Bouma says CAF retains the lion’s share of the business by offering reasonable prices (walking tours start at $5; the river cruise is $23 to $25), limited group sizes for the walking tours, and something no commercial operator has–the passion of its volunteers. Docents have their own elected council and committees (including a standards committee that serves a self-policing function, easing out guides who may not be up to par) and handle all new-docent education. The 70 accepted each year (from a pool of applicants that’s usually at least double that number) commit to ten weeks of training that involves one full day of classes and as much as 10 to 20 hours of homework each week before they give their own test tour and–if they meet the standard–are certified. After that they give at least 39 hours of tours the first year and 30 hours each subsequent year. New tour ideas are generated by the docents, who also write the narratives. The resulting numbers are eye-popping: this year CAF docents will put in nearly 30,000 volunteer hours on a roster of 78 different tours, leading 7,300 individual tour departures. Open houses for prospective docents will be held Saturday, September 6, at 1 PM and Thursday, September 11, at 6 PM at the ArchiCenter, 225 S. Michigan.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Bruce Powell.
