Who’s the Us in Made By Us?
By Made By Us teammate, Valerie Donati
To power a better tomorrow, it’s never been more important to harness lessons from the past. History has been unevenly written and unevenly shared, but even if we never arrive at a singular “truth” or telling of our story, it is our aim to do better, to make the tent bigger, to understand a more multifaceted perspective. Made By Us is a beacon, a collective effort and guiding force that provides historical context and perspective to inspire action. We use our Medium presence as a forum for exposing more of our process, our perspectives, and the people doing the day-to-day work behind our projects.
Well, glad you asked!
Of the five senses, perhaps scent has the power to trigger memories the most. Rosewater’s delicate fragrance will always take me back to a warm, sunny afternoon spent at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello when I was eleven years old. My young, single mother was doing her best to give her children an interesting life when she could barely afford to pay the bills. I remember that day like a dream, this D.C. kid thrilled to be soaking in the pastoral landscape, letting the history of that hushed, quirky plantation manse settle in my eager imagination. It may very well be where my love of history was birthed.
Fast forward to today, where the dream has come alive for me as I lend my support, along with a small but mighty team, to the passionate leadership of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and eight additional founding partner organizations who are preparing to launch a bold experiment with a broad coalition of history and civics institutions. This collaboration could not only change the way America’s most iconic sites share resources and work together but also work to more authentically provide our nation’s younger generations with the tools they need to shape the future of our nation. True, that’s a heady proposition, but today, in order to form a more perfect union, history matters more than ever. In the service of carving out a more informed, thoughtful future, context really is king.
My involvement in what’s become Made By Us started for me in 2015. I’m a brander, and my client, AMERICAN HERITAGE® Chocolate, a Mars Wrigley brand, hosts an annual gathering of history organizations to help support their mission of education by sharing marketing best practices and strategies. The Heritage Chocolate Society was the brainchild of Forrest E. Mars, Jr., a confectionery giant and history enthusiast with an important mission: he wanted to support their mission of education and ensure that historical organizations — museums, living history sites, libraries and more — had access to valuable marketing levers, strategic insights and brainpower more readily available to big brands with big budgets.
As we dug into the challenges facing these groups, where support and advice would make the biggest difference, it became immediately obvious that for most, a growing weak spot was the evolving composition of their audiences. Their guests were largely older people. Young people were choosing other ways to spend their time, visiting history institutions was way down. The impact? The time-honored bridge that history organizations offer all of us for understanding our nation’s founding ideals, the bedrock for our country’s take on democracy, was beginning to wobble at its foundation. And the timing couldn’t have been worse. On the eve of our nation’s 250th birthday, we are facing a deepening social and philosophical divide while losing a meaningful connection to the principles upon which the U.S. was founded — equality, rights, liberty, opportunity and democracy.
What to do? Did I mention passionate? A determined group of history leaders, CEOs and presidents of some of America’s most well-known institutions decided to do something they wouldn’t ordinarily do: they got together to find a solution. It was a wake-up call that no one of them could figure out alone, and they realized that it was their problem to solve. They set out to create a coalition that can provide fact-based and multi-faceted historical resources for individuals, communities and organizations committed to preserving and re-energizing active participation in our democracy.
Their vision, if realized, would help catalyze a vibrant United States of America at 250, shaped by passionate guardians of our founding ideals — younger generations whose participation in creating our country’s future is powered by rich historical perspective.
How’s that for a big idea?
But every big idea needs a great team. The founding partners recognized they needed more organizations to be a part of this group of history leaders — the more partners across the U.S., the closer every American would be to accessing a rich and inclusive national story, from the digital and physical offerings of the network. And, from the very start, they were determined to make sure “us” included organizations of all sizes, to level the playing field for participation.
Tapping potential partners through their professional networks and the group that Mr. Mars had created, the Heritage Chocolate Society, the groundbreaking Steering Committee brought on museums and sites that included Colonial Williamsburg, Mount Vernon, Fort Ticonderoga, Conner Prairie, History Nebraska and more, all keepers of our country’s stories. And they gained access to a crash-course in bold, disruptive thinking in the early years from members of the formidable incubator that is the Civic Collaboratory, leading to input from the social impact consultancy A Hundred Years.
Simultaneously, they set out to build a hands-on, tight-knit internal team that would be focused both strategically and tactically on bringing the founding partners’ vision to life, all while balancing the diversity of thought necessary to encompass different types of organizations and scales. The core group is composed of myself, one very intense and exceptionally talented human-centered design guru (whose parents really are rocket scientists), and Made By Us’ ever-creative program manager, whose background bridges public history and civic engagement.
From developing a powerful name and logo (no small feat), to envisioning how this unique ecosystem of partners fit together, to designing the first digital experience (launching soon!), the core team has used innovation sessions and inputs from the various partners, professional networks and friends to make sure everything we do is predicated on, and embodied by, the “us.”
Now we’re at the starting line, ready to take off. As a history geek, it has been one of the coolest things I’ve ever been a part of. And while there are some bold-faced names involved, it’s the growing ’Dream Team’ behind-the-scenes — the educators, curators, social gurus, at organizations literally all across this nation — that inject Made By Us with so much expertise. While internal collaboration within their own organizations has long been an operational maxim, now the group’s partners (and the list is growing weekly!) are doing it together, within a NEW ecosystem.
With a goal as audacious as providing offerings that are timely and relevant, sharing inspiring, surprising, consequential and actionable ways to understand and shape our country’s future, you have to figure the more collaborative the team, the better. We can’t say it enough: we wholeheartedly believe there is no end to making a more perfect union. And to that end, Made By Us must and does span our nation — because you can’t tell a full U.S. history without New Mexico, without New Jersey, from Tallahassee to Missouri, and Birmingham to Cambridge — is going to bring history to younger generations in innovative and meaningful ways, so they have more fuel to power the future. And there will always be more room at the table for new voices. If you have a favorite historical society or civic organization, encourage them to join us!
Because even though we have crossed the starting line, this truly is just the beginning. And where we expect to go, what we expect to do, is full of promise and potential but won’t be complete without contribution and input from many others. Whether that is giving context to current events through a historical lens in social media, or developing a digital space for people to share their dreams for the future of the U.S., we’re developing pathways that anyone can participate in, learn from and explore. The United States truly is made by us, and it’s up to us — all of us — to make it what we want it to be.
