What would you do if all of a sudden you lost your biggest customer? That’s essentially what happened to Circus World when its primary donor, the not-for-profit Great Circus Parade Inc., could no longer raise funds to hire the Baraboo, Wisconsin, museum to stage the legendary cavalcade of antique wagons in Milwaukee. “In its best years, three quarters of a million dollars flowed to the museum and it was really doing very well. That went on for 18 years,” says Ellsworth Brown, the director of the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS), who teamed with Circus World’s board chair Renee Boldt to rescue the all-things-bigtop museum during its financial crisis.

Owned by the WHS, Circus World’s 63-acre site encompasses the Ringling Bros.’ original winter quarters, a National Historic Landmark known as Ringlingville. Among the vintage buildings are a 600-foot-long train shed and an elephant house, both used by the circus until 1918 and now open for guided tours.

Famed for its splendid collection of antique wagons, research library, and summer performances under the big top, the 48-year-old repository of circus artifacts had always been operated independently by the nonprofit Circus World Museum Foundation under a lease management agreement.

Unlike the society’s nine other sites, the circus museum does not receive operating expenses from the state budget, nor does it have an endowment. By the end of 2005, Circus World had $500 in its checking account, was $300,000 in debt, and suffered a $500,000 budget shortfall. Fifteen months later, the museum has staged a turnaround that calls to mind the amazing feats associated with the circus. Since Circus World was without a director, WHS staffers stepped in to provide managerial oversight, work on budgets, and get involved with fund-raising. The museum’s board members wrote checks to cover necessary expenses, sought out donors, and worked through the issues. “There’s a lot more power in working together than working separately,” says Brown.

Focus … and Lots of Hard Work
“When you’re having financial difficulties, what you need to do is refocus on those core parts of your mission that really define who you are,” says Boldt. The cancellation of the 2006 parade forced the board to focus on what it did have: a museum with buildings on the Historic Register and a unique collection. Last year’s first order of business was preparing an exciting new performance season to let people know Circus World was still alive and would be around for a long, long time, Boldt adds.

Gui Ming Meng, a jar-balancing virtuoso whose act was a sensation at Circus World in previous years, was dispatched to China to select a troupe of acrobats to bring back to Wisconsin. “Everyone loved them, and in fact, a different troupe is coming next summer,” Boldt says. Sponsorships in the amount of $50,000 funded such activities as “Doug Terranova’s Elephant Encounters,” an interactive kids circus, and concerts on antique musical instruments. Circus World ended the season with total attendance of nearly 50,000 (slightly up from previous years) and earned revenue of more than $940,000. Says Boldt, “The momentum built to a point where everyone was feeling comfortable about the fact that the museum had stabilized and that we were going to move forward.”

More Communications
The Circus World resuscitation also required some guerilla marketing and media communications. WHS press officer Bob Granflaten sent a steady stream of news releases to the media as well as to circus organizations. The good news spread fast. Local and national media included pieces about the circus’ nationwide search for an archivist and an executive director, an announcement of the receipt of $99,600 in state building commission funds to refurbish the Hippodrome for the summer’s circus performance, and a news item about the receipt of $1.3 million to complete the rehabilitation of the Ringling Train Shed.

“In a time of crisis, instead of communicating more, people communicate less. That can be very detrimental for the turnaround,” notes Boldt. “We realized how important it was to reassure our donors, our volunteers, our guests, and the media the collection wasn’t going away; we weren’t going to close the doors; and we were going to work through this and be stronger. That’s precisely what happened.”

A Broad Base of Support
“The biggest lesson to learn is you can’t rely on one funding source, you’ve got to establish a much broader base of funding support in order to survive,” says Alicia Goehring, the society’s administrator for historic sites. Her optimism for 2007 is fueled by the commitment and drive of the board of directors and the levelheaded enthusiasm of Circus World’s dynamic new director, Steve Freese. A former state legislator and speaker pro tem, Freese has the ability to work with all types of people, and his success as a fundraiser made him the perfect candidate for the job.

“My first goal is to shore up the financial viability of the entire operation by building the visitor base and increasing the per-visitor expenditure,” says Freese, who notes flat attendance is a concern shared by other museums and historic sites. “Whatever shortfall there is, I have to raise from private donors. That’s one of the things I’ve been very successful doing with the historic preservation projects I’ve been involved with, and my own personal campaigns.”

Freese points to the $2.7 million he raised for Wisconsin’s Potosi Brewery Foundation as an example of what he aims to achieve for Circus World. Yet he says he’s not a miracle worker: “It’s just that I do the research, understanding who the prospect is that is potentially a giver, and that’s given to you by the members of the foundation you work for. They know who in their community has a capacity to give. Sometimes it’s a very short cultivation and sometimes it’s a very long cultivation. You really need to judge based on the person you’re working with what their needs are.”

Brown notes over the past year, the Wisconsin Historic Foundation Inc., a 501c3, has served as the fund-raising arm for Circus World as well as the historical society. While the majority of contributions come from Wisconsin, Circus World does have major donors from Florida, Ohio, and other states. “Some are friends of the family, some are circus buffs,” says Brown. “We really have tried to open up the national market in fund-raising … we’ve been successful.” Last year, the circus’ efforts brought in more than $635,000 in contributions, sponsorships, and grants. A department of commerce grant for Baraboo waterfront revitalization gave the museum $100,000 per year for two years, which is being used for operating costs. “It was lucky, and we’re pressing for ongoing state support in that sum or higher,” says Brown, who notes the museum has been able to meet its payroll, catch up on its debts and expenses, and continues to meet its budget for expenses. “We have a line of credit that we’ve been able to pay down, so the debt is two-thirds of what it was.”

Wisconsin Historical Society: eBay ‘PowerSeller’? Circus Images (112), Tall-Tale Postcards (79), and International Harvester (5,451) are just a few of the categories in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s eBay store (http://stores.ebay.com/WHS-Images). The 11” X 14” high-resolution giclée print reproductions from the society’s visual materials archive sell for the “Buy It Now” price of $15 and are also available on the society’s web site (www.wisconsinhistory.org). “We have 25,000 photographs digitally scanned and an endless supply of images in our collection. It’s proven to be a very successful venue,” says Ellsworth Brown, the society’s director. “As soon as we can get the scanning done, I think you’re going to see Circus World materials on there, too.” The eBay store launched in February 2006 and within a few months had generated enough sales—a minimum of $1,000 a month—to earn the popular auction site’s “PowerSeller” status. Andy Kraushaar, Visual Materials Curator in the WHS Library-Archives, first got the idea when he noticed a seller who had as many as 20,000 historical images from the Library of Congress and other archives up for auction on eBay. “What’s really terrific is we can extract the information directly out of our database and then upload to our eBay store, so we don’t have to carefully fill out a form for each item,” Kraushaar notes. Even with more than 6,000 items currently up for sale, he believes “we’re just at the beginning of it all.”

Re-Imagine, Re-Position
Over the past several years, museums and theme parks have taken a page from each other’s operating manuals in order to offer one-of-a-kind experiences and ultimately draw in more guests. Circus World, as a nonprofit museum, is experiencing the same transformation, as it is continually learning from the theme park world.

“We are in a tourist area and so we need to operate somewhat like an attraction,” Dave SaLoutos, Circus World’s performance director, says of Baraboo, which is 15 miles south of the Wisconsin Dells. “We have 63 acres and plenty of space to do a lot of different things. Yet the reason we exist is because we are a museum of the American circus and so there will always be some exhibit components.”

Goehring, who attended seminars at IAAPA Attractions Expo to learn more about maintaining the right combination of education and entertainment, explains the organization is in the process of what she calls “re-imagining and re-positioning” Wisconsin’s Historic Sites: “What we are looking to do is create meaningful and relevant experiences that people take home with them and never forget. We have to make the experience much more engaging.”

Ringlingville, where the Ringling Bros. began their traveling show in 1884, is a nascent market for heritage tourism and a venue Circus World believes can be a new market for the Baby Boomer crowd. “We do know that empty nesters are the Wisconsin Historic Sites’ single largest audience, followed by families with young children,” says Brown. “Surprisingly, at the Old World Wisconsin and Villa Louis sites, we have a very strong shoulder season in the spring, but also in the fall after Labor Day. It’s building because it’s a factor of the Boomer demographics. We need to figure out how to do a better job of marketing to them.”

More adaptations includes Freese’s short-term goals of developing a strategy to work with the hospitality industry, re-engaging volunteers to enhance the visitor experience, and reintroducing the circus to Wisconsin’s kids by developing a curriculum for fourth-grade history programs.

“When I grew up, every summer I had the opportunity to see the circus with my family. That’s almost nonexistent in a lot of communities in Wisconsin today,” says Freese, who notes Ringling Bros. is among 56 circuses founded or headquartered in the state. “We have an incredible opportunity to entice people to come and see their heritage by getting kids talking about the circus again, why it’s fun, and why people gravitated to see it every year.”

One of the first questions Wisconsin media asked Freese was if he was going to bring back the parade, which is currently on hiatus. “Well, that would absolutely wonderful if it weren’t for a small $1.7 fund-raising issue,” he says. “I have to shore up the financial viability of the entire operation before I can go in that direction.”

In the meantime the CWM board has brainstormed a way to bring its parade to a national audience while the flagship event is being reworked. Circus World has loaned individual wagons to other parades, including the nearby Appleton’s Flag Day Parade and Phoenix, Arizona’s Fiesta Bowl Parade, helping to spread the word that Circus World is alive and well and has come to town for a day.