As publicity and turmoil swirled around the Society, the immediate challenge for the board of trustees was to introduce some measure of stability to the institu­tion. The trustees' first step was to assemble a blue-ribbon advisory committee. This committee, chaired by John Macomber, the former chairman and CEO of Celanese Corporation, was officially created on August 10, 1988, and was com­posed of a stellar group of professionals representing a wide spectrum of back­grounds and experiences.^[110] The second step was convincing Barbara Debs to come back to the Society and serve as its interim director. Debs had established a rep­utation for financial acumen^[111] during her tenure as president of Manhattanville College from 1975 through 1985 and had served on the Society's board from Sep­tember 1985 until November 1987, chairing several committees. With a proven track record leading a nonprofit institution, a Ph.D. in art history, and a famil­iarity with the difficulties the Society had to confront, Debs was a strong candi­date to guide the Society through its difficult transition.

Barbara Debs accepted the board's invitation to serve as the Society's interim director, although she specifically requested that she not be considered for the per­manent position. She was happy in retirement and had no desire to resume the full-time responsibilities of a permanent chief executive.^[112] Because the Society had been operating in a state of crisis for quite some time, her first task was to provide the leadership necessary to hold the staff together and repair an administrative structure that had broken down during the Society's period of crisis. In a report presented to the board in September 1988, Debs outlined the immediate goals the Society faced and the progress that had been made. Within the institution, Debs and her staff had worked to establish staff reporting processes, had hired a chief financial officer to develop a fiscally sound operating budget, and had begun to assess the Society's organizational structure. Externally, Debs worked to restore public faith in the institution, meeting with important potential donors, govern­ment officials, neighborhood residents, and local community groups. In addition, Debs oversaw the Society's communications with the New York State attorney general's office, which was proceeding with its investigation into nearly all aspects of the Society's operations.

What made these tasks more difficult was the uncertainty that prevailed regarding the Society's long-term future. The advisory committee's charge was to address all options including reorganization, merger, and even dissolution if nec­essary. Debs and her staff had to coordinate their efforts with the evolving opin­ions of the committee so that steps taken would not conflict with the committee's final recommendations.

As Debs worked to establish administrative stability, the board also acted, once again taking steps to improve its governance structure and to increase its capacity to provide financial support. In November 1988, at the prompting of the advisory committee, the board approved several changes to its by-laws, some of which reversed changes that had been made during the latter part of the Bell adminis­tration. The board increased its maximum allowable membership from twenty-nine to fifty. The director's position was renamed president and was invested with all the powers of a chief executive officer, including ex officio status on the board of trustees. The title of president was changed to chairman of the board. A process of systematic rotation and evaluation of trustee performance was established and was to be administered by a new committee on trustees. Other new committees established were a development committee; a finance committee; a joint sub­committee on development, planning, and finance; and a collections committee with three subcommittees: exhibitions and interpretation, conservation and preser­vation, and collections management.^[113]

By the latter part of 1988, circumstances had improved. The board had ap­proved the sale of real estate that the Society owned on Forty-Second Street for $1.7 million. Unlike the Peck bequest, the Society's board treated this one-time inflow as capital, adding it to the unrestricted endowment.

An article in the New York Times discussed some of the "small but surely mean­ingful" changes occurring at the Society. It said, "Most remarkably, the Society, which for its 184-year history has been run largely like a private institution, shun­ning contact with city and neighborhood groups, is now eagerly soliciting advice, help and friendship from those groups."^[114] In October, the inaugural His­tory Makers' Gala, which honored Paul Volcker, netted the Society nearly $400,000. In addition, public attention on the Society's financial difficulties dur­ing the summer had helped increase private contributions, especially from trustees. By November, the trustees had contributed nearly $1 million, with six trustees giving $100,000 or more. Although only time would tell whether such levels of giving were sustainable, the increases reduced the projected operating deficit and seemed to indicate that the Society was moving in the right direction.

By the end of November, public opinion had shifted in the Society's favor. An article in the New York Times trumpeted the improving situation. Discussing the Society's $2 million deficit, John Macomber said, "There would be no cred­ibility for this institution if the trustees didn't raise the $2 million, which we think is a lead-pipe cinch. . . . The trustees have responded very well."^[115] Staff members spoke of the positive impact that Debs was having on the institution. Holly Hotchner, the director of the Society's painting conservation department, said, "All these years can't be turned around in a few months. But every correct step that can be taken, at this point, is being taken. Every hard question is being asked." Comparing staff morale under Debs with the situation under Bell, Karen Buck, the Society's assistant director of development, said that "it's the difference between night and day."

Programmatically speaking, Debs had galvanized her staff behind the goal of protecting the collections, which was not surprising given the nature of the pub­licity that led to the resignation of the Society's previous administration. In January, the Society announced the opening of two separate conservation labo­ratories, one for books and one for paper and manuscripts. In an article announcing the opening of the two new labs, Debs spoke about the importance of preserving the collections: "Conservation is our top priority. . . . Our collec­tions have to be restored so that they can be accessible to the public."^[116]

Working with the advisory committee during this period, Debs and her staff developed a long-term financial and programmatic plan for the Society, which was first brought to the trustees for discussion in January 1989. It should be pointed out that the first steps in this planning process had been carried out by the advi­sory committee. Options that had been rejected by the committee included the possibility of selling or otherwise divesting either the library or the museum, merg­ing with another institution, liquidation, and relocation to less expensive facilities. The committee had determined that saving the Society in something close to its present form was important. In addition, the committee was working on a new mission statement for the Society that would be "re-directed in emphasis, somewhat restricted in content, but not essentially different in kind" and had determined that the Society should remain in New York City in its present building.

Having determined these initial variables, the Society constructed what came to be known as the "bridge plan." It detailed the steps along a three-year path that would lead to institutional stability for the Society.

The bridge plan was, in a word, ambitious. The Society's stated goal was to be "a premier resource for the study and teaching of all aspects of the history of New York City, New York State and the early United States represented in our collections." Emanating from the revised mission statement and opinions expressed by the advisory committee, "the basic premise of the plan [was] that every aspect of the Society [was] considered a part of the whole, that the approach to plan­ning and programs must be comprehensive, and that every activity will be both multipurpose and multifaceted." To be successful, both the staff and the board agreed that the Society had to address three major priorities in its plan: "(1) to gain better control of its collections through comprehensive programs of con­servation, preservation, collections maintenance and management; (2) to more than double its public programming, which entails a reduced schedule of exhi­bitions but renovation of permanent galleries with installations that would demon­strate the Society's new mission; and (3) to raise $10 million in bridge financing to stabilize the Society's financial structure, support the foregoing goals, and enable the implementation of a critical $25 million endowment campaign." The basic elements of the plan were commendable; however, a closer look at the details reveals the enormous challenge that lay ahead if the bridge plan was to succeed.

A descriptive example of part of the plan best illustrates the point. Work on the collections, one of the three elements of the plan, included a listing of twenty-three separate action items. Each of these items represented substantial invest­ments in staff time, capital improvements, or both. The twenty-three items were broken down into three sections: conservation, cataloging, and collections re­finement. Listed here are the nine items associated with conservation of the col­lections:

The ambitious nature of the goals was not limited to conservation; listings showed similar objectives for cataloging and collections management. For exam­ple, in cataloging, it was deemed important to "develop a single data base for all collections; data base to be able to receive visual information." Other objectives in­cluded completing an inventory of object collections, cataloging the library col­lections, restructuring and strengthening the museum department, and reviewing and adopting a space plan for new study/storage locations. Goals for refining the collections included a review of "all collections in light of mission statement" and development of a plan for reshaping the collections through deaccessioning and selective acquisitions.

These goals represented only one-third of the plan. The objectives for im­proving the Society's programs and financial reporting systems were similarly exhaustive and comprehensive. The point of recounting this plan in such detail is not to debate the merits of specific items but rather to show the magnitude of the task the Society was setting for itself. Any one of the components of the plan would have been challenging; to pursue them all simultaneously was a monumental undertaking.

Of course, the important question was, how was the Society going to pay for these initiatives? Table 6.1 shows the projected operating expenses and rev­enues for 1989-1992, the period of the bridge plan. The total operating budget was to begin at $6.5 million and increase at a rate of 5 percent per year. Given the challenging and comprehensive nature of the Society's operating plan, there is some question whether it would be possible to limit expenditures to that level and growth rate; however, even if operating outlays were held to $6.5 million, the Society would require very high levels of contributed income in order to bal­ance the budget. Such a significant undertaking would require complete com­mitment of die Society's board of trustees.

Revenues to pay for this expenditure base were to come from four sources: fundraising, investment income, earned income, and public support. Because the Society's unrestricted endowment was small, investment income would cover a small part of the total ($900,000, or 14 percent, in 1990). With attendance averaging just 45,000 between 1986 and 1989, earned income could not play a dominant role either ($1 million, or 15 percent). Public funding, which would in­clude government grants as well as direct operating support from the city and state, was budgeted at $800,000 in 1990, $900,000 in 1991, and $1,250,000 in 1992. Of course, this income was not at all assured and represented a key element of the plan. Regular public appropriations, even if they were relatively small, would send an important signal to private contributors about the Society's future. The rest of the operating budget was to be covered by fundraising of various kinds, all of which was subject to significant risk. The bridge funding, to be raised from a consortium of private foundations, was projected to amount to a total of $10 mil­lion, or $3.3 million per year (51 percent of all private fundraising in 1990). Trustee giving was budgeted at $1.1 million, $1.2 million, and $1.5 million for the three years. Individual, other foundation, and corporate giving was budgeted at a total of $1.7 million, $1.9 million, and $2.25 million.

TABLE 6.1. BRIDGE PLAN PROJECTIONS, 1989-1992 (THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, FISCAL YEAR ENDING JUNE 30).

Source: New-York Historical Society records.

On top of this operating support, the Society also intended to launch a cap­ital campaign to raise $5 million per year during the bridge period. If all of the pieces were to fall into place, by June 1992, the Society would have an unrestricted endowment of approximately $28 million and a restricted endowment of $14 mil­lion, a sound base from which to begin a second phase of its long-term plan.^[117]

The Society and its staff continued to take major steps forward, even before the advisory committee had issued its report. During early 1989, Debs and her staff successfully negotiated two contracts with unions representing Society work­ers, reorganized the administration into four departments (museum, library, external affairs, and finance and administration), restructured the public pro­gramming and installation planning to ensure that the programs and galleries re­flected the new mission in a unified way, and secured the support of Community Board 7 of the Upper West Side, the community group that had been most vocal in opposing the Society in its effort to develop its real estate in the mid 1980s.

One aspect of Debs's reorganization that would have a lasting impact con­cerned how responsibility for management of the collections would be divided between the museum and the library. Specifically, responsibility for management of the prints, photographs, and architectural drawings was shifted from the library to the museum. Unlike the extensive discussion on the topic that had taken place at the trustee level during the early 1970s, when this step was discussed and re­jected, this time the action was an administrative decision. In the opinion of many members of the Society's professional staff, the prints, photos, and architectural drawings had been neglected by the library. Debs believed that the leadership in the museum was better qualified to make use of these collections. She did not regard her decision to move the collections to the museum as a permanent step; in fact, she thought the prints, photos, and drawings would eventually be relocated to their own