While Nancy Carpenter’s tenure as CEO of the Columbus-Lowndes Conventions and Visitors Bureau will end March 30, she will remain the leader of the Columbus Cultural Heritage Foundation.
Carpenter announced the move Thursday at the Columbus Exchange Club’s meeting at Lion Hills Center, saying she was selected for the role in late October. CCHF assists with the annual Pilgrimage and oversees operations at the Tennessee Williams Home and Welcome Center.
“You can’t keep a good woman down,” Carpenter said of the move.
Her salary to lead CCHF is $19,000 per year, Carpenter said Thursday, and has already become effective. The CVB will pay her $55,278 for her role as CEO through the end of that contract.
Carpenter has led the CVB and CCHF since 2011, working mostly under three-year contracts with separate salaries for those roles. In October 2022, the CVB board — then overseeing both organizations — gave Carpenter a one-year contract at just the CVB salary, making her CCHF work essentially volunteer.
CVB and CCHF split in March, with a separate board now governing each. The CVB board in September renewed Carpenter’s contract for six months, and Carpenter announced Nov. 1 she would be leaving the organization at the end of her contract.
CVB provided the Heritage Foundation about $102,000 for the current fiscal year.
CCHF Board President Brenda Willis told The Dispatch Carpenter felt like a good fit for the nonprofit’s CEO role.
“She is a great pick for the job and we are excited to have her,” Willis said.
Carpenter said before she leaves CVB, she hopes to continue fundraising efforts to restore and convert the Elk’s Lodge building on Main Street into a children’s museum.
CVB took out a $450,000 loan to purchase the Main Street property in 2015, hoping to convert it to a children’s museum. A year later, Carpenter estimated the museum project would cost between $3.5 million and $5 million. The building restoration alone would make up $700,000 of that.
Carpenter said she is now preparing to present the CVB board with updated cost estimates for the project, as well as a list of potential funding sources.
“My goal will be to present not only the monetary goals but what changes need to be made at the building as well,” Carpenter said. “All of this was presented in 2017. So there have been some changes since then. So, I will present to the board those changes once I have something valid to present to them. It may be at our December meeting.”
She said she has already spoken to a few local business people in Columbus interested in donating to the project, but she declined to disclose any further details.
Carpenter added her other goal while still at CVB is to increase its online presence and improve how it interacts on social media and its website to spread awareness about tourism events around Columbus.
“We want to upgrade and do a better job at marketing our events (on social media) and doing a better job of bringing everybody together and improving some of the things about our website,” she said. “We know that it’s difficult at times to maneuver the website.”
Once she transitions to working for CCHF full-time, Carpenter said her biggest priority will be future restoration efforts at the Tennessee Williams Home and Welcome Center on Main Street, which needs about $290,000 of work.
Renovations will include improvements on wooden flooring on the porch, interior and stairs, siding and the house’s facade. She hopes to obtain grants for the project sometime in 2024 through the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
“We’re just trying to upgrade it, not update it,” Carpenter said. “When you’ve got 10,000 people, or even if you’ve got 5,000 people, coming in through that house on a regular basis, you have to be ready to restore it every few years and because of some unforeseen events like the (COVID-19 pandemic) and funding issues, we were not able to do that regularly.”
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 40 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.