The Juneau Arts and Humanities Council has had new leadership for a few months now, and that has come with some changes.
Maggie McMillan joined the arts agency as executive director in December. The JAHC’s operations manager retired shortly before that, so McMillan took over finances as well. She stepped into both roles at a time when arts organizations across the country are losing long-standing grants due to the Trump administration’s sweeping federal funding cuts.
McMillan said getting up to date on the organization’s operations and finances has been overwhelming at times.
“It’s been like drinking out of a fire hose,” she said. “Every other week, I switch between being an operations manager or an executive director, but the staff here fills my cup.”
Prior to leading the JAHC, McMillan was director of the Juneau Chamber of Commerce for three years, and worked in donor relations at the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.
Financial stability is vital for the JAHC at this moment, between funding losses on the federal and local level. McMillan also referred to inefficiencies she’s found in the JAHC’s finances.
“I wonder if that has, you know, affected our ability to have very clear and transparent books that are easy to read right now,” she said. “I do have a team of people working on it, helping us make it so we start our next fiscal year in a really great place.”
McMillan has already made some changes to stabilize the organization’s finances, she said. One is reducing a full-time education director position to part time at the end of the month. She says the grant that funded that role from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies has ended.
The JAHC’s education director coordinates a program that pays for students to attend local dance and theater performances, a program that brings artists to schools and Poetry Out Loud. McMillan said the organization is seeking other funding sources and collaborations so it can continue to provide those programs to youth in Juneau.
The JAHC has also closed the Lobby Shop in Centennial Hall, though the Davis Gallery will still have regular art showings. McMillan said the shop is redundant with the one inside the Juneau Arts and Culture Center, just across the parking lot. Closing the shop inside Centennial means ending four part-time positions.
Though she said each of those employees had been working about two shifts a month, those calls were still hard to make. But McMillan said that’s why she was hired — to make tough financial decisions.
“I’m good at numbers, and so for me to come in and have like this 10,000-foot view and look down and go, ‘Okay, these numbers don’t make sense,’” she said. “So what do we do to keep as many people employed, but also stabilize our organization and also make smart decisions for a 54-year-old organization that wants to stay around for another 54 years?”
McMillan said the JAHC is planning a fundraising event in August — a two-day summer arts festival with music, performances, and, of course, art.