Since the beginning of 2023, I have been proposing to a variety of history-oriented organizations in Omaha to let me lead a citywide history movement. Unfortunately, I’ve had no takers, and now it’s time to bring this idea to the masses.

As you might know, for more than a decade now I’ve been voluntarily working to build love and appreciation for Omaha’s history among the public. Starting more than 300 articles for Wikipedia, I have also created hundreds of articles for NorthOmahaHistory.com, recorded 100 shows for the North Omaha History Podcast, written six books about the city’s history, and cultivated two Facebook groups with more than 120,000 members. The North Omaha History social media now has more than 12,000 followers.

In the intervening years, other people have come and gone too. Right now, businesses are being built based on Omaha’s history, and the city’s nonprofit sector continues to grow Omaha’s interest in history. There is emerging interest in high schools and higher education for teaching history, and the region’s tourism industry is paying attention to what could happen. The City of Omaha, the State of Nebraska and several other government agencies are seeing the potential of history for economic development, culture building, community empowerment and civic engagement. However, oftentimes the left hand isn’t talking to the right hand and what happens ends up in unneeded replication, unnecessary gaps and unresolved conflicts.

The city deserves more than this happenstance approach.

I want to facilitate a regional approach to building the Omaha History Movement, bigger, better and more effective than ever before. I have the practical experience, the purposeful knowledge and the bold determination to this Omaha can do this, and much more, if we work together.

Following is my case. If you have any ideas, want to collaborate or provide support, or otherwise want to be involved let me know!

The Challenges Faced

1. History is being parceled out to the lowest common denominator. Everyone is holding out for their own—buildings, society, white people, religion—and people aren’t working together.
2. Omaha’s history is being demolished because of neglect, denial and a lack of willpower from the absence of effort—but not of public interest
3. Public interest has swollen as evidenced by the 1,000,000-plus social media followers in various groups, following pages and otherwise contributing to the conversation
4. There is no movement that captures the public interest and leverages that with imagination to sustain and succeed in preserving Omaha’s historic built environment
5. Currently, no other organization is capable or apparently has the interest in doing that
6. There is a gaping space in the public arena requiring a leadership organization to step forward to facilitate a historic preservation movement in Omaha

There is a way to leverage the public interest in Omaha’s history against the forces that would seemingly wantonly demolish it. The past experiences of Omaha’s history efforts have shown that while a single campaign, project or program was appropriate to addressing simple or only somewhat complicated problems, there needs to be something more substantial to truly preserve the past in Omaha. 

Traditional, isolated approaches to address historic preservation in Omaha have led to:

• Funders selecting individual grantees
• Organizations seeking to preserve history working separately and often compete against each for funding
• Evaluation is structured to isolate a particular organization’s impact to show progress
• Large-scale preservation is assumed to depend upon leveraging individual influence, individual donations, and scaling individual organizations or interventions
• Corporate and public sectors are not heavily involved in historic preservation

Building an Omaha History Movement

Omaha needs a movement to preserve, protect and promote its history, and the right organization needs to facilitate it. Following is a process I am prepared to lead towards creating and sustaining this movement. This isn’t intended as a prescription though, and it needs to be adapted further.

To implement this collective impact effort, Omaha needs history-oriented organizations citywide to move away from the traditional, more isolated ways that we have attempted to use to solve problems.

I propose a sophisticated approach to solving the complex problems facing historic preservation in the Omaha metro area today, including places, people and events that affect every aspect of the larger community today. This approach is a research-driven international model called collective impact.

Collective impact is a collaboration framework that engages across sectors and groups who share a common interest to address a complex social issue, in a given community.

Through this collective impact, every Omahan will be able to identify, join and participate in the Omaha History Movement, including youth, elders and others; people of color; professionals; low-income people; elected officials and civic planners; academics and historians; and all others.

A Vision for the Omaha History Movement

Every Omahan feels engaged in preserving any part of the built, shared, unique and lived experiences throughout the entirety of the city and its history.  The values of this movement include…

• Share the full Omaha story 
• Support personal connections to the Omaha metro 
• Advance racial equity and social justice 
• Build healthy communities throughout the metro 
• Save sites for future generations 
• Preserve places of architectural richness and beauty 
• Bolster local economic development 
• Mitigate displacement and support equitable revitalization 

Elements of this Movement

• MAP: Conduct a thorough mapping and relationship building process. Focusing on the entire history community in the Omaha metro with all of its disparate elements, this would include more than 100 such organizations in the city. 
• UNITE: Create a strong backbone. The Omaha History Movement will include a team dedicated to aligning and coordinating the work of the entire group, eventually including dedicated and sustained funding to ensure long-term impact and outcomes.
• AGENDA: Establish a common agenda among this community. A common agenda means coming together to collectively define the common problem everyone faces and then create a shared vision to solve it. The movement will have a clear strategy to guide clear commitment by each organization involved.
• MEASURE: Develop shared measurements among organizations. Partner with higher education and professional allies to create the measurement with organizations to ensure successful usage. This measurement will allow everyone to rack progress in the same way and allow for continuous learning and mutual accountability.
• SUPPORT: Foster mutually reinforcing activities. Integrating the organizations’ many different activities to maximize the end result, this process would establish the Omaha History Movement as the hub of activity throughout the entire city, reinforce its identity, then secure and sustain its role as the convenor. 
• ACTION: Encourage continuous action. Trust building and strengthening relationships will happen in person, online, print, video and other forms of outreach. Additionally, it means constant presence throughout the history community and beyond, advocating and activating for substantial action, and constantly sustaining that presence.
• SUSTAIN: Strive for sustained momentum. Creating ongoing opportunities for movement building, community nurturing and sustained funding and support. The movement will maintain the right size needed according to its usage, success and demand. Ultimately the movement will support, build upon and sustain the emergent pro-preservation culture in Omaha today and use the appropriate structures to maintain that culture.

Omaha History Movement in Action

• Constantly building community and foster connections.
• Foster equity and belonging in everything we do.
• Ground the work in data and context, and target solutions.
• Focus on systems change, in addition to programs and services.
• Shift power within the Movement.
• Listen to, act with and engage the larger community by example.
• Role model the changes we want to see.

Potential Partners in this Movement

The potential partners in this movement will understand successful historic preservation in Omaha arises from many organizations partnering within a larger movement and they will actively coordinate their actions and share lessons learned. Citywide progress in this movement depends on working toward the same goal and measuring the same things. Research and practice across the country and beyond show that large-scale preservation depends on increasing cross-sector alignment and learning among many organizations.

Countless individuals can be involved as partners in the Omaha History Movement. This includes history fans, advocates and professionals. Educators, researchers, analysts, planners and preservationists can all have a seat. Young people — including children and youth — are essential to forming and sustaining this movement, as well as elders of all stripes. Parents and families, single people and others will have a place in the movement, too. One of the most important aspects of the Omaha History Movement is that it will be inclusive, featuring everyone’s history including Omaha’s Black history, the American Indian history of the region, Latine/Hispanic history and eastern European history, along with LGBTTQQI+ people, low-income peoples’ history and other histories, too.

In the Omaha History Movement, potential organizational partners include…

• History-oriented nonprofits
• History-oriented museums
• Educational institutions, organizations and programs
• Corporate sector, including business and industry
• Public sector, including local/state/federal government agencies
• Ethnic/cultural groups
• Funders, including donors and foundations
• Tourism
• Neighborhood associations
• Faith communities
• Community-based nonprofits
• Cemeteries and funeral homes

The Outcomes of this Movement

• Establish and maintain a movement that fosters a citywide culture of authentic partnership focused on successful historic preservation
• Successfully preserve Omaha’s historic built environment, historic places, memories of events and legacies of people throughout the history of the city
• Secure systematic changes that ensure sustained historic preservation throughout the Omaha metro

After more than a decade of dedicating my own resources and passion towards sharing a part of Omaha’s history, I want to see the city’s energy, ability and excitement leveraged towards the sustained interest, education and passion of everyone in Omaha for the city’s history. There is momentum and excitement for this vision like never before — are we ready to take action?!?

Let’s talk about the possibilities! I’m ready to move forward — contact me »

You Might Like…

• About Adam Fletcher Sasse
• A History of the Douglas County Historical Society
• Services

Elsewhere Online

• “Collective Impact” by the Center for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas.
• “Tackling Complex Social Problems through Collective Impact” from the Collective Impact Forum 
• “A Learning Agenda for Collective Impact” by Jennifer Splansky Juster & Cindy Santos Feb. 14, 2022 for the Stanford Social Innovation Review