Legislative Advocacy

February 16, 2023 by Travis Brown

Legislative Advocacy: Making the case for Main Street & Main Street Issues Hang around any group of Main Streeters (or any community revitalization professionals) long enough and you will inevitably start to hear about some form of legislative roadblock or some new bill that is going to make it harder to do their job. I’ve… Read More →




Property Information You Should Have in Maestro

July 13, 2021 by Travis Brown

Property Information You Should Have in Maestro Lately we have gotten a lot of questions and interest in the Property Management section of Maestro. So much so that we wanted to take a few minutes and highlight some of things that we have seen make a difference for organizations. As with most things, it’s best… Read More →




Events are coming back….

July 13, 2021 by Travis Brown

Events are coming back.....so now what? We’re all done with the terms, “new normal”, “pandemic”, “unprecedented” and about 724 others that have dominated our vocabulary over the past year and a half. Last year, we watched as very quickly everyone went from having events to being locked away from one another. Not surprising, this was… Read More →




Social Media Policy

March 2, 2021 by Travis Brown

Having a social media policy for your organization Alright, how many of you saw social media and your organization and clicked the link without seeing “policy”? That’s okay. So this isn’t going to be the post where you find all the latest trends, get tips or how to get more followers, or find tools that… Read More →




Downtown Chart of Accounts

January 19, 2021 by Travis Brown

Downtown Chart of Accounts Recently I saw a discussion thread on “The Point”, the National Main Street Center’s discussion board. This particular post was about a downtown chart of accounts and reading some of the comments took me right back to my first few weeks as an Executive Director. When I first got the position,… Read More →




How we became Maestro Community Manager

January 12, 2021 by Travis Brown

How we became Maestro Community Manager Most of you know Maestro, and some of you know people on our team, but do you know how we got started and how we became Maestro Community Manager? I (Travis) first met the team when I was an Executive Director for the Historic Quincy Business District (now The… Read More →




Involvements you should be using

December 4, 2020 by Travis Brown

Involvements you should be using Involvements are a key to unlocking the potential of Maestro. As we have described them before, they are essentially custom fields or custom tags that you can put on any contact, business, or property. They allow you to ditch all the spreadsheets by tracking everything about a person, company, or… Read More →




Are your events on-brand?

June 9, 2020 by Travis Brown

Are your events on-brand? There’s no denying that events are a large component of downtown life. Whether your organization is dependent on events for fundraising, or you are holding them to increase attendance and build atmosphere, events are a critical aspect of nearly every downtown. While these events are frequently essential for the health of… Read More →




Your Downtown Website

June 2, 2020 by Travis Brown

Your Downtown Website I think we would all agree that a website is not an option for any organization, it’s a requirement. Your website can be one of the most effective communication tools that you have. Since we deal with technology, we get asked about websites a lot. Most of those questions revolve around what… Read More →




Why Reporting Matters

April 9, 2020 by Travis Brown

Why Reporting Matters For over a decade now, I’ve had the good fortune to be a part of the Main Street movement. When I started I was told by our State Coordinator that I needed to fill out our monthly reporting, so I did. I didn’t think much about it at the time, I just… Read More →