Our 2023-2024 Annual Report: Letter from Our Board Chair and President

Click the image to access the full report.

Covering July 2023-June 2024, our recently released annual report features highlights of our work over the past year, our donor list, and financial statements.

Providing an opening for the report is a letter from League Board Chair Frank Sanchis and League President Jay DiLorenzo:

Along with the League team and our Board of Trustees, we are honored to be leading this organization at such an exciting time in its history. As we mark our 50th Anniversary throughout 2024, we are eager to celebrate all that the League has accomplished over the past 50 years — but we are even more excited to look ahead at how we continue to evolve over the next 50 and beyond.

When the Preservation League was founded in 1974, it was thanks to a grassroots effort led by a dedicated group from around the state. The League’s founders saw the need for a private organization to provide a clear, unified voice for preservation in New York. The organization’s purpose was to communicate preservation ideals and help shape federal, state, and local policies to encourage the protection, sensitive use, and creative reuse of historic properties.

All that remains true. But in the intervening 50 years, the League has taken its mandate of being a statewide leader seriously, and in that vein, has continued to push itself — and the field — forward.

Our statewide work, from our founding 50 years ago up to today, is inherently collaborative. We cannot do what we do without the local advocates and community organizers who care so much about their cities, towns, and neighborhoods. This cohort has only grown since the League got its start. We are truly excited about how we can work to expand that network further, welcoming people who might never have considered themselves “Preservationists,” but who nonetheless are working tirelessly to protect and celebrate their local histories and the places that matter so much to them.

We believe that preservation has a vital role to play in building a more just and sustainable future. Preservation is about more than saving old buildings or preserving historic landscapes. It’s about who we are saving them for, and how these places support their communities now and into the future. Through our Technical Services and public programming, we have been actively finding ways to make new connections and work across disciplines.

We see preservation as integral to tackling climate change and addressing the affordable housing crisis – two of the biggest challenges affecting our society today. Adaptively reusing buildings is a key tactic in addressing both concerns, and something the League strongly champions – whether through advocating for the strengthening of our Historic Tax Credits or recognizing the impacts of such projects through our Excellence Awards.

And in terms of how we work to save the physical places that are integral to our shared cultural heritage, the League continues to offer grants to jumpstart preservation projects through our partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts; our Donald Stephen Gratz Preservation Services Fund continues to fund a new project annually; and thanks to our strategic planning in preparation of our 50th Anniversary, we launched the Preservation Opportunity Fund and made the first grants supporting three ready-to-go capital improvement projects. From planning to physical restoration, the League is a resource for our constituents at every stage of their work.

Upstate and downstate, in cities and rural villages, the League is committed to a preservation movement that is truly for everyone. And your support makes that work possible – so our past has a future.