New Hampshire welcomes 34 million visitors each year. Granite State Ambassadors, the state’s official, largely volunteer corps of information specialists, welcome 8 million of them.

New Hampshire-based Granite State Ambassadors, Inc. (GSA) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, charitable organization, unique in American tourism. An invaluable resource to an industry that is the country’s largest “export” (thanks to the $107 billion in international visitors’ dollars spent here), the Ambassadors enrich New Hampshire’s tourism industry, the second largest state employer and the sources of $4.35 billion to the state’s economy. Granite State Ambassadors provide the welcome to New Hampshire visitors -- who pay over $125 million in rooms and meals taxes each year, all of which goes directly into the General Fund. Therefore, the positive impact made in each visitor’s encounter with a GSA directly benefits each resident. Each GSA does make a difference.

In accordance with the Strategic Plan developed by the GSA Board in 2009, the organization seeks capacity-building funding to ensure the legacy intended by Granite State Ambassadors, Inc.’s founding partners: an enduring pipeline of trained, volunteer hospitality specialists who welcome visitors to New Hampshire and a model other states and tourism agencies can follow to achieve the same results.

Since its creation in 1996, this award winning organization has certified nearly 1,000 residents and employees who staff front line visitor centers supporting the authentic culture of New Hampshire, its people and products. Nearly 400 active GSAs currently serve New Hampshire city, state, federal, and private organizations, including such key partners as the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, the NH Division of Travel and Tourism Development (DTTD), the City of Manchester, NH State Parks, NH Fish & Game, White Mountain National Forest, NH Made, regional associations and chambers of commerce. GSA adds value to these state agencies, local businesses, and individuals through a training and service support network that sustains and enhances the New Hampshire experience. The typical GSA -- if there is one -- donates volunteer time to three different organizations. Over the past decade, GSA and its individual Ambassadors have worked to promote and protect an authentic New Hampshire “sense of place” by pro-actively supporting the state’s culture, heritage and the well-being of residents and guests alike.

As a membership organization that provides information specialists to New Hampshire welcome centers and special events, GSA grew spontaneously from the founder’s recognition of an un-served need fourteen years ago. When the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (now the fastest-growing airport in America)was just a year old, Judi Window, a founder of the organization, recognized that visitors stepping off the planes needed someone to provide answers to their questions about the state. Now the organization reaches out to new opportunities to serve the public. In August 2008, the Granite State Ambassadors piloted a partnership with the Transportation Security Administration, aiding the TSA agents by helping departing passengers prepare for screening. In 30 days, GSAs helped decrease the number of extra screening calls for forgotten liquids, boarding passes buried in carry-ons, etc. by 37 percent.

In the past fourteen years, Granite State Ambassadors have donated over 170,000 hours of their time as information specialists, an equivalent of $3.4 million in value. Donated by GSA’s in a sincere expression of hospitality -- providing a personal welcome and ensuring guests needs (primarily for accurate information) are met -- that value is a quantifiable, if narrow, measure of the Granite State Ambassador mission. The mission defines the essence of New Hampshire as depending on the themes of “civic responsibility” and attachment to the State’s natural and built environment. The GSAs are successful because they individually and proactively embody the belief that, “New Hampshire will only be a good place to visit if it continues to be a good place to live… [one that] values the individual and permits them regular opportunities to pitch in and make a difference.”

Just as its vision and values statement is derived from the Governor’s Tourism Outlook. GSA, Inc. is integrally involved in the state’s Division of Travel and Tourism Development (DTTD) initiatives, at many levels. Though GSA derives only part of its income from contracts with DTTD and Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, its responsibilities extend to many other situations where a “state tourism presence” is required – and where the State is keen to put its best information specialists forward.

These assignments include the Eastern States Exposition (“The Big E”) the only “county fair” in the country with multiple states participating. Held annually in Springfield, Massachusetts and drawing more than 1 million attendees each year, the Big E is one of the Top 100 Events listed by the American Bus Association.

GSA staffs the information desk in the New Hampshire Building on the Avenue of States, greeting an estimated 80 percent of all fair-goers in some 3,000 hours of volunteer time (not counting the service by New Hampshire’s Governors, Commissioners of Economic Development and Directors of Tourism.) Working side by side with the GSA information specialists has prompted praise from Senators, Governors and Mayors who have recognized GSA’s contributions with a number of awards and honors (left).

There is no other organization like GSA, Inc. It is an organization both entrepreneurial and nurturing of the social networks that characterize community. While not all of New Hampshire’s welcome centers are staffed by GSAs and while some GSA centers also employ paid staff, no one else has been able to duplicate the model successfully. No other state staffs its information centers with certified, training, statewide, volunteers. No other service operates as a 501c3 with low membership/contract fees, high retention and 100 percent training. And that makes a difference in the culture of GSA and is the secret to its expansion and continuing success.

There are no requirements, no forced appeals for service. New Granite State Ambassadors self-identify, though they are often drawn to the organization on the recommendation of friends and travel industry members who serve the GSA. As an example of their interest in the GSA mission and their commitment to the service, Granite State Ambassadors must go to the organization’s website to sign up for their volunteer shifts. Twice a year there’s an “open season” on all available shifts and centers (though shifts are filled continuously.) When the Columbus Day to Memorial Day 2008-09 calendar opened, there were 5000 sign-ups in the first eight hours.

GSA’s are mobile, self-motivated and extroverted. Some are former actors, teachers and tour guides. Some are young students and front desk associates. Others, retired soldiers, engineers and entrepreneurs. Many have returned to New Hampshire for the quality of life and their individually-activated commitment to preserving the “New Hampshire essence” proclaimed in the GSA mission and vision statement. Their green shirts are a ubiquitous and welcome sight, both to those who have come to appreciate what that green shirt means – and for the harried traveler seeking a friendly face at the airport information booth or highway rest stop.

Can the Granite State Ambassadors model
be replicated? Yes.

1. It is built on a growing, indigenous, sustainable industry: tourism.
2. It provides an easily understood service to those with a clear need – visitor information – that is repeatable, scalable and conformable to highly individualized local cultures.
3. The volunteerism that is the foundation of GSA’s success depends on cultivating pockets of social capital – a hallmark of communities that work; one missing in those that have become dysfunctional.
4. The GSA online infrastructure that permits hundreds of volunteers to manage their “shifts” with minimal management oversight is easy to maintain, even at long-distance, freeing management for field work, training and coaching individual welcome centers and volunteers.

With capacity-building capital, Granite State Ambassadors, Inc. can accomplish two objectives:

1. Sustain the part-time Executive Director role – a position added this year in accordance with GSA’s strategic plan -- and boost Member Services and IT involvement to move the organization beyond its founding partners to sustainability for the long term.
2. Expand market opportunities both by enlarging contract responsibilities and securing new assignments for the complete GSA volunteer information specialist model -- including training, expanded online infrastructure and appropriate field management.

There are other situations, immediately presenting themselves, where the Granite State Ambassadors’ passion for what they do can “rub off on” the tourism marketplace, harnessing the power of shared cultural understanding to the engine of billions of curious world travelers who just need someone to point the way. For GSA to continue specific conversations with interested states and tourism agencies the organization needs the financial confirmation that we will not overextend our resources to move ahead.