The past few weeks have many of us feeling uncertain about the future. I’m writing to remind you of an opportunity to reduce some of that uncertainty with cold, hard facts.

Since 2020, AAM has partnered with Wilkening Consulting to provide timely, actionable information about attitudes, behavior, and expectations around our field via the Annual Survey of Museum-Goers (ASMG).

The deadline is looming for your organization to enroll in the 2025 cohort: discounted enrollment ends February 28.

The base fee is $1,250 for museums launching January 1 – March 8 (rising to $3,250 for museums launching March 9 or later.) This is incredibly good value for high quality, personalized data.

This ongoing research project both helps the organizations participating in the survey and equips the field with the information AAM needs to make the case for museums as essential public goods. (Browse the large library of Data Stories Wilkening Consulting has generated from the survey results, on topics as varied as imaginative learning, inclusive attitudes, homeschool families, and the demographics of US museum-goers.)

Your museum’s ASMG data will:

• Provide insight into your visitors: who they are, their behaviors and values.
• Benchmark your metrics against your peers in the field. (When five or more museums of the same type or location enroll in the survey, that unlocks even more benchmarking data.)
• Enable repeat participants to track changes in their stakeholders over time.

2025 Focus Topics

This year, in addition to collecting baseline data on museum audiences, the research will focus on:

• Repeat Visitation – what are the barriers keeping people from visiting your museum more frequently?

• Social Connection – How can we strengthen visitors’ attachments to each other and museums through memory-making and social connection? Can supporting social connection become a unique superpower of museums?

• Shared Values – What values do community members share? How can museums ground their work in these shared values and thus be more effective with broader audiences … while also avoiding potential landmines that could set our work back?

• Community Trust and Responsibility – How do community members perceive museums’ roles and responsibilities in supporting their communities? And in a time of disinformation, what engenders public trust in the information museums share?

How it works

• Enroll in the survey (it takes less than 5 minutes).
• Participants have the options of customizing their survey with one or two questions from Wilkening Consulting’s question library.
• By March 8, Wilkening Consulting sends you a custom link to your museum’s survey, and sample text for you to send to your email list and post on social media.
• You will be able to track your results in real time via a virtual dashboard.
• Between May and June, 2025, you will receive a data spreadsheet and a shareable, easy-to-understand slide deck summarizing your results.
• All museums will have access to a short video series providing context for your results, and access to office hours to discuss the data with Wilkening Consulting staff. Tier 3 members of AAM also receive a private, one-hour call with Wilkening staff to discuss your results.

Testimonials