Teaching the World to Value Collections (while making some $$)
I hope you will join me later this month for a webinar exploring how museums can build income streams around their collections and win hearts and minds in the process. While the session is formally pitched at natural history research …
The Top Ten Alliance Blog Posts of 2019
It was a whirlwind year of museums making themselves over for our changing world. Evolving ethics, social and technological transformation, and the looming presence of the bottom line are turning our institutions inward, searching for …
Sustainable Investing: A Practical Guide for Museums – Part 2
This is the second of a three-part series on sustainable investing. In part one, Anna Raginskaya, Financial Advisor, Blue Rider Group at Morgan Stanley reviewed the concept of sustainable investing and presented several reasons why museums …
Sustainable Investing: A Practical Guide for Museums – Part 1
Earlier this year a guest post on this blog advocated for museums harnessing their endowments to mission-related goals through a financial practice known as impact investing. In today’s post, Anna Raginskaya, Financial Advisor, Blue Rider …
It Takes a Village: How community partnerships made for a winning summer camp formula
For museums with the resources and opportunities to do so, offering a summer camp is a great way to open up the doors to students whose guardians might need the structured daytime hours a camp provides, and to offer students an interactive …
Collecteurs: Social Responsibility and Accessible Art
Regular readers of this blog know that I’m always on the hunt for museum-like organizations that live just slightly outside the traditional museum sphere. Such business can illuminate public demand, explore new business models, and test …
When a Private Museum Has Massive Public Support
Even before the 2008 financial collapse only 56 percent of museums received support from local government, and that funding made up about 10 percent of their overall operating budget. The most recent financial analysis by Grantmakers in …
How Museum Stores Support Their Institutions and the Public
Throughout my thirty years as a museum retail professional, I have often had to explain to others—whether colleagues, friends and family, or complete strangers—how museum stores support their institutions and the public at large. From my …
From For-Profit to Nonprofit: Evolution of the International Spy Museum
Next up in my exploration of museum business models, a conversation with Tamara Christian, president of the International Spy Museum. The Spy Museum is the first museum I’ve found that has operated as both a for-profit and a nonprofit …
(Co)Working in a Museum
In a 2017 post on this blog, Tui Te Hau, the director of the Te Papa museum’s Mahuki innovation accelerator, offered some advice for museums considering starting their own coworking spaces. In today’s post Cindy Foley, Executive Deputy …
