Posts
Financial Sustainability
Explore dozens of articles, member resources, and On-Demand Programs on financial sustainability in museums.
What Museums Can Learn from Amanda Palmer
On the way to New Zealand in the spring of 2016, I started reading Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking. I thought of it as “me time” reading, and as such it was relegated to snippets of time …
With New Museums Opening Rapidly, Old Institutions Must Turn Tactical to Compete for Funding
This article examines the various ways museums across the United States are contending with an increasingly competitive private funding landscape; the consequence of rapid growth in the …
Is It Time to Break Your Museum’s Organizational Mold?
Over the course of the twentieth century, and into today, museums have witnessed dramatic changes in their organizational and funding environments—some driven from within the museum field, …
A Snoopy license plate delivers more than mere peanuts to California museums
A special interest license plate is certainly an unconventional way to raise money for museums, and Snoopy’s path to plate-dom was certainly unconventional. But in late 2015, after nearly …
Assessing Museum Financial Sustainability: What Kind of Monster is Under Your Bed?
Has anyone besides me ever had a bad dream about financial sustainability? How about any nightmares along the lines of “What if the museum has to close down”? These kinds of disturbing …
Rethinking the modern house museum
This article highlights some of the numerous issues making preserving historic homes more challenging. Extensive maintenance costs can be prohibitive and encouraging return visits is …
Time to Partner Up
When you build relationships with other community groups, your small museum can reach its full potential. My tenure at The Lewes Historical Society began what seems like a lifetime ago: on …
Labor Pains at the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose
One might think that a new restaurant chain called “Now Hiring” has opened in urban centers across the nation. Especially in the Bay Area, the blessing of “full employment” has become a …
Meet Me in Miami to Explore Museums and AI
Right now I’m working on the agenda for Museums and New Intelligences, the Alliance’s second Knight Foundation-funded mini-conference exploring museum applications of emerging …
Capturing the Spirit of the Field Museum
One of my current projects is helping museums figure out how to develop new mission-related-income streams. In 2016, I helped develop and teach a workshop at which staff from natural …
On Cross Collecting, or Cross-Over Buying
Much like hedge funds diversify their portfolios, art collectors also maintain diverse collections to mitigate the risks the of the market. This is an old practice, but there has been a …
How AI Is Changing Sales
This article discusses five business applications of artificial intelligence–price optimization, forecasting, upselling and cross-selling, lead scoring, and managing for …