AAM’s 2022-2025 Strategic Framework aims to support transformative fieldwide work in partnership with our members, partners, and allies.

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Our Vision:

A just and sustainable world informed and enriched by thriving museums that contribute to the resiliency and equity of their communities.

Our Mission:

Champion equitable and impactful museums by connecting people, fostering learning and community, and nurturing museum excellence.

We Believe:

• Museums are essential to communities and to helping society address many of our most pressing issues, from the climate crisis to racism and economic disparity. Museum professionals educate and inspire people of all ages, activate curiosity, facilitate discussion, preserve cultural heritage, and conduct critical research. They nourish minds and spirits, enrich lives, and support healthy communities.

• Museums are human-centered institutions in the stories of human achievements and struggles they interpret, the audiences they engage, and the people they employ. They use the trust and authority granted to them by the public to remember, respect, and give voice to all peoples.

• Museum experiences are characterized by interactions, not only with objects and living populations, but also with stories, experts, and primary learning experiences in welcoming places. These experiences are supported by scholarship and knowledge.

• The Alliance’s strengths lie in our diversity, the breadth of the museum field, and our active participation in the global museum community.

Our Values:

• Partnership—As an Alliance of the entire scope of the museum field, we know the museum field is stronger when we work together. We value listening, learning, and collaborating to advance the field.

• Access & Inclusivity—We seek and embrace a diversity of people and perspectives to enhance our work, and we are generous in sharing our resources.

• Courage—We encourage curiosity and innovation, challenge assumptions, and take risks.

• Excellence—We aim to continuously learn and improve, striving to be exemplary in all we do, as we guide the field in its responsibility to preserve our natural, scientific, and cultural heritage according to the highest ethical standards, preserving the public trust, and supporting workplaces that value and respect the professionals who make museums possible.

Goals:

Over the three-year term of this strategic framework, AAM aims to:

• Celebrate, strengthen, and connect the museum professional community in all its diversity.

• Support museum professionals in learning from each other, managing through crisis, and rebuilding strong, relevant, and sustainable institutions.

• Lead the museum field in building support for museums as essential community infrastructure and becoming more equitable, inclusive, and impactful institutions and community partners.

• Critically examine AAM’s programs and operations to ensure we model our values.

Four Priorities:

As we pursue our goals, we will focus on four priorities:

• Social & Community Impact: The Alliance will advocate for the value of museums, their power to change the world, and their essential roles in sustaining strong, inclusive, and resilient communities by enriching education systems, bolstering economies, strengthening the social fabric of communities, improving peoples’ wellbeing, and beyond.

• DEAI & Anti-racism: Building on our momentum as a driving force for Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion (DEAI), the Alliance will engage partners, allies, and experts to champion an anti-racism movement across the museum field, catalyzing and supporting changemakers in museums and efforts to create more equitable outcomes in all aspects of their structures and programming.

• The Museum Community: Our Alliance will bolster its role in supporting, celebrating, and convening the broad scope of the museum community. Following a period of radical disruption for the museum field, we will comprehensively review and adapt key fieldwide programs and initiatives to enable the museum community to connect and thrive.

• The Way We Work: Equally important as what we do, AAM will critically review how we work to ensure equity is at the core of our culture, our structure is agile and scaled to national service as a changemaker and leader, and our business model facilitates a financially sustainable future.

Priority Details

Social & Community Impact

The Alliance will advocate for the value of museums, their power to change the world, and their essential roles in sustaining strong, inclusive, and resilient communities by enriching education systems, bolstering economies, strengthening the social fabric of communities, improving peoples’ wellbeing, and beyond.

Strategies:

• Support museum professionals’ skill-building and efforts to identify and address community needs and to measure and communicate the impacts their museums have.

• Develop, collect, and amplify research, data, and stories that articulate the valuable role museums play in creating a more just and equitable world.

• Build greater understanding and public support for the wide-ranging work of museums by amplifying the human-centered nature of museums.

• Champion legislation, government support, and policies that strengthen museums and their vital role in society.

• Activate our national network of museums to create societal change in pursuit of a better world in partnership with cause-based, mission-driven partners, agencies, and funders.

DEAI & Anti-racism

Building on our momentum as a driving force for Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion (DEAI), the Alliance will engage partners, allies, and experts to champion an anti-racism movement across the museum field, catalyzing and supporting changemakers in museums and efforts to create more equitable outcomes in all aspects of their structures and programming.

Strategies:

• Develop a five-year DEAI plan with an intersectional race equity approach, articulating our theory of change, building on lessons learned from the Facing Change: Advancing Museum Board Diversity & Inclusion pilot, and creating a sustainable structure for long-term work.

• Embed DEAI into the field’s Excellence programs, including the Museum Assessment Program (MAP), Accreditation, and their underlying codes, standards, and best practices.

• Engage, convene, and equip museum trustees, leaders, and changemakers with the case studies, assessments, and benchmarking resources they need to build DEAI skills and lead more equitable and anti-racist museums.

• Recognize, celebrate, and support a network of museum professionals of color and DEAI leaders in museums, and showcase exemplary case studies of equitable and anti-racist outcomes in museum programs and operations.

The Museum Community

Our Alliance will bolster its role in supporting, celebrating, and convening the broad scope of the museum community. Following a period of radical disruption for the museum field, we will comprehensively review and adapt key fieldwide programs and initiatives to enable the museum community to connect and thrive.

Strategies:

• Create more opportunities to highlight and celebrate the vital role every museum professional plays in building thriving museums, strong communities, and a better world.

• Provide opportunities for museum professionals to deepen their engagement with the Alliance, and platforms to share their expertise and grow their leadership skills.

• Through the Center for the Future of Museums, regularly assess key trends shaping the museum sector and the Alliance’s role in helping museum professionals to address issues such as environmental sustainability, community health and well-being, the future of work, challenges and opportunities arising
  from new digital technologies, and changing business models.

• Partner with other thought leaders and experts in the museum community, including individual museums, corporate partners, allied museum service organizations, and beyond, to address emerging issues of importance to the broad museum field.

• With our members, analyze the fieldwide impact of the AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, the Continuum of Excellence, the Center for the Future of Museums, and the Professional Networks; align these programs with strategic priorities; and explore collaborations, program improvements, and alternative operating/business models to meet the evolving needs of museum professionals.

The Way We Work

Equally important as what we do, AAM will critically review how we work to ensure equity is at the core of our culture, our structure is agile and scaled to national service as a changemaker and leader, and our business model facilitates a financially sustainable future.

Strategies:

• Develop a comprehensive digital strategy and formal product development process to align AAM’s programs and platforms, identify and implement new offerings that are most responsive to the museum community’s needs, and improve the Alliance’s ability to connect and serve museum professionals.

• Conduct a review of AAM’s corporate structure (Board, Accreditation Commission, and Professional Networks), bylaws, governance processes, and culture to maximize the highest and best use of
  volunteer leader time, resources, and talent to advance strategic organizational objectives and to model inclusive leadership.

• Disaggregate organizational and programmatic data to identify and address any outcomes that vary by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.

• Build a culture of philanthropy by growing individual giving while increasing other sources of contributions and identifying new earned revenue opportunities.

• Embrace flexible business practices and scalable programs/platforms to create a nimbler and more proactive AAM, including re-evaluation of this framework on a rolling basis.

Updates

• AAM’s Strategic Framework: A Progress Report – March 2023

Join us!

If you’re interested in joining our Alliance or contributing your skills and expertise, learn more about the many ways you can get involved.

AAM is grateful to the McKinsey & Company consultants who volunteered their time to support our strategic planning process: Judy D’Agostino, Andrew Doy, Ian Jefferson, Thomas Merizalde Martinez, Loïc Tallon, and Rob Wavra.

	This year, AAM was awarded a Platinum Seal of Transparency, the very highest level attainable from Guidestar. We hope this transparency gives you added confidence in our mission, accomplishments, and commitment to you.