Juilee Decker - Fundraising and Strategic Planning

Fundraising and Strategic Planning

Innovative Approaches for Museums

About the Series

The Innovative Approaches for Museums series offers case studies, written by scholars and practitioners from museums, galleries, and other institutions, that showcase the original, transformative, and sometimes wholly re-invented methods, techniques, systems, theories, and actions that demonstrate innovative work being done in the museum and cultural sector throughout the world. The authors come from a variety of institutionsin size, type, budget, audience, mission, and collection scope. Each volume offers ideas and support to those working in museums while serving as a resource and primer, as much as inspiration, for students and the museum staff and faculty training future professionals who will further develop future innovative approaches.

About the Series Editor

Juilee Decker is an associate professor of Museum Studies at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) where she teaches courses focusing on museums and technology so as to bring theory and praxis together in the classroom environment. She has worked as a public art consultant and advisor for more than 15 years and has managed several public and private collections of public art. Since 2008, she has served as editor of Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals , a peer-reviewed journal published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Titles in the Series

Technology and Digital Initiatives: Innovative Approaches for Museums

Engagement and Access: Innovative Approaches for Museums

Collections Care and Stewardship: Innovative Approaches for Museums

Fundraising and Strategic Planning: Innovative Approaches for Museums

Fundraising and Strategic Planning

Innovative Approaches for Museums

Edited by Juilee Decker

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

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Copyright 2015 by Rowman & Littlefield

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fundraising and strategic planning : innovative approaches for museums / edited by Juilee Decker.

pages cm. (Innovative approaches for museums)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-3877-0 (paperback : alkaline paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-3878-7 (electronic) 1. Museum finance. 2. Fund raising. 3. MuseumsMarketing. 4. Public-private sector cooperation. 5. Museum visitorsEconomic aspects. 6. Crowd funding. 7. MuseumsManagement. 8. Strategic planning. I. Decker, Juilee. II. Title: Fund raising and strategic planning.

AM122.F87 2015

069.068'1dc23

2015011697

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Introduction

Fundraising and strategic planning are inextricably linked. Charitable dollars impact museums every single day across the United States and abroad by keeping doors open, underwriting programming and membership costs, and sustaining collections. Such monies allow for the achievement of objectives and performance targets in support of the institutional mission, values, and vision. Evidence of support may be gleaned from a search of informational tax forms filed by museums, including Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 990. A more excitingand certainly more discursivemeans of visualizing support comes from media coverage.

Over the past year, museums and their visitors have benefitted tremendously from grant-funded initiatives that aimed to connect visitors with the collections they love. One instance is a suite of projects underwritten by billionaire philanthropist and former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, that proffers the use of digital technologies as key engagement pieces in the onsite museum experience in four U.S. museums as well as one in London and another in Singapore. The projects focus on immersive experiences that engage and further connect visitors with a single work or several from a collection. Apropos of its context, an interactive pen has become the tool of choice for visitors to the design museumCooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. This pen (or, due to its size and its capability, perhaps it should be the Pen ?) enables visitors to add digital records of objects from the museum collection to the visitors own portfolio of items. At the conclusion of ones visit, the Pen is given back to the museum and, in return, visitors may obtain information and images that they have captured. As Robinson Meyer reported in The Atlantic , this tool bridges the physical and the digitala proposition that every gallery, library, archive, museum, and other collections-based organizations aims to achieve.

The Pen and Cooper Hewitt model best practices in terms of what museums must do to thrive: they need to engage in authentic dialogue about their past, their present, and their future. Even if not called as such, they need to reinvent (or, even, reaffirm their present iteration) and to undertake strategic planning to bring their institutions to the next level however defined, conceived, and executed. Through collaborative efforts, the Cooper Hewitt has brought designits contentinto the experience of the visitor through context entirely. For instance, the employ of the Pen (a design object extraordinaire) connects the visitor with the collections before them while capturing an account of the onsite experience. The Pen is supplemented by touch-screen tables that allow for collections view and an immersion room where The Pen becomes a tool of design for the user. The experience is both immersive and social all at once. So while this project, at its core, is a technological and digital innovation, the foundation, reach, and outcomes boast of the benefits achieved through fundraising and strategic planning.

Other projects benefitting from the aforementioned Bloomberg funds include an engaging, hands-on journey through the information age at the Science Museum, London, and an extension of the existing location-based and digital efforts of the American Museum of Natural History that updates their Explore app (launched in 2010) to version 2.0 to allow for personalized journeys and new ways to share experiences at the exhibits. The Brooklyn Museum will use funds to enable visitors to navigate through the galleries and to ask, through their mobile devices or museum-provided devices in stations through the museum, questions that will, in turn, be answered by staff in real time. Geo-positioning will enable staff to respond face-to-face to visitors in the galleries as well. The outcome of this three-year project will create a dynamic and responsive museum that fosters dialogue and sparks conversation between staff and all Museum visitors. In commenting upon the grant and the overall plan for the institution, the vice director of Digital Engagement and Technology at the Brooklyn Museum remarked that the Museum has a community-driven mission and, in the past, weve often used technology to foster personal interaction in a way that treats each individual as unique and aims to give our visitors a sense of ownership in the institution. This project will do the same and such a significant grant allows us to do so on a scale that rethinks the entire museum experience from a visitors entry to exit. Bernsteins comments speak to the coherence of mission to practice that undergirds vibrant museums that seek to innovate.