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Hancock Shaker Village Receives $1M Grant from Kresge Foundation

The AAM Facebook feed just congratulated Hancock Shaker Village on receiving a $1 million grant from the Kresge Foundation.

Read the original article. There are some really, really interesting things going on in there amidst all the business-speak.

“[The grant] recognizes the living history museum’s work as a visionary organization pursuing transformational projects designed to shift its business model and to serve as a field-wide example of leadership.”

Here’s what I see when I read that: grantmakers, and those who are interested in helping museums with money and resources, don’t want to see museums rest on their laurels. The museum is “visionary,” “transformational,” and a “field-wide example,” and that’s why it just got a check for a  million dollars.

“Appropriate levels of capitalization that allow an organization to grow or reinvent itself is standard in the for-profit sector, but has not routinely been considered best practice in the nonprofit sector. Kresge wishes to reverse this trend by supporting cultural organizations that have completed the thoughtful, exploratory process to reinvent their business models. ” – Alice Carle, program director at the Kresge Foundation

Venture capital firms exist to throw cash at good ideas that need a push. (The hope is then that the good idea will take off and offer a substantial return on the initial investment.) I love that the Kresge Foundation is looking at nonprofit funding in the same way. Too often really brilliant ideas – that may succeed or they may flop – are implemented on a shoestring budget that practically guarantees their failure. When a great idea fails, is it because it was a bad idea or because it wasn’t supported in the right way? Maybe one. Maybe the other. You never know unless you analyze its failure honestly.

“The Village will use half of the Kresge grant to seed its Building Reserve Fund and half to research and launch promising new business initiatives. “We are taking steps to move away from the outmoded museum business model of dependence upon admission and gift shop revenue,” said [Ellen] Spear, [President and CEO of Hancock Shaker Village].”

In this and other sections of the article, the museum’s programs, outreach, and education efforts are clearly outlined in business terms. They’re business models, initiatives, and product development. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe both. Depending on admission and gift shop revenue isn’t a long-term sustainable economic model for a museum. But does it somehow violate the spirit of a museum to engage directly in naked capitalism?

In the end, though, huge congratulations to Hancock Shaker Village. Receiving a grant of this magnitude is a big vote of confidence. They know what they want, they know how to get there, and now they have the resources to take that path.

Identity Museums

[Amanda’s note: This is the first of what we hope to be many posts by other members of the Tufts Museum Studies community. If you are a member of our community, and are interested in contributing your thoughts, please let us know! If you need some ideas to spark your muse, check out our list of ideas for posts.]

Identity Museums Challenge History’s Received Truths from The New York Times, December 29, 2010

I thought this article offered some good food for thought about how museums shape (and/or re-shape) our collective cultural understanding of the world.  As egalitarian as we may strive to be, the story we tell with our collections and exhibitions is always one person’s (or group’s) story, and most likely someone will feel left out or misrepresented. But what happens if our desire for inclusion of all begins to tamper with the “truth” that is our past?

Jenn DePrizio teaches Museum Education in the Tufts Museum Studies program, and is Director of Visitor Learning at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

This Place Matters

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has a neat project up on its website: This Place Matters.

“This Place Matters” is a simple Google Map on which any visitor to the site can pin a flag, marking a place that matters to them.

The NTHP says “It could be your favorite local diner or a treasured neighborhood movie palace.  How about the school you walked to as a kid; or even your corner grocery store?  It could be a project you’ve taken on yourself, or one being championed by a local preservation society, Main Street organization or other community group.”

At its most zoomed out, the map is a riot of colored flags – most of the eastern seaboard is barely visible. Zoom in and there are all sorts of empty spaces. Click on a flag to read about a spot, who submitted it, and why it matters to them. The NTHP hopes to use this map as a tool to encourage preservation – to identify spots in need of saving and to spark a group consciousness and conversation about why historic preservation is important. It might have been an even more powerful experience if there were a way for multiple people to comment on one flag – to react and converse with each other about places that matter to them. It doesn’t appear that Google allows that sort of thing, however.

There are some really wonderful places on the map, but there’s a lot more that needs adding! So, Tufts museum community – what places matter to you?

A Guide to Guidestar

With the advent of the internet age, we all have a LOT more tools in our hands to begin to learn about specific organizations – and particularly specific museums. Whether you’re doing some research into a museum you’d like to work for, trying to get a good picture for how a museum of a certain size operates, or considering donating to a museum, there are some great tools out there that are promoting transparency and openness for nonprofit organizations.

Today, we’re highlighting Guidestar.

Guidestar is essentially a database of all sorts of nonprofit information. Organizations can establish their profiles and post information – financial statements, programs and events, staff listings, and recent news items. There’s also a section in which the organization can advertise its current funding needs.

Guidestar’s mission is: “to revolutionize philanthropy by providing information that advances transparency, enables users to make better decisions, and encourages charitable giving.”

To access the full capabilities of Guidestar, you’ll need to register. It’s easy and free, and they send a minimum of email. So, start here.

Once you’ve registered, you can navigate the site by searching for a specific organization, or try a more advanced search for organizations in a particular area or focus. Doing a general search on “museum” brings up some of the heavy hitters on the first page:

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Museum of Modern Art

American Museum of Natural History

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Field Museum of Natural History

Organizations are responsible for updating their own information, so what you see is what the museum gives you. The Met, for example, hasn’t put up their budget numbers, but they have linked to their 2007-2009 990 tax forms and their 2010 Annual Report. (Watch this space for a guide to interpreting museum annual reports, by the way.) They don’t have a lot under staff or programs, either.

The American Museum of Natural History offers some different information. It lists all its board members, and gives a programs overview that includes its budget: almost $149 million. The MFA Houston also has all its board members and programs information, though no budget.

After quite a bit of searching and clicking, the best museum profile I found belonged to our local USS Constitution Museum. They have background statements, staff information, financial information, programs information, and they’ve even put up some of their funding goals. Bravo to them. (You’ll notice that a Guidestar user has also given the museum an enthusiastic five star review!)

Most museums put a bare minimum of information in Guidestar, which is a shame – it’s a powerful tool that’s quick and simple to update. Administrative and financial transparency is a hot topic in the nonprofit world right now – check out the Christian Science Monitor’s Guide to Giving for recent articles about that very subject.

Think about it: if you’re trying to figure out where to donate your hard-earned money, do you give to the organization that’s tight-fisted and secretive about how it’s going to use that money, or do you want an organization who opens its books and says “here, here’s how your $20 made a substantive difference in the way we do our work”?

Guidestar also offers other tools for nonprofit professionals, including a series of webinars about development, community outreach, and other important topics.

More museum blogs!

First things first: if you’re not reading Museum 2.0, you should be.

Next, check out Nina Simon’s recent post, Six Museum-Related Blogs You Might Not Know About That Are Really Good. One of the blogs is local – Thinking about Exhibits is written by Ed Rodley, an exhibit developer at Boston’s Museum of Science.

This is a fantastic collection of thoughtful writing. Go check it out. In the meantime, all these blogs have been added to the blogroll on our sidebar. (Look right, then scroll down.)

What do you say we aim to make that list the next time she does it?

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