VQ Strategies

OCTOBER 7, 2022

Designed to assist and support an organization (and most commonly hospitals, museums, libraries, and arts organizations), these groups historically focus on raising funds, sometimes manage the volunteer corps, and nearly always maintain their own governance system. A Path to Change. Sustaining the Change.

Structure 98

Structure Volunteer Model Leadership 98

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. Most of my work involves museums, but these categories can be useful in any project that involves user participation. No one model is better than the others. No one model is better than the others.

Model 98

Model Activities Active Activism 98

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 15, 2019

The Western Museum Association was kind enough to invite me to speak on a panel about engagement at their annual meeting in Boise. Phillip’s early remark about museums was an invocation for everyone. As an outsider, he immediately saw that museums were operating “under a business model that doesn’t work.”

Museum 30

Museum Audience Conversation Associations 30

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 16, 2017

Like Seema, I've been looking for ways to increase active resistance of racism, hate, and bigotry--both as an individual and as the leader of a museum. Seema and I have started an open google doc to assemble ideas for specific things museums and museum professionals can do to resist oppression. Museums are ideas.

Museum 40

Museum Doc America National 40

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 20, 2017

El Museo Reimaginado is a collaborative effort of museum professionals in North and South America to explore museums' potential as community catalysts. I'm generalizing grossly here, but for the most part, I find European museums to be conservative. I find North American museums to be risk-averse.

Museum 40

Museum America South America Participatory 40

Museum 2.0

MAY 15, 2012

Last week, I sat down on a toilet in our museum and found myself looking at an interactive station intended to test a “Legends of the Stall” sign concept for the restrooms. Some of my happiest moments as a director come when I encounter awesome things in our museum that I had absolutely nothing to do with. Sorry for the delay.

Culture 53

Culture Build Museum Articulate 53

Museum 2.0

MAY 2, 2012

Today is my one-year anniversary as the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. A year ago, I put my consultant hat on the shelf and decided to jump into museum management (a sentence I NEVER would have imagined writing five years ago). The possible determinism of cultural geography.

Museum 55

Museum Director Participatory Culture 55

Museum 2.0

JUNE 27, 2012

A year ago, I wrote a post speculating about whether events (institutionally-produced programs) might be a primary driver for people to attend museums, with exhibitions being secondary. Many museums, big and small, thrive on events. At our museum, about 68% of casual visitors (non-school tours) attended through events this year.

Museum 53

Museum Arts Dallas History 53

Museum 2.0

MARCH 9, 2009

I once asked Eric Siegel, the Director of the New York Hall of Science, why museums are rarely innovative shining stars on the cutting edge of culture. He commented that as non-profits, museums are built to survive, not to succeed. At one point, Mark commented that they have a "deliberately unsustainable" business model.

Model 55

Model Business Los Angeles Museum 55

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 14, 2013

One of the greatest gifts of my babymoon is the opportunity to share the Museum 2.0 First up is Beck Tench, a "simplifier, illustrator, story teller, and technologist" working at the Museum of Life & Science in Durham, NC. As a person who works for a science museum, I work in an environment that supports play.

Museum 51

Museum Roles Game Participatory 51

Connection Cafe

AUGUST 1, 2019

Museums and nonprofits can also reap huge benefits from employing artificial intelligence, particularly in their membership and development departments. Nonprofits and museums depend on dedicated, but oftentimes limited, development staff to sift through countless prospects to determine which ones are priority.

Museum 29

Museum Game Chicago Indianapolis 29

Museum 2.0

MARCH 24, 2020

The last ten years saw our work move toward the service sector as rentals become a very real part of our business model. The museums of the world are collaborating to bring you #MuseumGames every Sunday, with a new crossword puzzle each week featuring clues from all sorts of museums. ??: As with the service sector, so our fate.

Museum 20

Museum Work Time Doc 20

Connection Cafe

JULY 28, 2016

So I went ahead and picked out some of the top sessions for Arts & Cultural organization to make planning your conference journey just a little bit easier. Maximizing Engagement at Your Arts & Cultural Organization – Learn how you can move your visitors from “hello” to “I do” with a personalized journey for your supporters.

Arts 20

Arts Culture Organization Tucson 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 26, 2013

Over the past three years, the Detroit Institute of Art (DIA) has served as the museum poster child for the debate on the public value of the arts. Last year, the DIA was saved from financial crisis by voters in its three neighboring counties who elected to take on an additional property tax to support the museum.

Detroit 52

Detroit Museum Michigan Arts 52

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 23, 2011

An exhibiting artist approached me recently at an evening event at the museum. But it's a question that many museums seem to address inadequately. It's interesting to me that so many museums debate admission fees but don't get comparably riled up about open hours. he said, "I have some feedback for you. He's right. They aren't.

Museum 55

Museum Open Artist Audience 55

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 18, 2011

Many people ( Paul Orselli , Linda Norris , Pete Newcurator ) in the museum field have written about the question of museum "tribes"--based partly on Seth Godin's book , partly on the longstanding fan culture that pervades our lives through sport , celebrity, and shared experience of mass events.

Museum 45

Museum Share Support Indianapolis 45

Museum 2.0

JUNE 28, 2017

I can think of many extraordinary innovators in the nonprofit cultural sector--people and organizations creating brilliant programs, site-based experiences, and products. Why aren’t more cultural organizations franchising, scaling, and replicating like comparable businesses? Precarious business model. Change may be necessary.

Culture 21

Culture Organization Model Podcast 21

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 4, 2015

Each of these women push the boundaries of cultural institutions in different ways, with digital and physical manifestations. Ravon and Amanda are using several social media channels to explore and share museum exhibitions, programs, and projects. She writes about race, history, parks, culture, and politics.

Culture 20

Culture Work Museum New York City 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 5, 2008

I was fascinated by our discussion, and Bob came to mind last month, when I was asked to write an article for the Association of Children's Museums quarterly journal, Hand to Hand , about children's museums and Web 2.0. To understand more, I turned to Elaine Gurian's article The Molting of Children's Museums? Why the uniformity?

Classroom 22

Classroom Children Museum Model 22

Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2016

When we say we want our museum to be "audience-centered," what do we mean? However, I have enormous respect for the customer-centered model when it is executed in ways that truly invite visitors in on their own terms and deliver satisfying experiences. Many of my favorite museums, libraries, and zoos are customer-centered places.

Museum 20

Museum Audience Music Arts 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 17, 2013

Last week, my museum hosted Hack the Museum Camp , a 2.5 day adventure in which teams of adults--75 people, of whom about half are museum professionals, half creative folks of various stripes--developed an experimental exhibition around our permanent collection in our largest gallery.

Museum 49

Museum Arts History Professional 49

Museum 2.0

APRIL 13, 2009

I spend a lot of time talking to people about social media--how it can be a model for real-life content venue interactions and how it can connect museums and cultural institutions to users in new ways. This is the reason that many museums and cultural organizations decided they needed websites in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Museum 43

Museum Social Media Culture Media 43

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2009

I'm working on a section of my book about sharing social objects and am writing about the most common way that visitors share their object experiences in museums: through photographs. Revenue Streams: Museums want to maintain control of sales of "officially sanctioned" images of objects via catalogues and postcards.

Museum 54

Museum Photo Policy Open 54

Museum 2.0

JULY 26, 2010

I've been spending time recently interviewing people who run unusual cultural and learning venues. From a museum perspective, I think there's a lot to learn from these venues' business models, approach to collecting and exhibiting work, and connection with their audiences. Skill-sharing free schools. Community science workshops.

Culture 49

Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Museum 2.0

MAY 22, 2012

Imagine you've just been tasked with developing an innovative, future-thinking national museum for your country's history. Blueprint is the story of a group of people who tried to create a Dutch Museum of National History (INNL). The Museum directors released Blueprint as a showcase for these plans. Where would you start?

Museum 36

Museum History Netherlands Create 36

Connection Cafe

FEBRUARY 25, 2014

Last week Ginny Fitzgerald, the Director of Visitor Services and Membership at Chicago History Museum, joined us to host a webinar about how she prepares her team for peak attendance times. Chicago History Museum defines their summer season as June 1 through August 31. Ginny has over 17 years of experience in visitor services.

Arts 32

Arts Culture Business Chicago 32

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 27, 2017

Our county board of supervisors had brought their official meeting to the museum. In it, I argued that museums could give up control of the visitor experience while still maintaining (a new kind of) power. Museums could make the platforms for those experiences. Traditionally, museums and cultural organizations offer programs.

Platform 31

Platform Impact Childhood Museum 31

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2018

For the past five years, each summer, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has hosted MuseumCamp. This new, experimental training is a hands-on deep dive into the MAH’s model. I'm excited to share the MAH's community-first model and to invite you to this in-depth, immersive learning experience.

Community 31

Community Participatory Museum Registration 31

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 8, 2018

You run a regional museum. This is the plan that plunged the Berkshire Museum into hot water. In July, the Berkshire Museum released its $60,000,000 New Vision , along with a funding mechanism: selling 40 of its most valuable artworks. It states that museums can only sell objects to purchase or care for other objects.

Public 40

Public Build Museum Detroit 40

Museum 2.0

JUNE 1, 2010

You can join the conversation in the blog comments, or on the Museum 2.0 Like many museum and library professionals, I am enamored of the idea of cultural institutions as “third places” – public venues for informal, peaceable, social engagement outside of home or work. This is the only post written by me, Nina Simon.

Place 41

Place Discussion Culture Museum 41

sgEngage

APRIL 28, 2022

I model the hospitality I expect our volunteers to show to visitors by welcoming them with warmth, fully listening and engaging when they are present, and showing appreciation for their choice to [volunteer] that day. – Rebecca Barnes, volunteer manager at Tellus Science Museum .

South Dakota 84

South Dakota Volunteer Tips Social 84

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 1, 2013

It takes you through the technologies and tools for each channel for different goals and offers up lots of case studies from organizations such as National Wildlife Federation, Red Cross, AARP, Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, American Museum of Natural History, SEIU and others. The book offers some recipes for culture change.

Campaign 97

Campaign Online Chapter Model 97

Whole Whale

SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

AS works with nonprofits across a wide range of industries, including arts and culture, the environment, foundations, and government. Previously, CAP has served clients in education, human services, youth serving organizations, religious organizations, and arts, culture, history, and environmental. Website: [link]. Alexander Haas.

Consultant 52

Consultant Fundraising Phoenix Atlanta 52

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 26, 2018

Our goal is to help civic and cultural institutions become more representative OF, co-created BY, and welcoming FOR their diverse communities. We've see this model succeed at the MAH and at other community-centered organizations around the world. The model we landed on was movement building. Publishing toolkits. Consulting.

Los Angeles 31

Los Angeles Network Oakland Change 31

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

The book looks at how individuals can avoid burnout through self-care and how nonprofits can support it – through activities that promote well-being, cultural cues, or an overall strategy. How cultural norms influence participation. A team culture that prioritizes collaboration and excellence. ½ Have story?

Product 50

Product Time Create Museum 50

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2011

I've now been the Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz for two months. But the point is that the MAH, like just about every other museum in the known universe, was content to define the museum experience as something removed from the outside world, a rarefied church-like space of refined artistic reflection.

Museum 31

Museum History Arts Work 31

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

And then there's the Berkeley Ace hardware store, which has a basement lair devoted to model trains. When you find a bar with your favorite song on the jukebox, or a museum room that feels like your grandmother's living room, you suddenly feel a strong affinity and are able to see yourself reflected in the space. What's going on here?

Museum 34

Museum Los Angeles San Francisco Model 34