Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Marnie Webb has been thinking about how the nonprofit sector might be different if organizations believed in abundance and re-thought their organizational structures and how they delivered programs as a result. If we thinking that way, what are the organizational structures that we have to build?

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Artist Structure Museum Nonprofit 96

Museum 2.0

MAY 6, 2016

Five years ago, I left the consulting world to take the helm at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) at a time of crisis and change. As I did at the one-year and three-year mark, here are some of the things I'm most proud of, mistakes I've made, and questions on my mind as we head into the next five years.

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Museum Director Arts History 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

I've spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums. This post shares some of the most interesting questions I've heard throughout these experiences. Feel free to add your own questions and answers in the comments! BROAD QUESTIONS ABOUT AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION 1.

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2010

Last week, I attended Structure Lab , a half-day workshop on legal and financial structures for ventures for social good. The Structure Lab is set up as a "game" in which you explore cards in various categories (values, assets, financing, etc.) to better articulate what you are really trying to do with your project concept.

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Structure Model Social Profit 31

Nonprofits Source

JANUARY 23, 2023

Through the Google Ad Grants program , nonprofits everywhere can leverage pay-per-click (PPC) marketing for free. Best of all, there are professional Google Grants managers out there to help you navigate the program and make the most compelling ads possible. We recommend you reach out to their team for all your Google Grants needs!

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Grant Google Management Guide 52

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 3, 2019

We figure out the program that gets us the solution the grant wants. But we also know that it hasn’t made an appreciable impact on the people coming to museums. I loved how she brought up so many issues, often combining structural issues with the related effects. That is, except museums. We’ve all been there.

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Accessibility Museum Australia Voice 32

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 24, 2012

I like to ask myself this question periodically, challenging myself to find substantive ways for visitors to contribute to our museum. We actively seek participation and develop structured opportunities for visitors to collaborate with us. We don't have to convince them that it's their museum.

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Platform Open Museum Participatory 41

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

The conventional wisdom on museum memberships is that they are "one size fits many" programs whose primary benefits are free entrance to the museum and insider access to exhibition openings. But what about all the other people who love your museum? Want to know how the Brooklyn Museum is answering this question?

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Museum Audience Program Artist 24

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 3, 2011

I'm working on a keynote address for next week's Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums conference in Baltimore. The speech is in memory of Stephen Weil, one of the giants of contemporary American museum thinking--a radical in a bowtie who strove to "make museums matter." What are the most important problems in the cultural sector?

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Problem Museum Baltimore Culture 53

Museum 2.0

APRIL 11, 2017

This is the sixth in a series of posts on the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History ( MAH )'s development of Abbott Square , a new creative community plaza in downtown Santa Cruz. John would run Abbott Square Market , a multi-vendor food and drink business, adjacent to the plaza, adjacent to the museum. Money is on the table.

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Technique Museum Exercise Structure 29

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 2, 2013

George Scheer is the director and co-founder of Elsewhere Collective, a fascinating "living museum" in a former thrift store in Greensboro, NC. In this post, George grapples with the challenges of balancing the care for a museum collection with that of contemporary artists-in-residence who are constantly reinterpreting it.

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Artist Museum Proposal Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

I''ve been curious about this question for a long time. I''ve mostly seen museums employ one of two methods for formal community advisors: Create special "spots" on the board of trustees for certain kinds of community representatives. Suddenly, C3 felt more like an engagement program that advances our institutional goals.

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Community Story Museum Map 39

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. When, on the other hand, amateurs had the opportunity to help design scientific questions or disseminate research results, they often felt more ownership of the project and greater interest in using scientific methods to address their own community needs.

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Model Activities Active Activism 98

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 22, 2012

At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, we take our interns seriously, give them real responsibility, creative challenges, and meaningful work opportunities. We also have fabulous opportunities in Community Programs, Education, and Development - please check the website for all the options and information on how to apply.

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Participatory Museum Photography Unconference 37

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 7, 2007

I got my copy of the fall issue of Museums and Social Issues this week. The theme is "Civic Dialogue," and the journal includes articles on the historical, cultural, media, and museum practice of getting people talking to each other (including one by me about such endeavors on the web). Oh, and one other thing.

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Museum Lecture Denver San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 19, 2016

We believe that partnerships build a stronger museum and a stronger community. We work with over 2,000 regional partners each year to develop exhibitions, festivals, programs, and projects. We all collaborated to develop programs, strategies, and community partnerships. Like most museums and nonprofits, we have a donor database.

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Collaboration Tools Build Organization 20

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 5, 2010

Although the Clearinghouse and Awards programs could be helpful to the cause of greater access for people with disabilities, I don’t think they truly take on the biggest opportunity for change. The bigger question is about how to structure the second phase. The FCC has to think about what its biggest objectives are.

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Accessibility Award Proposal Phase 100

Museum 2.0

APRIL 19, 2016

We champion causes through the partnerships we build, the programs we offer, and the stories we tell. Our museum has already had several requests to lend our support to bond measures that will be on the ballot in 2016. We wanted enough of a process to provide clarity and structure without too many hoops. How did we create it?

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Policy Advocacy Create Museum 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2011

Lots of museums these days have video comment booths to invite visitors to tell their stories, but how many of those booths really deliver high-impact content? Last week, I talked with Tina Olsen, Director of Education and Public Programs at the Portland Art Museum, about their extraordinary Object Stories project.

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Story Interview Museum Audio 53

Nonprofit Tech for Good

DECEMBER 14, 2022

One way to create a major donor program or donor perks system is to replicate one from another organization. If you are using another nonprofit’s program as an inspiration, there is no need to do so. For example, if you join a modern art museum, there is a good chance you won’t have to pay admission to other modern art museums.

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Donor Sponsor Accessibility Music 343

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

Audience segmentation and research has become a hot topic in museums, especially when it comes to crafting appealing offerings that are customized to different kinds of visitors. I sat down with Kristen Denner, Director of Membership and Annual Fund, to learn more about the program's development and the museum's goals for its future.

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Interview Director Museum Arts 46

Museum 2.0

APRIL 29, 2015

These are the slides and notes for the talk I gave at the American Alliance of Museums conference on Monday, April 27 about the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. When I became the director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History four years ago, I took this work with me. They talked about community building.

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Build Community Museum Artist 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2009

On Monday, I gave the keynote at the Museums in Conversation conference in Tarrytown, NY. I learned to cultivate creative greed while working on Operation Spy at the International Spy Museum, where I was lucky to be working on a project that was so new to us that we didn't have any pre-established models or structures for doing it.

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Museum Conversation Columbus Local 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 31, 2011

Last week, at the annual meeting of the American Association of Museums in Houston, I was honored to chair a fabulous panel on empowering museum staff to take creative risks ( slides here ). Beck beautifully described her entry into museum work. What kind of support do you need to be confident about taking a risk in your work?

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Denver Museum Oakland PowerPoint 55

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 4, 2015

Ravon Ruffin and Amanda Figuero - Claiming Space for Brown Women in the Digital Museum Landscape Based in Washington DC, Brown Girls Museum Blog is a new-ish site led by graduate students Ravon Ruffin and Amanda Figueroa. The Museum of Impact is a pop-up project of short-term exhibitions on urgent topics of social justice.

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Culture Work Museum New York City 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 4, 2015

If people on the street are talking about X, the museum should be talking about X too. I used to work at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA. Our mandate was to be the museum of Silicon Valley--not of its material history, but its pulse of innovation. Other times, grounded in the museum's collection.

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Content San Jose Museum Miami 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

This isn't just a rhetorical question. A participant who writes her reaction to an object on an index card is very different from one who donates her own personal effects to be part of an institutional collection, and both of these people are different from one who helps develop a new program from scratch.

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Public Research Participatory Report 36

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JANUARY 6, 2014

The art part includes all the ways nonprofits and schools can engage and connect with alumni of their programs through social channels. Societal Change: Impact on society, policy discussions, and conversations that advance sustainable practices. Engage with the purpose of leading to collective action.”

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Social Media Network Media Free 108

Museum 2.0

JULY 28, 2015

"We want our museum to be relevant." Art therapy program for trauma victims? We need to think about the structure of how our institutions function--from hours of operation to explicit and implicit rules of use--to make our work relevant to the patterns of contemporary life. I've heard (and said) this many times. That's relevant.

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Lecture Headline Flash Culture 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 4, 2010

It's rare that a participatory museum project is more than a one-shot affair. But next month, Britain Loves Wikipedia will commence--the third instance of a strange and fascinating collaborative project between museums and the Wikipedia community (Wikimedians). Some of these challenges were about mission fit.

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Wikipedia Arts Museum Images 40

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 14, 2011

Adult staff members are not here to answer questions or help you. The simulation is structured to give students information, then a binary choice. This post isn't a question of who's "right" about how these experiences are perceived by visitors. Lives are at stake. The responsibility is entirely yours. Maybe, maybe not.

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Grenada Student History Library 48

Museum 2.0

MAY 19, 2016

Designing a new program. For example, when we held community meetings about the development of a new creative town square next to our museum, a group of middle/upper-class moms talked about not feeling safe downtown. Create a structure that values peoples' participation. You're planning a new exhibition.

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Build Community Museum Participatory 35

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 24, 2011

This post features an interview with Sarah Schultz, a museum staffer at one of the institutions Light profiled in the book (the Walker Art Center). Sarah has worked at the Walker since 1992 and is currently the Director of Education and Community Programs. We created a teen arts council, invested in staff, and invested in programming.

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Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

Payne," member of the incredibly popular Santa Cruz roller derby team, wants to pitch a partnership with our museum. But then, it turns out we've already said yes to three other groups for the event in question. My presumption is that as time goes on, our answer to the question of "why to say yes" will change. I want to say yes.

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Phase Library Museum Homeless 38

Museum 2.0

JUNE 27, 2008

The VSA has replaced their keynotes with structured group dialogue. But the VSA has taken an intentional approach to these structured conversations with the goal of putting the (arguably) best part of conferences—the side conversations and hallway discussions—front and center. My first reaction was skepticism. Why are they doing this?

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Studies Associations Houston Museum 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? Museum invites community members to participate in the development and creation of an exhibit. Museum staff create an exhibit by a traditional internal design process, but the exhibit, once open, invites visitors to contribute their own stories and participation.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Last week, Jim Richardson and I hosted MuseumNext , a 24-hour workshop for museum professionals focused on bringing new, wild museum projects into the world. We also ended the entire event with one of my favorite exercises, the Exquisite Corpse game, in which participants co-created comics of their craziest museum dreams.

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Facilitation Reflection Museum Participatory 32