Sector 4: Assessment and Planning

Getting the answer to this question is
goal of the fourth sector.

Recognizing that the prioritization strategy Stacy Klingler and I have laid out over the past four weeks is technically an assessment process, there is still much more that can be done to assess your situation and plan future goals.  And, much has been written about strategic planning, including my chapter in the Small Museum Toolkit.  But in short, to move a museum forward, you need to know what assets you have, understand the gaps, identify what you want to accomplish, and outline the steps to get you there. 

Lucky for small museum folks, there are three organizations who want to help you in this effort and propel you to meet best practices.  The American Association for State and Local History, the American Alliance of Museums, and Heritage Preservation have developed assessment tools that help you put work in perspective, educate board and staff, kick start planning, and provide funding leverage. 

The Standards and Excellence Program for History Organization (StEPs) “is a voluntary assessment program for small- and mid-sized history organizations. The program, created by AASLH with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), encourages awareness and achievement of national standards.” This self-directed assessment process is a great way to get the ball rolling.

If you feel like the opinions of an outside professional and a more intensive self assessment process is what your organization needs, then you should look at MAP and CAP.

The Museum Assessment Program (MAP) “helps small and mid-sized museums strengthen operations, plan for the future and meet national standards through self-study and a site visit from a peer reviewer. IMLS-funded MAP grants are non-competitive and provide $4,000 of consultative resources and services to participating museums.”

Heritage Preservation’s Conservation Assessment Program (CAP) “provides a general conservation assessment of your museum's collection, environmental conditions, and site. Conservation priorities are identified by professionals who spend two days on-site and three days writing a report. The report can help your museum develop strategies for improved collections care and provide a tool for long-range planning and fundraising.”  CAP provides over $7,000 in consultative resources and services, sending a conservator and historic preservation professional (if applicable) on site. 

Ultimately, with an assessment in hand and an organizational commitment to keep moving forward, you will have board, staff, and volunteers on the “same page” which promotes efficiency and strengthens your chances for successful implementation of goals.  You also have a good benchmark to help you see when you’ve arrived at a goal.  You can look back and demonstrate for others where you’ve been which will fuel the new momentum you have.

And, you have a case to make to funders.  Do you need collections storage shelving? A new computer?  Funding for a museum educator?  Any one of these formal assessments offers excellent justification in a grant application, foundation proposal, or case statement for a potential donor.

With just one of these formal assessments in hand, you will know what kind of institutional planning you need – strategic or operational – and you will have a sense of what planning time frame you need.  To take the next planning steps, read “DIY Strategic Planning” in the Small Museum Toolkit, or tap the rich library of planning publications.  Here are a few to get you started. Good luck!

Recommended Resources

Alliance for Nonprofit Management

 

Bryson, John M. and Farnum K. Alston. Creating and Implementing Your Strategic Plan: A Workbook for Public and Nonprofit Organizations, 2^nd Edition. San Francisco: Josey-Bass, 2005.

How To Do Traditional Brainstorming

Lord, Gail Dexter and Kate Markert. The Manual of Strategic Planning for Museums. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2007.

Merritt, Elizabeth E. and Victoria Garvin, editors. Secrets of Institutional Planning. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 2007.

McNamara, Carter. Field Guide to Nonprofit Strategic Planning and Facilitation. Minneapolis: Authenticity Consulting, LLC, 2003.

Skramstad, Harold and Susan Skramstad.  Handbook for Museum Trustees. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 2003.

Strategic Planning for Smaller Nonprofit Organizations

Working in museums for nearly 20 years, Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko has been a museum director since 2001. Cinnamon became CEO of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine in 2009. Before that, she was the director of the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where she led the organization to the National Medal for Museum Service.  

Sector 3: Solidifying Your Reputation

People will always talk so do what you
can to control the message.

As you consider the relationships you have built or are building, take a moment and consider how people in the community describe your organization.  What kind of reputation does it have?  Is the museum considered quiet and sleepy?  Mysterious?  Stagnant?  Or is it known as innovative and active in the community?  I think all of us prefer the latter description, but not all of us can be assured of it. 

When considering the work before you, knowing your reputation and improving or enhancing it is critical to your success.  There are four strategic ways you can solidify your reputation:

Start taking steps for future fundraising campaigns and annual appeals by establishing or reconnecting with a donor base.  Set up coffee chats, special visits or tours of the museum, attend public events and programs to be seen and meet people, or simply network through friends and family and connect with your base of donors, e.g. members.  Make sure donors know who you are and what the museum’s mission is and be sure to stay in contact.  People give to people and when your donors know who the face of the organization is, their giving comfort improves.

Once you’ve had some “face time” with donors and feel like you understand why people give to the museum, consider a membership drive or a small capital campaign to test the waters.  You, of course, have sizeable funding needs, but instead of tackling them all at once, carve out a smaller campaign that matches your staffing, board, and volunteer capacity.  Establish a goal for members acquired or funds raised and don’t let up until the goal is met.  Then, thank the donors, steward the relationships, and keep them primed and ready for future giving opportunities. 

Separate from the fundraising strategies but critical to your success is your relationship to the local media.  Pay close attention to the messages used to describe the museum and the topics local media focus on when reporting about museums/your museum.  Get in the habit of crafting regular press releases with consistent messaging.  Get to know local journalists and editors – make sure they know they can call you directly when news relates to your organization.  And, never lose sight of how the museum is described in social media circles.  Respond to negative comments with positive language that invites the author to return again.  Develop some kind of regular posting schedule that pushes interesting information about the museum to social media audiences.  A united, consistent messaging process will influence your reputation in lasting ways.

And lastly, and by far the most important way to solidify your reputation is to be kind to everyone.  It sounds ridiculously simple, but one or two bad days and you’ve created a ripple effect among community members who may think you’re inaccessible, disinterested, or worse, rude, and they will make decisions about supporting the museum based on their interactions with you.  If you live in a small town, this extends to the grocery aisle, the day care drop off point, and so much more.  This visibility can be a drag, but it’s also an easy way to draw positive attention to your museum that will ultimately attract support for all of those amazing projects you have lined up.

Next week, you’ll read about the fourth and final sector, assessment and planning, and we’ll see you at the American Alliance of Museums annual meeting in Baltimore!

Working in museums for nearly 20 years, Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko has been a museum director since 2001. Cinnamon became CEO of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine in 2009. Before that, she was the director of the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where she led the organization to the National Medal for Museum Service.

Overwhelmed? At a Crossroads?: New Ideas for Prioritizing Work

 

It's easy to get lost when you reach crossroads. 
Having a prioritization strategy will always take
you where you want to go.

Ever find yourself overwhelmed by the work in front of you?  Or sometimes you find yourself at a crossroads about how to leverage scarce resources and time?  We’ve all been there.  Good news though.  Expanding on the ideas that led to the creation of the Small Museum Toolkit, Stacy Klingler and I have developed a four-part prioritization tool that is mindful of the world you work in and points you toward the key areas where you need to concentrate energy, time, and money.

Over the next four weeks on this blog and at the upcoming American Alliance of Museums annual meeting in Baltimore, we’ll lay out this prioritization tool that focuses on these four sectors:

• Developing audiences;
• Building an internal coalition;
• Solidifying  your reputation;
• Assessment and planning.

Also during our AAM session, we’ll share our thoughts on small museum leadership and describe what makes a small museum leader special.  At the end of this session, through group discussion and personal planning, you will leave energized about your work and personally nourished by the collaborative experience we’ve planned for you.

Hope to see you in Baltimore and at our session Small Museum Leadership Considered on Monday, May 20 at 8:45 am.  We’ll also follow up on this topic on Tuesday morning during the Small Museum Table Talks at 7:30 am.  Bring your coffee, your granola bar, whatever your morning elixir, and come chat with us and other small museum enthusiasts who will share what works in small museum settings. The table facilitators really want to hear from you as you reflect on the ideas and strategies you have employed.

Working in museums for nearly 20 years, Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko has been a museum director since 2001. Cinnamon became CEO of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine in 2009. Before that, she was the director of the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where she led the organization to the National Medal for Museum Service.

Getting to Know Your Building: Writing an Operations Manual

Are you new to managing a small museum? I bet you feel comfortable with your area(s) of expertise, but managing a facility might not be a part of your life or work experiences.

If you do not have something like an operations manual at your facility now, then you and your facilities manager should begin assembling one immediately. (I inherited my building from the county with nothing but a set of original architectural drawings.) If precious little material exists to get you started, begin by documenting what the facilities manager is doing or having done. Knowing exactly when lightbulbs get changed (and approximately how many hours you get out of them) will, in the end, give you an excellent idea of your building’s life cycle. This documentation will tell you when regular maintenance needs to occur and what tasks need doing at the change of seasons. Record everything, even the seemingly unimportant—it is impossible to know immediately upon occupying a new (to you) building where everything is or what everything represents. At some point, you will identify the spigot for which you have found the water shutoff.

The following items would be a great start for a basic operations manual:

1. As-built drawings of the building

• Building map (floor plan)
• Lighting map
• Alarm map
• All rooms with numbers or names
• Circuit map (detailing which circuit breakers control which outlets and lights)
• Plumbing map or information about the locations of shutoff valves
• Fire-suppression system map

2. Major modification or renovation description and drawings

3. Basic maintenance schedule of building and grounds

• Daily cleaning
• Weekly cleaning
• Monthly cleaning
• Deep cleaning schedule
• Filter change in HVAC system
• Periodic tree-trimming and gutter-cleaning schedule
• Major grounds keeping activities, such as fertilization, annual plantings, leaf removal

4. Other documentation

• Material safety data sheets for all chemicals used in the building
• Warranty or purchase records for building tools and equipment
• Manuals or other operating information for the museum’s HVAC system
• Contact and contract information for vendors who regularly service the building
• Key and alarm-code policy and current key log
• Notes on discoveries that the facilities manager has made

In addition to the basics, you may wish to include things like environmental readings taken from data loggers or hygrothermographs, periodic light-level readings, floor-load information, and elevator sizes and load capacities. In fact, if you and your facilities manager have time to fill out the American Association of Museums Registrars Committee’s General Facilities Report, you will have a great deal of vital information about your facility all in one place.

Be sure to keep your operations manual up to date. Any time you have major work done at your facility, make sure that you gather all this important information and place it in the operations manual, purging superseded information. Review your operations manual yearly with your facilities manager to ensure that it has all the information you need.

Claudia J. Nicholson has thirty years of experience in history museums and historical agencies, as well as a master’s degree in history museum studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program. An experienced curator, she became executive director, fundraiser, curator, educator, press officer, and tour guide at the North Star Museum of Boy Scouting and Girl Scouting in North St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2005. Her chapter was written based on her experience converting a non- purpose-built structure into a history museum.