Posted by Cara
Library staff made a definite impact at ACM this week! All 11 of us talked to folks during the conference who knew all about us and said "oh, you're from the
library." It was a great feeling and we received a warm welcome and amazing support and positive feedback from the 600 or so children's museum (CM) folks who were there. It seems to be a tight-knit community and I can say without hesitation that our friendly, service- and team-oriented staff fit right in!
There are some terrific posts outlining many, many details of the conference,
so I'm going to change it up a bit and create my
ACM 2017 Top 10 List to create a compilation of what I learn, saw, experienced, absorbed, and wasn't sure about, at the conference. Thanks for reading!! (Btw, this is in no special order.)
- Non-profits 101. Most CMs are non-profits which are different structurally than our City org. They appear have a very influential Board of Directors to which the organization reports. In a lot of cases the Board seems to have a lot of say in the funding, educational goals, exhibits, events, etc., of the museum. A lot is expected of the Board, such as regular and sizeable donations, connections to the community especially to people of "wealth," hard work advocating and sustaining the museum. A CEO or ED (Executive Director) leads the team and their main function is to (constantly) raise money for the museum. That's what they and their executive team do, again constantly! The Directors of Education, Marketing, Exhibits, Customer Experience, etc., handle the day-to-day and museum functions.
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| Sample of Non-profit fundraising & project schedule. Notice how much they raised! |
- Marketing magic. CM marketing is similar to library marketing in that depending on size of the org, sometimes the job falls on one person, sometimes there's a whole department. In any case, a marketing plan is crucial and the approach should be multi-faceted. Social media, print, media, billboards, radio, etc. all come into play. Forging relationships with the media can be a gold mine as they often turn to you for stories, providing free marketing. Use a communications/marketing style guide with standardized logos, branding, color palettes, talking points, etc. so everyone is ON THE SAME MESSAGING PAGE. Change up your marketing materials every 3-5 years. Of course there are innumerable examples of good branding...
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- Being small makes you nimble. Several smaller museums presented and hearing their story was important because we're small too. The main point is that being small gives you flexibility to act, change, try new things, and take risks. Staff roles are also flexible and the right person can step in when needed, regardless of title. Community engagement takes on a different flavor with potentially more grass roots and hands on involvement from the community.
- Organizational culture can make or break you. Time and money should be spent on developing your culture and organization values! Some definitions of culture are "what is it like to work here," your DNA, work vibe, how do we behave, everything not in the employee handbook, how we act with each other and patrons. Organizational culture is like gravity; you can't see it but it's there. There is no single way to unify your culture, but unifying is important. Use strategies that bring people together across the boundaries of the org chart. Culture should run deep and transcend staffing, budget, and leadership changes. Org leaders should lead by example and set the tone, but let others define the culture, especially front line staff. Use engagement strategies to engage and create an inclusive culture.
Danger done right. Orgs should take on risk as it offers the promise of providing awesome and unique experiences. Risk is scary;it's okay to be afraid. Be honest with stakeholders when taking on risk - have a clear reason for the need to do so and why. Some of risk is about being lucky. There are different kinds of risk in museums - big picture risk (the whole project is risky; you don't have the money, right or enough staff), content risk (offering a controversial exhibit), safety risks (using hammers and nails). Best advice for answering questions about risk: If we don't do [XYZ] there is a greater risk of kids not being able to push their limits and learn about themselves.
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Children's Museum of Manhattan's Muslim culture exhibit was a big risk in a post 9/11 city. In the end it was carefully planned, award-winning and hugely successful!
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| Guide and trust families in "dangerous" exhibits. The can do it! |
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Recognizing donors is big business. With extensive fundraising going on, we must recognize donors. A recognition policy is a MUST HAVE and allows you to keep it simple and standard with donors, and say no. Most agree don't allow donor logos on exhibits. Can opt to make just a few sizes of donor signs so there's no negotiating on look and size. Find fun ways to thank and recognize donors - mascots, gift baskets, interesting and colorful quarterly reports, free tickets. Naming in perpetuity has to be A LOT of money.
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| Donor key for individual donors. |
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| Oh yes, we have stairs too! |
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| There's even a flow chart for recognition! |
- A fishbowl is a great place to have a conversation. In the spirit of fun and innovation, ACM offered several presentation formats - very different. A fishbowl is a discussion with 4 seats in the middle and a circle of people outside it. It starts with 4 presenters and then anyone who wants to talk (there were a few) take a seat inside the fishbowl and stays there, and someone else leaves. This was used for Org Culture topic. Needless to say, I did not enter the fishbowl. A firestarter consists of rapid fire presentations on thought-provoking topics - then the same rapid fire Q&A follows.(This was used for Donor recognition topic).
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| The fishbowl |
- You can buy a children's museum. The exhibit hall was small at the conference. Exhibitors fell into a few categories - architect and building design companies; exhibit and concept design companies (like Gyroscope); lots of companies selling stuff to buy for your museum (Imagination Playground); and a sprinkling of service companies offering things like tickets kiosks.
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| Gyroscope were conference rock stars - definitely have a good reputation and were mentioned in several workshops. |
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| Kidspace has this - we want this! |
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| Draw and upload your drawing to screen. Expensive but cool! |
- Vu Le is a non-profit hero! Check out the other blog posts about this program. This guy way so good! He described (in very funny way!) how the non-profit culture is characterized by a lot of things, especially guilt about making money and martyrdom (the ED who wouldn't replace their duct taped chair because it would be too expensive). He was an inspirational genius and, while I don't think we have quite that same culture here at the Library, his message was that we are awesome and can be even more awesome by recognizing our worth, stopping the guilt, and standing up to those who might knock us down - including donors who may make unreasonable/unrealistic demands. Good stuff!
We got this! There is no doubt that the best part of this conference was spending time with our wonderful, fun, caring, and crazy-excited staff. As Library representatives and ambassadors, they displayed an amazing professionalism and work ethic that is second to none. I am so proud to be part of the library team and want to thank every single library staff member for everything you have done and will do to make our 2nd floor dream a reality!
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| 14 hours into the day, we wrangled everyone for one last photo. And why not throw in some yoga?! :] |
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