Introducing Abbott Square Part 4: The Most Important Question to Ask in a Capital Campaign

This is the fourth 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.

When you embark on a big capital campaign for a community project, don’t ask how much the project will cost. Ask how much it’s worth.

When we started the Abbott Square project, we focused on how much the project would cost. We were brand new to capital fundraising, and we were nervous about what we could afford. We had no idea what it would take to do a big campaign. We knew we’d have to reach out to new donors who weren’t connected to the MAH. We’d have to find them, get them involved, and get them invested. It all sounded daunting—especially for an organization that had no development director when we started the project.

So we played it cautious. At first, we wanted to fix up the plaza and add some art. We put a $250,000 price tag on that. Then, we realized we wanted to do more, maybe add some food, definitely make spaces for performances, and improve the infrastructure for community festivals and events. That brought the price tag to $1,000,000.

And then I sat down with a major donor—someone I hoped would give a big gift to the project. She changed my whole way of seeing the project. She taught me two crucial things:

1. The project price tag is what it’s worth, not what it costs. She said, “This project is worth more than a million dollars. Having a town plaza, a place to connect in the middle of downtown, a creative gathering place—that’s huge. That’s worth a lot more than a million dollars.”
2. Mega-donors make decisions based on the value and price tag of the project… not the balance in their bank accounts. She said, “Here’s how I look at things. I’m considering a project and let’s say I’ve bought in. I want to pay for a percentage of the project - let’s say 15%. So if you tell me the project costs $1,000,000, I’ll give you $150,000. If you tell me it’s $5,000,000, I’ll give you $750,000.”

Her insights blew my mind… and sent our team back to the campaign drawing board.

We made a crucial shift from scarcity thinking (“What’s the least we could do? What’s the least we could pay?”) to abundance thinking (“What’s the most we could do? What’s the full value of this project?”). Inspired by our supporters’ big dreams for the project’s potential, we started thinking bigger, too.

That donor encouraged us to think about what it would take to make the best possible version of Abbott Square. She pushed us to crunch the numbers on a meaningful food experience. We started to pencil out what it would cost to fill the plaza with great events and art activities every week. We talked to other donors to gauge what they thought the project was worth.

We got to $5,000,000.

We didn’t get there by inflating the budget. We didn’t get there through cost overruns. We got there by finding people who dreamed of a creative gathering place, listening to them, believing in their aspirations, and matching the scale of the project to the value they told us was there. We raised all $5,000,000, ahead of schedule. (And that donor? She gave $800,000.)

Now when people talk with me about their capital campaigns, I don’t ask how much the project will cost. I ask how much it’s worth—to their donors, and more importantly, to their community.

If the project is worth as much or more than it costs, you’re in for a pleasure of a fundraising campaign. If it’s worth less than it costs, hit the pause button and ask yourself—why are we doing this? Who is it for? How can we make it something so valuable to our community that it will feel more than worth the cost?

If you are reading this via email and would like to share a response or question, you can join the conversation here.

Can We Talk about Money? Tweetchat on #RadicalGiving December 18

On December 18, at 10am PT/1pm ET, I invite you to join the denizens of Museum 2.0, Museum Commons, and Incluseum for a 30-min tweetchat about how and why we can give for change at #RadicalGiving. We've each written some preliminary thoughts about giving to prime the tweetchat. Here are my reflections (theirs are at the links above). Please join us on Friday on twitter to talk more.

I remember the first time I asked someone for money. I had just taken the job as director of a museum that was struggling financially. If we didn't raise substantial funds in my first few weeks on the job, we'd have to close our doors.

I stood in my bathroom, looking in the mirror. I tried saying, "Can I count on you for ten thousand dollars?" without choking or bursting out laughing.

The first few times I asked for money--heck, the first few years--it felt awkward. But it also felt amazing. I saw how we were able to garner support for work I was passionate about. How we could build a more relevant and valued museum. How we could expand our impact. How donors could be partners in change. I learned the addictive power of asking.

The more I asked, the more I found myself thinking about giving. I started asking on behalf of other organizations I care about. My husband and I started being more intentional, and bolder, with our own giving. The more I asked, the more people asked me. Even with limited means, I saw how our own giving could make a difference.

At the same time, I became more and more aware of the screwed-up societal inequities that make philanthropy possible. One of the ways we redistribute wealth in an inequitable society is by asking rich people to voluntarily donate. And then we celebrate their generosity, rarely questioning why they had the capacity to give in the first place. Especially in the arts, research shows an alarming imbalance in what kinds of organizations have access to grants and donations. Our system of philanthropy often reinforces the inequity that it theoretically has the power to disrupt.

I decided that in my own limited way, I wanted to contribute in two ways:

1. by developing a strategy for my own giving that helps boost organizations that have powerful impact AND are more subject to philanthropic inequity than others.
2. by trying, where I can, to talk more openly with friends and colleagues about philanthropy.

My husband and I don't have a master plan for our giving, but we have started to identify some things that are important to us. Locally, we give to organizations for which we volunteer. We give to organizations with leaders who we believe in. We try to give early, to help leaders who are starting out to believe in themselves and their ability to raise funds for their work. We try to talk to friends--especially those doing well financially--about integrating philanthropy into financial plans. Yes, it feels awkward. But other people are talking to them about investments and trips and cars. Why shouldn't we feel as comfortable talking about ways to buy into social change?

That's on the personal side. Professionally, I've always struggled with what organizations to support--especially in museums and the arts. I admire many around the world. I can't support a fraction of those I love. How should I narrow the field?

Bearing in mind the data on who has access to philanthropic capital, I've decided to give to organizations that are rooted in and/or led by communities of color. This year, that included: Rainier Valley Corps, a Seattle-based leadership development program for people of color; the Laundromat Project, a New York-based neighborhood arts organization working in communities of color; and the South Asian American Digital Archive, about which I know little but was encouraged to support by a colleague volunteering her time to a project of mine.

These are organizations that inspire me. I've learned from their work and their leaders. I'm trying to more frequently convert my admiration into cash--just as I encourage people to do as a fundraiser for my organization every day.

I've noticed that the more time I spend fundraising as part of my job, the more comfortable I get talking about money. Money has become a currency of my work. I talk about it. I think about it. I treat it the same way I treat ideas and people and objects and stories. It is an essential, powerful part of getting the work done.

I realize that not everyone is comfortable talking about philanthropy, or about money. When we do so in our field, we're often focused on pay inequities for the work that we do. But pay and philanthropy are two separate topics. We should be willing to talk about both.

Talking about money is like talking about death. The more we do it, the more we are in control of our own fates. Talking about money helps us honestly and unflinchingly tackle challenges we face in our society. The more I talk about it, the more power I see it has--and the more I feel I have an ability to influence that power, however small my influence might be.

Many professionals--myself included--have the capacity to give. We give as donors. We give as volunteers. Let's not be silent about this giving. We can be leaders with our dollars and our time. We can influence change when we put our money where our hearts are.

***

As alluded to above, topics like the role of money, or the equivalent (time/work), in bringing about radical inclusive change are little discussed in our field.

We have some questions we want to pose to YOU in an upcoming #RadicalGiving Tweetchat on December 18 at 10am PT / 1pm ET.

Below, find some questions that came from our joint discussion on these subjects and that we will ask for your responses on during the tweetchat:

• Q1A. What is your personal motivation to give to support inclusive change and those who are leading change? 
• Q1B. How do you give? 
• Q2. What do you give your time/money to? Let’s signal boost these projects and efforts! 
• Q3. How can we have these conversations about money more in museums? 
• Q4. If money talks, how can we influence the conversation?

Is Your Museum Selling Out? Try this Game about Revenue and Ethics

A few weeks ago, debates in England got me thinking about the relative ethics of sources of museum revenue. The London Science Museum and the Tate were both under fire for taking sponsorship money from BP (which, at least at the Science Museum, came with some content strings attached). At the same time, Michael Savage wrote a blog post called The stupid fetish of free admission, and the end of the British Museum. In it, he argues that the British Museum's value has been severely compromised by its willingness to lend its artifacts out to other institutions worldwide for a fee. He also wrote a post slamming the Met and other museums for galas that smack of elitism.

I was intrigued by the different ethical questions related to museum income. And so, I present here a simple, irreverent game in which you can play museum director and rank the relative ethics of various sources of museum revenue. If you can't see it below, click here to play.

Most museums earn money with most of these sources--and some may not feel like ethical concerns to you at all. There are wonderful aspects to each of these types of revenue sources. But there are ethical issues too, and it's worth talking about their relative impact.

Share the game with your colleagues... and add your additional thoughts in the comments under the respective revenue sources. Play on.

Is There a Formula for Free Admission?

There are plenty of great arguments out there for WHY to make museums free. But HOW do you do it?

It's much easier for art and history museums than for those museums that rely on admissions for a majority of their income (science, children's). Nationally, admissions income generates only 1-4% of most art museums' annual revenue. Max Anderson, currently director of the Dallas Museum of Art, is a fervent champion for art museums being free. As Anderson put it, "At what point are you going to allow something like 2.5 percent of your revenue to get in the way of mission fulfillment, of serving the fullest potential audience?"

Indeed. I've been curious about free admission for a long time. It's one of the things I'd like to do at our museum in Santa Cruz but haven't made happen yet. The philosophical rationale is simple: if we are really a community institution, an institution for and with the public, we should be free.

The financial rationale is a bit more complex than replacing 1-4% of the budget. There's the potential loss of membership gifts from people who are motivated by receiving free daytime admission. There's the potential need for more floor staff and security (hopefully)! There's the expectation--hopefully backed by a plan--that new philanthropic gifts will outweigh the loss of "value"-motivated members.

We've started looking seriously into making the move to free admission at our museum, and as we've done the research on other institutions, a pattern has emerged. Museums that are successfully moving to free admission appear to use the following formula:

1. Secure a philanthropic gift equivalent to 3-7 years of the lost revenue from daytime admissions.
2. Aggressively market the philanthropic benefits of a free museum. Create a new value proposition for giving that is rooted in the idea that the museum is free and open to all. Recruit new members and donors who are invested in supporting public access. 

When we looked at museums that went free and then switched back to charging, we noticed that either one of these factors was missing or broke down. 

You need the multi-year gift to give you some runway. Even 2% of the budget is hard to replace if there isn't an obvious other source out there. Five-ish years appears to be long enough to build up the replacement philanthropic support for being a free institution.

You need the emphasis on philanthropy because donors are the only ones who are willing to pay for free admission (even in small increments, like Tacoma Children's Museum's Pay as You Will policy). You shouldn't expect gift shop or cafe sales to increase with free admission. When museums are free, people use them more frequently, for more casual reasons. They don't treat the visit as a destination multi-hour experience necessitating a meal and a souvenir.

Does this formula add up?

Any other ingredients you have seen work--or fail--in making a museum free?

If you are reading this via email and would like to share a comment, you can do so: here.

The Next Generation of Major Donors to Museums: Interview with David Gelles

Last week's New York Times special section on museums featured a lead article by David Gelles on Wooing a New Generation of Museum Patrons. In the article, David discussed ways that several large art museums are working to attract major donors and board members in their 30s and 40s.

The article both energized and frustrated me. I was excited to see coverage of an important issue of generational shift, but I was frustrated that it appeared to perpetuate traditional, clubbish standards of donor cultivation. I was curious to learn more about what was behind the article.

Fortunately, I had an outlet for my curiosity. David and I have known each other for a decade. We first met in Washington DC through a mix of social and professional circles. David describes himself as a "museum brat." He is the son of Bonnie Pitman, an extraordinary museum leader and educator who has served as director of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Bay Area Discovery Museum, and as a board member for AAM. David introduced me to one of my museum heroes (and his godmother), Elaine Heumann Gurian. He grew up with a special love for and perspective on museums that makes his commentary particularly well-informed.

We've kept in touch over the years as our careers evolved--mine in museums, his in journalism--and I called David to learn more about the story behind the article.

NS: Why did you want to write this story?

DG: The initial idea really came from me trying to bridge my current beat – finance, Wall Street, mergers and acquisitions -- and thinking about how that can apply to the museum world. It struck me quite obviously that the people I cover on a day-to-day basis, especially the younger bankers, are some of the future major donors for museums. I cover all these guys who make 7, 8 figures a year. Inevitably, these are the people museums are going to want to attract to join the board and make major gifts.

At the same time, from my background in the museum world, I’ve gotten to know some of these boards and board members and see how they operate. By the time my mom was at the Bay Area Discovery Museum, I was in my late teens/twenties, and I started to know the board socially, including Bob Fisher, who is now very involved with SFMOMA. I’ve known Bob for 15 years now. We have some mutual understanding and trust. I knew something about this world.

NS: I struggled with your article because you note that these younger people are looking for something different from their donor experience, but many of the examples--the wining and dining--seems like same old, same old in terms of approach to engagement.

DG: Let me first note that this was very deliberately a piece about recruiting young donors who could give substantial gifts and join at the board level. Programmatic engagement is a very different story.

Wining and dining is always going to be a part of this donor cultivation. Let’s face it – people like to be social and have a drink. But I do think some of these examples are really something very different. For example, in the article I talk about SFMOMA and how they dealt with the museum being closed for renovation. They brought in Yves Behar onto their board, a designer in his 30s. He and some of the other younger board members were absolutely the key to get the museum out of the building and into the city. And it was through the younger patrons that they were able to spread SFMOMA all over the Bay Area.

NS: The article mentions that as part of that project, SFMOMA has an outpost in Los Altos. I have a kind of cynical perspective on that--that Los Altos is an extremely wealthy area and a place for donor cultivation, not for engaging people who might not otherwise experience art and art museums. I worry that some of these examples perpetuate income inequity and the perception of museums as  being for the 1%.

DG: I wrote this article coming to museums on their terms. I’m not trying to make value judgments about whether or not it’s a good thing that museums are cultivating wealthy patrons. The fact is that large institutions are heavily reliant on big donations. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is really not the story I wrote.

I do think it’s fair to ask whether museums have become too complex, too expensive – incredibly complex, incredibly expensive to run and maintain -- and that necessitates an incredible high level of giving. In an age of high income inequity, that means you have to focus on major gifts from major donors. And rising income inequality means fewer individuals have the capacity to make major gifts – not less money to go around, but fewer pocketbooks.

NS: It seems like some of the giant institutions in the article--the MoMAs of the world--will probably be just fine with their Young Collectors groups and so on. But the generational shift seems much more threatening to the vast majority of museums that are smaller, not in huge cities, not big names.

DG: Absolutely. Smaller, less marquee institutions may face problems going forward. I included the Delaware Art Museum as an example of this. 

There are a couple of key demographic trends that impact this. There is wealthy flight back into the cities – that’s left a lot of regional and more rural institutions exposed. There's also the transience issue. It's just not the case anymore that professionals are likely to stay in one place for their entire career, especially with our generation. There's an example from Minneapolis in the article about this--a donor that the Walker Art Center was cultivating who moved to New York. This isn't just happening at the highest income levels: it's generational. In the last five years, I’ve moved from Berkeley to Miami to SF to NY... and I wouldn't be surprised if I move again.

NS: Transience seems like a really interesting issue here. What are some of the ways that you saw organizations addressing this mobility of donors and prospects?

DG: When new money comes to town, institutions need to be pretty quick on their feet. The ICA in Boston probably did a pretty good job of that. They saw a confluence of an emerging biotech community with the fact that the institution was going to expand rapidly and they were able to tap into and engage those academic/biotech leaders as donors.

NS: I'm curious to hear more about your experience working with these young bankers on Wall Street. One of the things you covered a bit in the article is some of the reports out there about how younger donors want to be engaged differently--seeking more accountability, wanting their money to go to active projects as opposed to endowments or long-term operating. Is that something you see when you look at the young bankers you cover on a daily basis?

DG:I didn't do exhaustive reporting on this directly, but yes, I think so. I think of one friend of mine who is involved in several museums in New York City, a very successful young banker who very deliberately chooses smaller museums where he can see his money at work. He funds smaller exhibitions, maybe is able to build a relationship with a curator, feel like his voice is heard. He very intentionally choses that versus being one of 600 in the Met’s Young Patrons group. He likes that intimacy. That’s a kind of accountability in itself.

NS: I guess a bigger question about these bankers is the extent to which they are involved philanthropically, irrespective of focus. It's one of the big questions where I am, near Silicon Valley. There's a lot of stress about whether a culture of philanthropy exists with young wealth, or whether people would rather be spending the money on themselves or deploying it differently, like through impact investing.

DG: There is a culture of young philanthropy in NYC, perhaps in contrast with Silicon Valley. In New York, it’s deeply woven into the fabric of the social scene. The social calendar is dictated by galas. There is party season at the end of the year. And then there’s spring party season. That’s a real part of the social currency of the town – and to attend, you have to buy tickets, buy a table, get invited.

When it comes to the donor experience, other communities could probably learn a thing or two from New York. Take San Francisco: there actually is a stable population of people who built their careers in Silicon Valley. A lot of institutions could find whatever that community is and find ways to create those long-term ties. New York is not the only city with a social calendar.

NS: Sure. But another way to look at it is that these galas and this social calendar perpetuate a kind of cultural elitism that exacerbates class disparity. I think what I struggle with most is the sense I get, throughout the article, that this kind of old-guard cultural elitism is being perpetuated for younger generations.

DG: I don’t think museum parties are perpetuating class disparity.

NS: Really? The other lead article in the Museums section was about protests at the Guggenheim, branding that museum as the "1% museum." What do you think the Guggenheim 1% thing is about?

DG: I could see how some people would view events like those at the Guggenheim and other big institutions as a manifestation of class disparity. And of course it is a reflection of certain haves and have nots in society. But I don’t think the museums and the museums' social programs are what are perpetuating class disparity. It might be a reflection of that disparity, but I don’t think they are responsible. 

NS: I guess as someone who runs a small museum that isn't in New York, I struggle with this kind of coverage that seems to perpetuate the dominance of a story about what museums are that is not reflective of the broader population--of people or museums. I worry that this kind of article problematizes our conversations in smaller communities by focusing attention on examples that aren't really relevant to our experience. 

DG: I'm sorry you feel that way. That's not representative of most of the feedback I've been getting. 

I don’t think the lesson is that you have to have a huge fancy party in the atrium to cultivate new donors. That’s not the point. The point of the article is that there’s a generational shift happening here, the next generation has different philanthropic priorities, and museums are finding a variety of ways to try to build bridges.

NS: That makes sense. I appreciate what you are trying to do. And so let's end on a positive note: in the best case, what do you hope the article will do?

DG: I hope it will serve as a prompt for institutions of all sizes across the country take seriously the need to engage with a new generation of donors and visitors. Though that wasn’t the thrust of the article, it’s really part and parcel of the same thing.

But Bob Fisher alluded to it in the article with his quote about a sleepy museum of antiquities. If you are a sleepy institution, it’s going to be hard to get this generation, our generation, involved at a programmatic and a philanthropic level. I have a hard time saying that, because I love little antiquities in vitrines. But I would have a hard time making that a philanthropic priority.

That’s the tension: how can museums, which are still temples of culture, do a bunch of things at once? They need to do what they have evolved to do—maintain an ever-expanding collection, much of which isn’t on display and needs to be storied, insured, conserved, plus doing their own curating to be programmatically relevant, displaying outside exhibits, and then of course trying to do public programming that gets through the door people who might not want to stare at beautiful little objects like I do. Add to that engaging this new generation – both through programming and as donors. Museums have a lot of work to do.

My hope is that this article demonstrates some of the ways that some big institutions have done it somewhat successfully and also serve as a clarion call to the rest to take it seriously.

How do you grapple with engaging the next generation of major donors at your institution? Are you finding ways to do so that are changing as your museum and your community changes?

Do You Empower People to Take Action? Thoughts on Zoos and Charity:Water

Last week, I learned that ninety-six elephants are killed every day in Africa.

I learned this at a conference for directors of American zoos and aquaria (I was there to give a talk). I was blown away by these zoo directors' collective focus on a singular mission: ensuring the survival of animal species worldwide. The whole day was spent in passionate discussion about research projects, international crises, and serious, cost-intensive efforts for zoos and aquaria to take action to improve the fate of elephants and other species at risk.

I would guess that most people have no idea that this work is happening at zoos. I certainly didn't. I had a vague sense of how conservation fit into their educational missions, but I didn't realize the extent of the direct advocacy and activism happening every day.

And so, rather than talking about community participation in the context of zoo visits, I asked these directors: how can you involve your 180 million visitors in this important conservation work? How can you invite them to participate alongside you to save species?

In museums (and zoos), we frequently stop the conversation with visitors when it comes to action--especially political action. We give people content and then we say, "you decide." This may make sense in strictly education institutions, but it is ridiculous to stop there in organizations that are already engaged in activist work. If you are taking action to save species, why not invite visitors to join you?

We often stop at the educational message out of a sense that it gives visitors agency to do what they want with the information provided. But that means we also stop ourselves from inviting visitors to join us in the work that matters most. It devalues their potential contribution. It robs them of the opportunity to make a difference--and robs us of the opportunity for increased impact and change.

A clear example of this can be found in the difference between the 96Elephants campaign and that of charity: water.

The 96Elephants website is a dramatic educational site created by the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the zoos and aquaria in NYC. The site provides a powerful statement about the slaughter of elephants in Africa, supported with rich media and educational text. But when you get to the part with the call to action, there are two things you can do:

1. "explore the crisis" by reading more about elephants and humans on the site
2. sign a pledge to avoid ivory products and encourage a moratorium on ivory products

These are not exactly life-changing actions.

In contrast, check out charity: water, a non-profit that works to ensure safe drinking water for people around the world. The homepage has three prominent options: 

1. sponsor a water project (which involves making donations of $6,000 - $20,000)
2. start a fundraising campaign 
3. learn about the water crisis

It's no accident that only one of these three is a "learn" box. The first two are opportunities to immediately get involved, either by donating money or raising it. charity: water is incredible at empowering regular people to make a difference. You can donate your birthday to raise funds for clean water. You can track exactly where what projects your money supports. Paul Young, the Director of Digital at charity: water, explains: “We are trying to build a movement of passionate people who are going to form a relationship with us for years…. We want our donors to be advocates. We want them to share content, we want them to feel really connected to their impact and we want them to represent that to all their friends and family.”

A lot has been written about how charity: water stands out online. Just surf through their beautiful site and you'll see how they empower people as participants in raising serious funds for their cause.

Zoos have an entry point that charity: water lacks: the visit. Zoos have millions of visitors--millions of people who care about animals, who are interested in them, and who show up to learn more about them. Some of those visitors, looking at the majestic African elephants, are ready to take action to ensure their survival. They are ready to do more than learn about the crisis and sign a petition. If charity: water can do it for drinking water, surely zoos and aquaria can do it for animals.

Fundraisers often say that "it's an honor to be asked." This can sound disingenuous. But it's true. When we invite people to share our greatest passions, when we invite them to support our most important work, we empower them to be meaningful, powerful participants. That's what building a movement is all about.

My Favorite Fundraising Email

Tis the season for end of the year fundraising letters. Now that I run a museum, I read this mail with particular interest. I'm always curious how organizations represent themselves, what they ask of me, and what they assume.

This is also the season for grappling with where to make donations and how to rationalize those choices. I loved this article by Talia Gibas about effective altruism and the relative value of giving to cultural organizations versus other causes. It is sparking conversation in the arts blogosphere and my own kitchen. Rather than retread the issue, I recommend you just read Talia's post.

I thought about "effective altruism" in a new light today when I received a fundraising email from Machine Project, an amazing experimental art space in LA, entitled "Another Year, Another (Even Larger) Hole in the Floor."

Here is the body of that email:

Dear Friends, 

Mark Allen here, Machine Project founder. As you probably saw, we just did this absurd project where we turned the gallery into a 99 cent store, which led to a disgusting bathroom, which led to a cave, which led to a secret door in the wall, which led to stairs in the middle of the floor, which led to a secret underground theatre. I raised the money to cut the giant hole in our floor and that was great, but I kind of forgot I also needed to fundraise to pay our rent. That wasn't so great!  

So, I'm taking this moment to hypnotize you into becoming a member, or renewing your membership, or making a donation of any amount of money, gold, yachts, or airplanes. Stare deeply into the eyes of the below image...1...2...3....

Excellent. You are completely under the power of this email. Now, without hesitation go directly here and join us for whatever wonders 2014 shall hold. 

best,
Mark and the rest of the elves at Machine Project

This email reminds me that in addition to all the serious work we do to demonstrate the value of the arts to society, it's worth acknowledging the value in providing pleasure, provocation, and joy. This email is a mini-art experience that I felt inspired to pay for. Was that a philanthropic or a discretionary spending choice? Does it matter?

You don't have to argue your way into being apples if you can celebrate being oranges. And if you can do so with a letter as idiosyncratic as your organization, even better.

Happy yacht-donating.

Conviction? Check. Money? Check. So What's Keeping the Arts Sector from Embracing Active, Diverse Audience Engagement?

A couple weeks ago, I had a conversation with a funder that shocked me. If you asked me a month ago what the biggest barrier was to American arts organizations adopting practices that support active engagement in the arts by diverse participants, I would have said two: money and legitimacy. There are more than enough people in the field who are enthused about active participation, and recent reports like the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's Fusing Arts, Culture, and Social Change have sparked field-wide conversations about how philanthropy might more equitably support institutions that serve marginalized communities. We have the arguments and the energy. So what's missing? The funding and validity that a major foundation can provide. I've always assumed that slow-moving, big, traditional, white- and upper-class-serving arts organizations are buoyed in their practices by funders who tacitly approve of their activities with their donations. Move the money, and the field will move.

Turns out it's not that simple.

I was talking with Ted Russell, a senior program officer from the James Irvine Foundation, one of the biggest arts funders in California. I asked how their new Exploring Engagement Fund (of which my museum was an early grant recipient) was going. He paused. He said they've been somewhat disappointed by the applications they've received and surprised by the mixed response in the field to their new approach to arts grant-making. Some have raised the question of whether the Irvine Foundation is "too far ahead of the field" with a grantmaking strategy that focuses on active arts engagement for all Californians. 

In the fall of 2011, the Irvine Foundation released a high-profile new arts strategy that focuses on the "who, how, and where" of arts engagement, with a focus on reaching nontraditional audiences through active participation in nontraditional venues. This was coupled by a shift in their funding, with all foundation arts funding moving into the Exploring Engagement Fund that requires grantees to address at least two of the "who, how, where" goals in each project.  

I was thrilled when this happened for two reasons. First, and close to home, it meant the possibility that the Irvine Foundation might become a funder of the work we do at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History around active arts participation and social bridging. But secondly, and more importantly, it meant validation for active participation in the arts. It meant dollars for marginalized communities. It meant opportunities for experimental practice. It meant one of the "big guys" was moving in what I see as the right direction towards making arts institutions more relevant to our diverse communities. It felt like a lucky break for the things I care most about.

But Ted made me realize it's not that easy. It is just as hard to be an activist funder as it is to be an activist organization. For the Exploring Engagement Fund to be successful, the Irvine Foundation needs really good applicants who WANT to do the kind of experimental, forward-thinking work that Arts Program Director Josephine Ramirez describes in her vision for the program. I assumed, given the energy around active participation and diversifying audiences that exists in the field, that there were lots of prospective grantees like my organization just waiting for this kind of opportunity to open up. It seems that the Irvine Foundation assumed similarly, and that the results have thus far not lived up to their (or my) hopes.

Why not? 

I don't think the problem is the Irvine Foundation's approach, or even their communication around it. The "who, how, where" strategy is clear and well-reasoned. In a lot of ways, the Irvine Foundation's challenge is comparable to that which any organization that changes its strategy faces. Who exactly is the market for this new approach to arts funding? Just as an institution that changes its focus has to either attract a new audience or engage its traditional audience in a change process, the Irvine Foundation has to execute this new strategy in partnership with its grantees.

To be successful, I see three tasks ahead for the Irvine Foundation:

1. Help traditional arts institutions understand and connect with the new strategy. Ted told me that the Irvine Foundation staff have learned that they have to work on how they communicate about the new strategy and support capacity-building for organizations to be able to be successful in the new paradigm. Longtime grantees have relied on Irvine for years for one kind of support and now see themselves being thrust into a different set of expectations. Even organizations that care about community engagement could be stymied by the creative challenge to hit two of the three "who, how, where"s with a single two-year project. It's not surprising that they push back against the changes. Part of me wonders whether it's worthwhile to invest more money in trying to convince traditional arts institutions to embrace active engagement--but then I realize that that's the work I've been trying to do for a long time. I think a strong way to do this is by reaching out to program staff directly. I know there are people within traditional arts institutions who will be empowered by Irvine's new strategy--people who feel frustrated that their passion for serving low-income families is met with lip service, or people who are pigeonholed into an education zone because of their enthusiasm for active art-making. I'm hopeful that those individuals and departments will go to their development directors, who are spinning their brains around trying to repackage their organizations in the "who, how, where" paradigm, and offer a way forward for funding AND increased priority on Irvine's vision for the arts in California.
2. Actively recruit new grantees who may now be eligible or appropriate for funding. I have no doubt that there are many incredible artists and organizations that could do wonderful things with funding from the Irvine Foundation. But those individuals and institutions may not be on Irvine's map... and Irvine may not be on theirs. The kinds of organizations that focus on active art-making and social practice are different from those that focus on arts consumption. Organizations that work in nontraditional venues may not label themselves as arts institutions. Organizations that engage marginalized communities and have long been shunned by major funders might not attend to the strategy shifts of those foundations. Just as working with "nontraditional" audiences often requires more intensive forms of engagement, working with nontraditional grantees will require the same.
3. Have courage. I believe in a few years we will point to Irvine as a catalyst for significant change in the arts sector in California and around the country. But being on the leading edge is scary. It requires confidence that the grantees and the projects ARE out there. It requires turning a deaf ear to complaints from institutions that aren't willing to engage audiences in what Irvine feels are the most effective ways. I have no illusions that the Irvine Foundation (or any foundation) will continue to put forward an approach that works personally for me or my institution. But I sincerely hope that every foundation will continue to be thoughtful and courageous in constructing grantmaking strategies that they feel will do serious good in the community. 

When funders change their ways, it matters. It ruffles the landscape. It lays the groundwork for real change. And sometimes that might mean "being ahead of the field" with a big old carrot that gets some stuck organizations moving forward. 

Yes, Audience Participation Can Have Significant Value

For years, I'd give talks about community participation in museums and cultural institutions, and I'd always get the inevitable question: "but what value does this really have when it comes to dollars and cents?" I'd say that these techniques support audience development, repeat visitation, membership, maybe could even attract new kinds of donors... but I didn't have numbers to back it up.

Now, I do. Or at least preliminary ones. Last week, the local newspaper did a really generous front-page story on my museum (the MAH) and the changes here over the past eight months since I started. In the summer and fall of 2011:

• attendance increased 57% compared to the same period in 2010
• new membership sales increased 27% compared to the same period in 2010
• individual and corporate giving increased over 500% compared to 2010

We've also had incredible increases in media coverage of museum events (like that Sentinel article), new programmatic partnerships with several community groups, and private rentals of the museum for community events. After a really painful financial starting point, we've been in the black every month and have established a $100,000 operating reserve.

I'm incredibly proud of all the staff, trustees, volunteers, collaborators, visitors, and members who have made this happen. We started the summer with no money and a strategic vision to be a thriving, central gathering place. We just started to try to live up to that vision, partnership by partnership, activity by activity. We're hearing on a daily basis that the museum has a new role in peoples' lives and in the identity of the county. It feels pretty amazing.

It also feels amazing to see some of my theories validated in this way--that giving people the opportunity to actively participate does really transform the way they see the institution and themselves. I can't say that any one experience--working on a collage with other visitors, swinging on a hammock, discovering a participatory display for pocket artifacts in the bathroom--directly contributed to increased attendance and giving. They all have in concert, and they build on each other. We have a LONG way to go to really become that "thriving, central gathering place" in our vision, but it's immensely gratifying to see that we are on the way. It's always shocking to me when a visitor will say, "it feels so comfortable here," or "I love how it's opened up to the community." I can't believe it when I hear words from the strategic plan come out of people's mouths.

There are at least three significant things that have contributed to our success thus far:

1. A clear strategy. Our team focused this year on just three things: making the museum more comfortable, hosting new participatory events, and partnering wherever possible. The broad mandate to "open it up" was backed up by a lot of activity on multiple fronts--comment boards, participation-specific internships, program formats that allow us to slot in enthusiastic volunteers easily, more flexible uses of some museum spaces, and a range of options and opportunities for collaborators. 
2. Community response. Every time we've tried something new, we've gotten lots of support in terms of media coverage and enthusiastic attendance. This community was ready for a museum that reflected the unique creative identity of Santa Cruz. We try to design every new program with a partner organization with an audience for whom that kind of content or format is already appealing. We've had a few programmatic misfires, but for the most part, our new projects are succeeding because the newspaper wants to feature them in the "best bets" and people are game to come out and try. It helps that we're in a small market and we have focused on two audiences--families with kids 5-12 and culturally-inclined adults without children--for whom demand exceeds supply in terms of local opportunities for affordable cultural experiences. 
3. Trust and love from our old friends. Our long-standing donors and board of trustees have been amazingly enthusiastic about the changes at the museum. They supported us financially when we were on the skids, and they are continuing to support the future of the institution. They are excited to see new people in the museum and to hear their friends talk about the museum in a new way. Almost to a person, our donors understand that we are reaching people with a variety of modalities and that they don't have to personally like every experience or element to feel great about the service the museum is doing in the community. We're starting a new campaign based on the "renewed ambition" of the museum and we feel confident about the future.

All of this said, I know we still have a lot of work to do--this truly is just the beginning. Going into the new year, we're focusing on:

• making exhibitions and collections as participatory as our public programs
• transforming our volunteer gallery host program into something more interactive 
• helping members feel more like part of the family with us and with each other
• finding and testing out innovative formats for participatory history experiences (it's been easier to get started on the art side, and we are a museum of art AND history)
• figuring out ways to measure impact beyond anecdotes, especially with an incredibly limited budget/staff for evaluation
• pushing forward on partnerships that allow us to reach and support marginalized people in our community

In a week when I'm super-stressed out about the work ahead, it's good to take a minute and celebrate what we've done. Thank you all for helping shape my thinking on museums and for your smart, critical, energetic eye on this work. And the next time someone questions the benefits of letting audiences actively participate, send them to Santa Cruz.

Fundraising as Participatory Practice: Myths, Realities, Possibilities

"Fundraising is about relationships."

"The key to fundraising is listening."

"Development works when you are responsive to the donor's needs, not just presenting your own."

Anyone who has worked in fundraising has likely heard these missives again and again. But as a creative type who has recently taken on an executive role, I've been fascinated, shocked even, to learn that the folks in the development department have been singing the relationship chorus for so long.

On the one hand, this is awesome. I'm finding myself really enjoying fundraising because it is fundamentally about inspiring people to participate--and to do so in a way that is significant both for the organization and for themselves. As a designer, I'm always trying to ensure that participatory activities, however casual, impact both the participant and the organization. When someone gives money, that's almost always a given.

On the other hand, there's something deeply weird about the fact that I didn't know that fundraising was about relationships before I started doing it. If fundraisers are so keen on relationships, why weren't they the first into social media and participatory projects on behalf of their organizations? Even stranger, why are they so often the most opposed to such relationship-oriented efforts when extended to everyday members or visitors? I've led many meetings and workshops on building relationships with audience members in which development officers are the least comfortable with fostering open, two-way engagement with participants.

What's going on here? I suspect there are two contradictory issues behind this confusion:

1. While relationships are about giving and receiving, fundraising strategies frequently rely on a scarcity model in which gifts and thank you's are finite and defined. In a world in which donors are traunched, relationship "benefits" are meted out to individuals based on their level of giving. You can't have a personal relationship with someone who hasn't earned it through appropriate gifts--you'd be "wasting" your attentiveness.
2. While relationships are about trust and open communication, donor communication is perceived as very high stakes. Fundraisers therefore want to sculpt the message as much as possible. Too much openness could lead to someone being unhappy and withdrawing their participation.

Interestingly, in the participatory design model I'm more familiar with on the Web and in collaborative project design, the fundamental issues are different. It tends to be easy to communicate openly and express appreciation abundantly when you are co-creating an exhibition or a community art project. There's no such thing as too much community cheerleading or engagement. What's hard is to ensure that people make meaningful contributions and to help participants advance from one-time actions into ongoing involvement--two things that fundraisers are pretty darn good at.

I'd love to see a book, blog, or conference that focuses broadly on building relationships in cultural organizations--with donors, staff, visitors, audiences, members. I think there's a lot we have to learn from each other to get to a place where those relationships are as genuine and meaningful as possible. Authentic relationship-building is something I've long debated with friends in the education, exhibition, and online worlds. And now I feel silly that I haven't more actively engaged with fundraisers about it.

Kickstarter: Funding Creativity in a New (Old) Way

Let's say you want to make a documentary about the World Cup. Or sail around the world. Or produce an art exhibit with elementary school students. Or build an open-source PCR machine for copying DNA. How would you fund it?

Kickstarter is a website for creative folks to find funding for their dream projects. The site doesn't link them with foundations or grant applications; instead, it makes it easy to reach out to regular people for donations of as little as $1. Currently, the site supports US-based projects only. A Kickstarter project has three parts:

1. Project description. This is typically a video plus text, although some projects just use a simple image instead of a video. Project creators can also write updates (a kind of project-specific blog) to share either privately with backers or openly with all.
2. Funding goal. Kickstarter is an "all or nothing" funding scheme. If you make or exceed your goal in the timeframe you set, you get the money. If not, the backers' credit cards are not charged. Kickstarter makes money by taking a percentage on projects that succeed.
3. Pledge levels. While backers can fund you at whatever level between $1 and $10,000 they desire, most Kickstarter projects offer rewards at discrete pledge levels to motivate people to give specific amounts.

For the most part, Kickstarter projects are managed by young, creative individuals with small projects (and smallish funding goals) in mind. When I first started exploring the site, I assumed it was mostly a place for charismatic hipsters and a few star artists with enough social media savvy and clever video production capabilities to produce enticing pitches. But then I started finding more humble projects related to broader issues, and I began to see Kickstarter as a potentially fascinating space for museums and cultural institutions.

Why should cultural and arts organizations care about Kickstarter?

• Kickstarter is a symptom of changes in donor culture. They are tapping into a large audience of people who don't care whether their donations are tax-deductible or not. Kickstarter backers aren't investing in companies or projects. They are making donations--in most cases, to entities that are not non-profits. These backers are excited by specific, near-term projects and want to support them directly. These are people who like to have a personal connection to a specific project and may be less interested in museum-style donor levels that are more about general (and vague) support for the institution.
• Kickstarter backers are mostly young adults with money who are broadly interested in supporting the arts and creative practice. While arts professionals moan about the erosion of support and the disinterest of younger potential donors, Kickstarter is a fertile ground for research into the kinds of projects, presentation styles, and pledge gifts that appeal to this much-desired demographic. (For example, check out the charming way this comic book artist personalizes his relationship with potential backers in this video, minute 2.)
• Kickstarter may be a good place to fund small experiments or to jump start campaigns. The all-or-nothing funding approach makes many project creators conservative about their ambitions. A documentary film crew might use Kickstarter to pay for travel costs, or a dance troupe to pay for recorded music so they don't have to hire musicians for their live performances. While Kickstarter is not likely to be the best solution for a huge fundraising project, it could be the perfect way to fund a discrete part of a capital project with high public appeal or a small wacky experiment that doesn't fit into the budget.

Success on Kickstarter: A Tale of Two Projects

To illustrate some of the key elements of a successful project on Kickstarter, I want to compare two projects that look very different on the surface: Jim Babb's Socks Inc. game and the Neversink Valley Museum's capital campaign launch materials. Please take a look at their pages and then come back.

In their presentation, these projects appear completely different. Jim's is a fun game involving sock puppets. He has a very catchy video pitch and pledge gifts that include things like a "sock clone" of you ($200, three backers so far). The museum's page is much simpler. There's no video, just a picture of the planned new community cultural center. The pledge levels include membership to the museum and traditional donor gifts--books, tickets to a party, naming opportunities.

At first glance, I assumed that a project had to be hip like Jim's to succeed on Kickstarter. But both these projects made their funding goals ($11,000 for the museum, $6,000 for the socks), and in the case of the museum, director Seth Goldman told me they raised an additional $7,000 for their campaign from less web-savvy people who preferred to write checks instead of donating online through the Kickstarter site.

So what do these projects have in common?

• They picked sensible funding goals. Seth needed $25,000 for the capital campaign materials, but he felt that $10,000 was more reasonable in terms of what he could drum up online. After researching the fees and determining the true costs of all the gifts, he set the amount at $11,000 so they could net $10,000 for the campaign. Similarly, Jim focused on what he actually needed (and it looks like he will far exceed his goal in the time allotted). Not all projects are successful--I recommend this blog post for a sobering look at what happens when a project doesn't quite make it.
• They developed pledge levels that were scalable and supported the project appropriately. Some projects on Kickstarter offer such fabulous thank you gifts that it's unclear how the creator will actually recoup any money for the project. Jim and Seth were very smart with their gifts and pledge levels. Jim noted to me that $25 is "the sweet spot" for donations, so that's the level at which he offered his first physical item (a patch featuring one of the socks from the game). Seth made the same decision--at $25 you get a book as well as a museum membership. Both of these projects offer gifts at levels below $25, but they're "free" for the project (membership in the museum's case, digital thank you's and behind the scenes blog access for the socks). Jim also told me that "the most important gifts to think about are between $25 to $250, since people donating amounts higher than that are contributing because they really want to support the project." In the museum's case, Seth capitalized on this by inviting funders at the $200 to a party hosted by a board member on the capital committee. As Seth noted, "we reversed the party concept. Instead of saying there's an admission fee for the fundraising party, we'll make it if you give $200 on Kickstarter the reward will be an invite to the party."
• They were willing to aggressively "beat the drums" to promote their projects. Both Jim and Seth made it clear that you have to do the work marketing your project to be successful. For Seth, that meant emails and frequent Facebook updates out to museum members, whereas for Jim it involved a Twitter campaign and some guerrilla marketing to players of his past games. Jim noted that only 20% of his backers were people outside of his professional and personal networks, so it's essential to focus on people you know and not on "going viral." Jim told me "people are much more likely to check out a project and donate to it if a personal friend encourages them to pledge, so start there and encourage people to share in their communities." In Seth's case, this paid real dividends as the adult children of some museum members began donating and spreading the word. In one case, a man in Texas donated $1,000 to the campaign. Seth contacted him to thank him and express his incredulity that a stranger from far away would make such a gift, but then the man explained that his mother was a museum member and that she loved the museum and he wanted to do this as a gift for her. She had forwarded the link from the museum newsletter to her son, and he had taken it from there.
• People who pledge have the opportunity for ongoing engagement with the project. The thank you gifts are invitations for deeper involvement over time. For Jim and the sock puppets, backers have the opportunity to test the game and eventually develop new levels and missions for other players. At the Neversink Valley Museum, every backer at the $15 level or higher received a museum membership. As Seth commented, "I can give you a better answer next year for how fabulous this is. A lot of people who wanted to come to the party got all the benefits below $200… so now they’re all members of the museum. So we’ll see how connected they are to the institution, will they renew their memberships, and will they donate above basic membership when it comes time to renew." The hope is that Kickstarter is the beginning not just of a project but of new relationships that can support the organization over time.

Could you imagine using Kickstarter at your institution? What do you see on the site that helps you think about how your organization raises money or communicates with audiences?