Who’s Coming? A New Free Toolkit for Respectful Audience Surveying

Michaela Clark-Nagaoka surveying visitors at a MAH event.

Note: this is cross-posted on OF/BY/FOR ALL, where you can find more tools and stories for building more inclusive organizations. 

If you want to involve new people at your organization, you need to know who is coming - and who isn’t. Today, OF/BY/FOR ALL is introducing a new free resource - a guide to creating and implementing demographic audience surveys that are accurate, respectful, and useful.

I remember the first time I understood how powerful it was to have demographic data about our participants. At the time, I was leading the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. We were three years into a dramatic transformation to welcome new people in new ways. For my first three years, we got a sense of who was and wasn’t involved based on observation and gut instinct. We tried things. We checked out the crowd. We noticed if people were younger or older, more or less racially diverse.

But after three years of ad hoc observation, we were hungry for hard data. We realized our gut instincts could only take us so far. There was a lot we couldn’t see - like economic class and sexual orientation. And there was a lot we were assuming - about race, gender, and age. We decided to make a commitment to collecting better data about who was and wasn’t coming.

We discovered that was not an easy thing to do. We talked to colleagues in other institutions who were struggling with the same questions. No one had a playbook of answers. We ended up working with two sets of consultants, funded by two different foundations, for over a year. Those expert researchers taught us how to conduct truly random surveys, how to train our team, how to ask sensitive questions in a respectful manner, and how to analyze the results. The outcome was a simple, powerful protocol... but our process in getting there was anything but simple.

That’s why we decided, as part of our first year of work with OF/BY/FOR ALL, to demystify audience surveying with The Who’s Coming toolkit. We’ve teamed up with Slover Linett Audience Research - with generous support from the James and John L. Knight Foundation - to write this toolkit. We wrote it for people like us: busy professionals who want to do a better job capturing and analyzing demographic audience data. In this toolkit, you’ll find step-by-step tools to help you write a survey, share it with a truly random slice of your audience, and analyze the results. You don’t need funding or a consultant to get started collecting data. You can do it yourself, with your staff and volunteers - and this toolkit.

In my experience, collecting good demographic data can help you smash stereotypes. It can help you make smarter strategic decisions and better programs. As one small example, in our very first round of data collection at the MAH, we learned that the audience coming to monthly free First Friday events was wealthier, whiter, and older than the audience for ticketed Third Friday festivals. This finding fundamentally shifted our perception of who attends paid and free programs. It made us ask why, dig deeper, and understand a lot more about what makes a program welcoming to whom.

The Who’s Coming toolkit has two parts. The first section tackles HOW to design and implement random audience surveys. The second section tackles WHAT to ask. While both parts are rooted in practitioner and expert experience, the WHAT will keep evolving as our collective understanding of identity changes. We wrote this toolkit from a US-centered perspective, and we know some of the demographic terms might be different in other countries. If you have questions or suggestions to make the toolkit more inclusive, please let us know.

Until then, I hope you’ll read it, share it, and most of all, USE IT. You are free to download, share, excerpt, and use this toolkit however you want. And if you do use it, we’d love to hear how it goes for you and what you learn. What gets measured gets done. When you measure demographic data, it accelerates your ability to make positive, inclusive change.

What's Stopping us from Building More Inclusive Nonprofits?

Every day, I’m amazed by the range of efforts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in the cultural sector. There are funding initiatives. Grassroots activism. Academic research. Conferences and white papers and toolkits and blogs.

And yet, very little seems to change. The enthusiasm is high. The voices are in the room. Even people in power seem to care. So why aren’t more organizations changing?

There are many reasons. Many organizations have decades invested in operating in oppressive power systems. Some people in power resist change. But I’d like to posit another reason: we don’t talk enough about HOW to do it.

In my experience, the conversation about diversity, equity, and inclusion has focused primarily on the WHY and WHAT. The arguments for WHY cultural organizations should diversify are stronger than ever. The vision for WHAT cultural equity looks like is increasingly powerful and compelling. But HOW do we get there?

In the excellent book Switch: How to Change when Change is Hard, authors Dan and Chip Heath describe three critical parts of an effective change journey. You must have a rationale for the journey. You must feel emotional drive to move. And the path to your destination must be clear. Chip and Dan suggest that most unsuccessful attempts at change suffer from a lack of one of these three: the head isn’t convinced, the heart isn’t swayed, or the path isn’t clear.

When it comes to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in nonprofits, I believe we have a path problem. Researchers and funders have done a great job making the argument (head). Activists--both within and outside organizations--are passionately advocating for change (heart). But the path is obscured. The path to the desired outcome is dark and riddled with 400-page toolkits. The result? People spend their limited time shoring up their head and heart, because those are the resources that are easy to find. They don't act, because they don't know how to get started or where to go.

Let me give you an example: diversifying nonprofit boards. Many organizational leaders have become convinced that recruiting more diverse trustees is critical. Funders, activists, even mainstream media have waved the flag of dismal current statistics. But HOW does a motivated director lead change in this area? How should they rewrite board member descriptions? How should they change nominating criteria and processes? What is the path to the outcome they seek?

The HOW is the work. It's the meat of the actual change we create. But we don't often focus on it. It sounds too prescriptive, tactical, or boring. I know I'm guilty of this. When I share our work--especially at conferences--I find myself focusing on the what and the why. I tell a story of pivoting to deep community involvement, and people get inspired. But they're often mystified about how we did it. In the best case, they take our story as motivation to go try something themselves - to forge their own path. But many draw another conclusion: that we're anomalous. That it couldn't work for them. It's like I'm waving from a destination to which there is no clear road nor map. By celebrating the destination, I'm ignoring the path that brought us there.

I've come to believe that if we can clear the path, we can accelerate change. That's what we’re building with OF/BY/FOR ALL. We're sourcing and sharing specific, step-by-step strategies for everything from a first meeting with a community partner to a full-on rewrite of your board nominating process. Our goal is to make it easy to understand how to move forward in becoming representative of your community and co-created by them.

We know doing the work is not easy. But it's even harder when you don't know how to do it or how to get started. If we can clear the path, hopefully it can help more organizations make change with confidence. And - if the path is clear - it will also reduce the number of reasonable excuses for not taking action.

I honor and appreciate compatriots around the world who are focusing on the WHAT and WHY of these issues. This is a growing ecosystem with many actors and many goals. I’m thrilled that every day, more people are convinced that change is necessary. But once heads and hearts are aligned, they need somewhere to go. They need a clear path so they can charge ahead. That's what I'm trying to create.

Change Ahead: I'm Shifting from Local to Global in 2019

I have some big news to share. In mid-2019, I will transition out of my role as the executive director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) to focus full-time on leading OF/BY/FOR ALL, an emerging global movement to build more inclusive community institutions. We're planning for a slow and thoughtful transition; you can read more about it on the MAH website. Here on this blog, I wanted to share more of the personal side of this decision and what it means for me.

It has been my great privilege to lead the MAH since May of 2011. When I started as executive director, I was 29 years old. I knew nothing about management. Nothing about fundraising. But the museum needed a new direction, and the board took a risk on me. I knew something about community participation. I knew something about taking risks and making space for others to do so. I knew that Santa Cruz County - my beloved chosen home - was full of creative, curious people eager to connect in a new kind of institution. And so we made the MAH that institution, full of diverse, brilliant humans coming together to build a stronger, more connected community.

The MAH today is profoundly different from the museum I was hired to run in 2011. The budget is up 4x, full-time staff is up 6x, and visitation is up 9x. We've built a community plaza, hosted hundreds of community festivals, and co-created exhibitions that spark action on social issues. We now have a wholly community-rooted model, working with over 2,000 local partners annually to plan, produce, and share exhibitions and events. Our visitors and partners reflect the diversity of our community. And the reason they participate is not fundamentally to learn about art or history. People come into the MAH every day to make art. To make history. And to do it together, with friends and strangers alike.

I like to joke that both our biggest advocates and our biggest critics say the same thing about the MAH: "that museum is a community center." They're right. Our incredible staff and partners make it so every single day. I couldn't be prouder.

So why would I start to make plans to leave at this time of strength and beauty? Over the past year, I've worked with the MAH board to incubate OF/BY/FOR ALL, a global movement to help more organizations do the kind of community-involved work we do at the MAH. When OF/BY/FOR ALL started, we imagined it would grow big one day. We had no idea how quickly that day would come. In the past year, OF/BY/FOR ALL has gone from a good idea to a full-fledged nonprofit startup. I'm thrilled that so many people around the world want to work with us to build more inclusive institutions. I'm full of gratitude for the amazing staff at the MAH who have made it possible for me to spend more time online and on airplanes. But I see that this won't be sustainable for too much longer. I see the incredible potential for both the MAH and for OF/BY/FOR ALL, and I believe that each will soon need focused, committed leadership.

This sent me into an honest assessment of my own skills and passions and where I could do my best work. I'm an entrepreneurial, experimental, opportunistic leader. Those skills made me a great fit to turn around and grow the MAH to the amazing place it is today. But I see that these same skills could make me a liability to keep the MAH strong and growing. I've learned and grown a lot as a manager and leader as the MAH has evolved. But the institution is growing beyond my "zone of genius" as a risk-taking spacemaker. The MAH doesn't need someone to break it open and rebuild it. It needs someone to deepen and strengthen it.

I love the MAH, and I want it to have the best executive director possible. I know that person is out there--that leader who is brilliant on depth and structure, committed to community impact and inclusion. Maybe it's you - or maybe it's someone you know. When we post the job announcement in a few weeks, I hope you'll help share the opportunity. I truly believe it's the best museum director job in the world.

This was not an easy decision to make. I'll be leaving a place that has become home for me. I have brilliant colleagues who make our office joyful, zany, and loving. They teach me new ways to be true to our community every day. I have the best board, full of thoughtful, diverse community leaders. And then there are the people walking in every day ready to get involved, their pockets spilling over with passion and ideas. I love how open the MAH feels and how open it has made me.

But I also see what a big opportunity lies ahead for me with OF/BY/FOR ALL. I see what a big opportunity exists for the next director of the MAH. I have often thought of my job at the MAH as that of a spacemaker. I create and hold space for our community to flourish in all its creative and cultural diversity. With OF/BY/FOR ALL, I'll be able to take that spacemaking to a global stage, helping empower organizations and communities all over the world to grow stronger together. I'm moving forward with hope towards that abundant future for our community, our museum, and our world.

How Hello Museum Builds Intimate Community in one of the Biggest Cities in the World

When I tell stories about how the MAH builds community, I emphasize the importance of deep partnerships and relationship-building. We connect with people both professionally and personally, at the museum and on the street. Colleagues from bigger cities often ask: is this approach relevant to us? Can this kind of intimacy and informality work in a sprawling metropolis? This weekend, I got my answer in Seoul--the 18th biggest city in the world--at Hello Museum.

Nestled in a forest of high-rise apartment buildings, this small museum connects children and families with contemporary art. Like the New Children's Museum in San Diego, Hello Museum creates building-wide interactive exhibitions with artists, on themes like nature and #NoWar. But while Hello Museum originally opened as a "children's contemporary art museum," that's not the tagline they use today. Now, they call themselves a "small neighborhood museum"--in the middle of a city of 9.8 million people.

Hello Museum embeds neighborliness in every aspect of its work, starting with its name. I assumed the name was an invitation for children to say hello to contemporary art. But director and founder Ysaac Kim explained that it's not about people connecting to the museum. It's about them connecting with each other. As she said, "I noticed that children these days are taught not to talk to strangers, not to say hello to them. So we made this museum as a place where you can say hello."

Walk into Hello Museum, and you'll encounter a million touches that create a sense of intimacy and community. Everyone takes off their shoes on entry, which creates a homey feel. As we padded in, the front desk was manned by a visiting artist. In a warren of small rooms without doors, parents sat chatting on the floor as their children swirled through art installations made from everyday objects. There were plants and books everywhere.

We wandered up the stairs, slipped on slippers and sunhats (provided on a friendly shelf), and enjoyed a small rooftop garden with waterplay and painting areas. Up on that roof, our world of paints and plants felt tiny in contrast to the skyscrapers looming all around. It felt like a place to be human in a concrete and steel world.

While Seoul is very different from Santa Cruz, Hello Museum felt like a sister to the MAH. The warm, sociable spirit felt the same. Visitors easily and happily collided and said hello to one another. Staff members and teenage volunteers brokered conversations and play. At one point, Ysaac effusively greeted a woman visiting with her child. As they hugged and laughed, they explained to me that the mother was a friend - and part of a company that had sponsored this exhibition opening. It reminded me of every time I've given a tour of the MAH and run into a friend or partner along the way.

Like the MAH, Hello Museum brokers new "hellos" through local partnerships and visitor participation. They try to be of, by, and for their community (which is why I was visiting). For example, on our way into the museum, Ysaac pointed out tiny textile factories dotting the neighborhood run by "grandmothers." In Hello Museum's maker space, children worked with scraps donated by these seamstresses. On the floor, children sat and slid on denim cushions, sewed by the grandmothers out of cast-off jeans donated by museum visitors. After the exhibition closes, these community-made denim cushions will keep doing good in the community. Hello Museum is donating them to a local animal shelter that needs warm cushions to insulate dogs and cats from cold concrete floors.

Ysaac and her team at Hello Museum have created something small, beautiful, and powerful. Seeing this hive of creativity and human kindness made me realize that this kind of museum may even be more valuable in a big city than a small one. In a city that is rapidly growing and changing, they've created a place to come together and play and create things and make friends. A place to slow down and say hello.

Hello Museum taught me that intimacy and community-building is a choice. It's a choice to keep things simple. To work with neighbors. To design spaces that feel human and warm. A choice that any small museum, no matter how big the city, can make.

Want to Co-Create an Exhibition on a Hot Issue? Introducing the Community Issue Exhibition Toolkit

Two years ago, our team at the MAH embarked on our most challenging co-creation project ever. We partnered with foster youth, former foster youth, artists, and community advocates to create an exhibition that used art to spark action on issues facing foster youth.

Short story: we learned a lot. We wrote a toolkit about our process. You can download it for free right now.

What did we learn? This project wove together many different participatory threads. We co-created it from start to finish with community partners. There were over 100 partners. We commissioned new collaborative artwork. We invited visitors to take real action in response to what they saw. The exhibition evolved after it opened. The lead partners were youth who had been marginalized and exploited by institutions. There were trust issues. Complex power dynamics. The facilitation was as chaotic and fragile as a spiderweb.

The result was the best exhibition I've had the honor of working on (check out these outcomes). It empowered our partners, deeply touched our visitors, and catalyzed real community change.

The lessons I learned from Lost Childhoods are at the heart of the OF/BY/FOR ALL project we're building now. This project deepened our commitment to creating platforms that empower partners. This project taught me that co-creative projects must be OF and BY the communities they purport to be FOR. It taught me that exhibitions can make a real and measurable difference in how a community tackles its biggest issues. Through Lost Childhoods, we saw youth step into their power. We saw casual visitors volunteer to become foster parents. We saw politicians, foster youth, and advocates come together to talk about how we can build a community where all youth can thrive.

Since that first project, we've made a commitment to create a "community issue exhibition" every other year at the MAH. We're working now on the next one, on seniors and social isolation. It's just as messy and complicated as the first one. But now, we have a format to manage the process. And we see the magic working again.

Today, I'm thrilled to share that format with you. You can now download the Community Issue Exhibition Toolkit, a guide to this co-creation process. I wrote it with Lauren Benetua, Dialogue Catalyst, and Stacey Marie Garcia, Director of Community Engagement and the architect of this approach. Lauren's now bringing her community organizing skills to the OF/BY/FOR ALL project--here are her thoughts on the toolkit and its impact on her work.

In the toolkit, you'll find:

• the how and why of community issue exhibitions 
• templates for timelines, budgets, and community partner communication 
• tools for empowering partners to take the lead in the co-creation of complex projects 
• tools for empowering visitors to take action on the issue you are exhibiting

We don't expect you will use the toolkit to do exactly what we've done. We hope it's a useful set of recipes you can riff off of to co-create your own project on a local issue that matters to you.

Please let us know what questions come up, and most of all, how you can imagine using this toolkit in your work. We'd love to see this model evolve and grow.

Launching the First Wave of the OF/BY/FOR ALL Change Network

How do you build a movement for institutional change?

That's the question we've been grappling with as we start the OF/BY/FOR ALL initiative. Our goal is to help civic and cultural institutions become more representative OF, co-created BY, and welcoming FOR their diverse communities. We've see this model succeed at the MAH and at other community-centered organizations around the world. We want to share the methods and tools that make it work. Not as a prescriptive recipe, but as a pattern. We see OF/BY/FOR ALL as an adaptable playbook for community change.

The challenge is to figure out the best way to share that playbook. Last year, we tested out different formats. We explored opening a training center. Publishing toolkits. Consulting. Building a leadership development program. We even thought about franchising.

The model we landed on was movement building. We plan to fuel a distributed Change Network of organizations growing OF/BY/FOR ALL together. We'll offer an online program for change, support a global community of practice, and keep expanding the program based on community input.

We want to make the "how" of community involvement clear and achievable. Change Network organizations will make specific pledges to become of, by, and for new communities. We'll provide tools to help organizations meet their goals step by step. As the network grows, more of the tools and knowledge base will come from participating institutions, with our staff focusing on community organizing and connections.

Our near-term goal is to enroll at least 200 organizations by the end of 2020, collectively pledging to involve one million new people in their work. Eventually, we may build a certification program, like LEED for green buildings, or B Corps for social enterprise. But we're starting with a campaign to involve one million people - and to build a community of organizations helping each other make it happen.

We're excited about this movement-building model for three reasons:

• It taps diverse sources of expertise. The MAH is not the authority on all things OF/BY/FOR ALL. By building a change network, we will empower diverse organizations to share methods and expertise with each other. 
• It scales. We want to go big with this movement. We plan to involve hundreds of organizations in the next three years - and thousands in the years to come. We realized that models that rely heavily on in-person training or consulting wouldn't scale to the extent of our dreams. 
• It emphasizes action. Talk is good. Change is better. Change Network organizations will make specific commitments to become of, by, and for more diverse people. The program we're building will help accelerate their progress. But it starts with organizations demonstrating eagerness and pledging to take action.

The Change Network program launches next week in prototype form with a First Wave of twenty organizations (full list at the end of this post). We selected a First Wave that reflects diversity of geography, size, and sector, so we can see who this works best for and why. The First Wave includes 6 museums, 5 performing arts organizations, 3 public libraries, 3 parks, and 3 community centers. Half are led by people of color or indigenous people. We represent six countries and ten time zones. For this prototype, 19 of 20 are in English-speaking countries, to provide as much clarity as possible as we get feedback from participants. In the future, we look forward to taking what we learn from this First Wave to build a strong Change Network with organizations all over the world.

I can't wait to learn with and from these amazing First Wave organizations. Some are leaders in the field of community participation. Others are just getting started. All are ready and eager to grow of, by, and for their communities.

OF/BY/FOR ALL is one of many projects in a growing ecosystem of efforts to propel more inclusive institutions. Some people are writing toolkits. Some are giving workshops. Some are developing training programs. Some are leading academic studies. Some are funding projects. If we are going to build a more inclusive world, we don't need just one or two projects. We need an ecosystem of activists, academics, funders, professionals, policymakers, and associations striving together towards common goals.

With OF/BY/FOR ALL, we're playing a role in this ecosystem as an accelerant for organizational change. I respect my colleagues who are writing, advocating, funding, and researching the nuances of community work. Heck, I've spent lots of time participating in those ways myself. But today, I'm motivated to focus my resources and energy on a program to help organizations commit to action and make it happen. That's what OF/BY/FOR ALL is all about.

As we learn more from the First Wave and build the Change Network, we'll write about it on the OF/BY/FOR ALL website. So if you want to join us in sharing stories and opportunities to become of, by, and for your community, please consider joining that email list today.

Here is the brave, beautiful, and wide-ranging First Wave:

• Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz, CA, USA (host site)
• National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, NM, USA
• Techniquest in Cardiff, Wales, UK (science center)
• HistoryMiami Museum in Miami, FL, USA
• Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center in Niagara Falls, NY, USA
• Immigration Museum in Melbourne, VIC, Australia
• Te Manawa in Palmerston North, Aotearoa, NZ (museum)
• Stedelijk Museum Schiedam in Schiedam, Netherlands
• Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI, USA
• Oakland Symphony in Oakland, CA, USA
• Marfa Public Radio in Marfa, TX, USA
• Laundromat Project in New York, NY, USA
• ARTZ Philadelphia in Philadelphia, PA, USA
• Oakland Public Library in Oakland, CA, USA
• St. Joseph County Public Library in South Bend, IN, USA
• Dakota County Library in Eagan, MN, USA
• Los Angeles River State Park Partners in Los Angeles, CA, USA
• Divis and Black Mountain in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
• Movement BE in San Diego, CA, USA (youth empowerment)
• Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition in Minneapolis, MN, USA
• Genesis Centre in Calgary, AB, Canada (community wellness)

I can't wait to learn and build the Change Network with this First Wave in the months to come.

Taking OFBYFOR ALL Out for its First Live Call to Action [VIDEO]

Last week, I had the great honor of launching the OFBYFOR ALL global initiative as the opening keynote speaker at MuseumNext in London. The talk is a 35-minute introduction to the OFBYFOR ALL framework, with a museum bent given the audience. I hope you enjoy it. Here's the link if you can't see the video embedded below.



This talk was a real challenge for me to write. In the past, I treated keynotes as opportunities to share insights and stories. I rarely shared explicit calls to action beyond the option to buy a book. I tried to do a great job, but it felt safe. I didn't feel like I had anything on the line.

With OFBYFOR ALL, the stakes feel higher. We hope this project sparks a set of tools AND a global movement. So I don't just want audiences to enjoy the talk. I don't just want them to learn something from it. I want people to take action. To sign up, join in, and help us build a more inclusive world.

I care deeply about this call to action, which increased my vulnerability and nervousness in writing the talk. It increased my sense that I needed the audience. Without them, without you, there will be no global movement.

So I got stuck. I agonized over the talk. I spent hours trying out and scrapping material. I was afraid I couldn't give a talk that would inspire people to participate.

I broke through when I realized I'd been here before. I realized I was feeling the same fear and excitement that comes with any truly participatory project. We've launched many projects at the MAH - and in my own personal work - that only succeed if people respond to our call to action. Exhibitions that only exist if enough people contribute artwork. Projects that only happen if partners show up to meetings. Books that only get edited if people decide they want to help.

For years, I've believed that the most powerful question you can ask to shift to a participatory mindset is: how can participants help make this project better? When you ask this question, your relationship with participants starts to change. You start to need them. The power dynamic swings towards them. If they are the ones who can make the project great, then you get really focused on inviting them in the most powerful way possible.

OFBYFOR ALL will only impact millions if many people at many organizations get involved. And so I tried, with this talk, to invite you to get involved. I hope watching this video will encourage you to do so too. And if it doesn't, let me know why. This project is in its earliest stages, and I'd love any and all feedback on how we can make the invitation to participate as strong as possible.

OFBYFOR ALL: Let's Build Organizations that are OF, BY, & FOR our Communities

Today, I'm thrilled to announce the launch of a new global initiative, OFBYFOR ALL.

OFBYFOR ALL is a framework to help civic and cultural organizations become OF, BY, and FOR their communities. We're building tools, trainings, and hopefully, a movement for a more inclusive world.

This project is led by the MAH but global in scope. We're launching it with partners at community-based libraries, parks, museums, and cultural centers around the world. Our contexts are different. Our organizations are different. But we share a common passion for making our institutions of, by, and for our communities. We see OFBYFOR ALL as a way to share and spread that passion--and to convert it into action.

Many organizations think they have a "for" problem. They want to be for more people, or for different people, than they currently serve. I believe that in many cases, the best way to be "for" people is to become "of" and "by" them.

That's what we did to spark transformative change at the MAH. As our staff and board became reflective OF our community, more people felt represented. As we developed programming co-created BY the community, more people felt ownership. As we focused on being welcoming FOR the community, more people wanted to participate. The result? We turned a struggling museum into a thriving community center that is of, by, and for our county.

We are building OFBYFOR ALL to share this playbook for transformation, through proven tools and strategies piloted at the MAH and other community-based organizations around the world. We are building OFBYFOR ALL to help you:

• assess your organization's current strengths in OF, BY, and FOR work (try it free right now) 
• articulate goals for who you most want to involve and develop a plan of action to do so 
• tackle change, access creative tools and strategies, and get support 
• track your progress as you change 
• connect with supportive colleagues at a global network of organizations who are also taking action to become of, by, and for their communities

I'm excited to share the strategies we use at the MAH to be of, by, and for our community. But I'm even more excited to learn about strategies used by innovators around the world who get involved. We see OFBYFOR ALL as itself a project that must be of, by, and for the community of cultural and civic changemakers. We're building a global network across sectors, organizational types and sizes. I can't wait to learn how rural librarians are doing this work. How national parks leaders are doing it. How cultural activists are doing it. How you're doing it.

People all over the world, in many sectors, are talking about demographic change. Talking about inclusive practices. That's great. But I want to see more organizations doing it. I want to help make that future a reality. That's what OFBYFOR ALL is all about.

Excited? Here are three ways to get started:

1. If you work or volunteer for an organization, try the free OFBYFOR ALL organizational self-assessment. In 5-10 minutes, you'll get a baseline "OFBYFOR ALL score" for your current work. 
2. If you are ready to take action, sign up for an OFBYFOR ALL bootcamp. In a two-day training, we'll help you map out a vision for community involvement and an action plan for change. 
3. If you have a network of friends who need to hear about this, share it. Share the website, or this blog post, or one of our posts on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Happy International Museums Day. Let's celebrate by getting to work to make our institutions of, by, and for all.