Rethinking Membership: What Does it Mean to Belong to a Museum? 'Twas the night before Thanksgiving, and my mother-in-law had an important meeting to attend. She's only been a member for a few months, and we're visiting from a thousand miles away, but there are about 40 other members expecting her. When she has to travel, she finds a group of members in that other town and meets up with them. If things keep going well, soon she'll "graduate" to a lifetime membership (free), and she's considering getting training to become a leader for a group in her own town. As a member, she enjoys a weekly interactive, social experience that supports her personal goals. What kind of membership inspires such loyalty and participation? Weight Watchers. It's social, it's supportive, and the membership is sustaining. Museum membership is not nearly as healthy as that of Weight Watchers.
What's wrong with value members? The same argument may be made of value members at museums. How did value membership rise to prominence? Could You Split Your Membership? Signs like this one (spotted in the window at a large science center) drive me nuts. Why? Because they validate the highly-problematic concept of membership as a discount. There are many folks who've written about the problems with "value" membership and have recommended that cultural institutions reorient toward offering "affinity" or "relationship" memberships.
While value membership focuses on free admission and discounts, affinity membership focuses on building relationships and supporting a community of highly invested visitors. Making the switch from value to affinity membership programs can sound risky. So what can an institution do if staff would LIKE to move towards affinity memberships but don't want to risk losing the revenue and relationships generated by value memberships? I have a simple recommendation: create two kinds of membership. While the groups do overlap, in general, annual pass holders and affinity members want different things. 1stfans: An Audience-Specific Membership Program at the Brooklyn Museum. The conventional wisdom on museum memberships is that they are "one size fits many" programs whose primary benefits are free entrance to the museum and insider access to exhibition openings. The main audiences for memberships are value members, who think of it as a good deal, lifelong learners, who want to come to as many programs and exhibits as possible, and donors, who support the museum.
But what about all the other people who love your museum? What about the families who show up on your free days religiously or the ones blogging about your new artifacts? Could you create a membership that speaks specifically to them? 1stfans builds benefits onto two programs that were already successful at connecting people to the Brooklyn Museum: free Target First Saturdays and online social media outreach. Want to know how the Brooklyn Museum is answering this question? Can you tell me about the basic concept behind 1stfans as a membership program? Who are the 1stfans? Will: Right. Will: No. Rewarding Changes in Museum Membership : Museumist. Rewarding Changes in Museum Membership Photo by Stefan Baudy Edward de Bono, an internationally renowned thinker, once said: “It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.” Taking his words to heart, we present our newest Museumist recurring segment: “What If Museums…” Let’s throw some ideas against the wall and see which ones stick.
What if Museums…Offered Points-Based Membership Programs? Let’s begin with a little background. Inspiration #1: On February 16th, Nina Simon wrote a post about the need for museums to have both value and affinity based memberships. Inspiration #2: One of the latest social media crazes is FourSquare, a site that allows you to “check-in” at venues across your city. How This Applies to Museums Now if you combine Nina’s idea of separating value from affinity memberships and the reward system of FourSquare, you get a points-based museum membership. Meet John. Buy the membership, get x amount of points. Building from the Inside: Five Museum Membership Leaders Speak « WestMuse Blog. By Adam Rozan Click on Adam to follow the OMCA twitterfeed Construction is a fixed presence across the American museum landscape.
Our visitors have grown accustomed to seeing it. However, the greatest renovations occurring have little to do with brick and mortar projects, but rather the varying degrees of change in visitor-focused services, program offerings, and promotion-oriented thinking. Membership. Seemingly, the entire museum community has jumpstarted their programming, exhibition, marketing, and online departments overnight. This change includes the recognition of new and more digitally inclined audiences, and their psychographic needs and interests. To find out, I asked Jason Gaulton, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Sunny Green, Oakland Museum of California, Emily Lakin, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Mark Mills, The Barnes Foundation, and Joyce Sitterly, New Museum to discuss membership. Jason Gaulton Membership Manager LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Sunny Green 1. 2. 3. Volunteer Management.
Volunteers in Museums. American Association for Museum Volunteers.