By Elissa K. Miller, M.Ed.
Even though outsiders may think it’s an oxymoron for a nonprofit museum to earn revenue, all nonprofits must bring in money to support their missions. It’s a wise practice for museum education departments to increase revenue and reduce overhead so that more funds are available to support and expand mission-delivering programs.
There are a number of different ways that children’s museums can increase revenue and minimize administration costs while expanding education programs.
These budget-friendly methods leverage museum software and streamline museum operations to create both the funding and staff time to develop new programs that extend your reach and your mission.
Ready to boost your museum’s education revenue? Let’s get started.
If your education department is still relying on paper registration forms and spreadsheets to manage events, camps, classes, field trips, and birthday parties, you could be wasting valuable time and money better spent on enhancing the quality of your program.
The first step toward increasing revenue and reducing paperwork is implementing online registrations and reservations.
Moving registrations online doesn’t mean you’ll lose the personal touch. By eliminating the need to juggle calendars, update spreadsheets, record payments, and send invoices and confirmations, well-designed online registration actually frees your team to spend more time helping people who need assistance.
An online registration system is also more eco-friendly, eliminating printing and postage costs. And, online registration can help you reach a broader audience through online ads, articles and social media posts.
The best registration software will be flexible enough to meet your museum’s unique requirements. To read more information about evaluating museum software solutions, check out Doubleknot’s museum software guide.
Asking for a donation during a purchase is a proven-successful method of raising additional funds. People are already opening their wallets to make a payment, so asking them to add a few more dollars to their existing bill to support your programs is an easier proposition than responding to a standard donation request. Consider updating your registration and payment pages to:
Be sure to coordinate any donation requests with your fundraising and development team to ensure that your plans complement overall fundraising activities instead of competing or interfering with them.
Along with day camps and birthday parties, family events are often the bread-and-butter for children’s museums, offering a range of fun and educational opportunities to learn about different cultures within the communities you serve.
Consider holding these kinds of eye-opening programs to celebrate the countries and cultures in your service area.
You can expand the cultural awareness of your youngest visitors by planning museum events to guide them through multicultural exhibits, create culturally-inspired crafts, or read insightful children’s stories.
Products that support your mission (and incidentally build your brand) are always appropriate and acceptable add-on opportunities.
For example, if your museum software supports mobile sales, you can also sell camp- and event-related products at check-in and check-out for these programs. Families may be more inclined to make an on-site impulse purchase when they see how happy and engaged their children are in your programs.
Birthday parties offer income opportunities that also provide a valuable service for busy families. Your team can reduce parents’ stress and increase revenue by offering add-on options such as:
Check to see whether your registration and reservation system allows you to display upsell options after a purchase is completed. An ideal system will allow you to promote products and events in categories related to the items in the purchase.
Plus, the revenue you make from these upsell opportunities can help provide more money for your mission and educational programming.
With the increased emphasis on STEAM education, children’s museums are uniquely positioned to develop programs that are aligned with important educational standards. If your museum’s group visit programs are primarily unstructured visits under the supervision of teachers and chaperones, you may have an opportunity to offer more tailored programs. These could include teacher- or staff-led lessons and activities that rely on materials and facilities at the museum.
Additionally, scouting badge programs can provide an opportunity to generate more revenue and encourage more learning. Your badge “menu” could include self-guided activities to complete badge requirements; add-on kits and materials for use by leaders; and structured badge achievement activities led by staff.
Most kids who grow up visiting a beloved children’s museum will eventually decide they’re too old to go anymore. While older children will age out of floor activities designed for younger learners, there are many ways that older children and teens can continue enjoying your museum in age-appropriate ways.
For middle school students and younger high school students, after-school and weekend STEAM programs provide important enrichment opportunities and allow youth to continue their relationship with the museum they loved as younger children.
School districts and regional education centers can help identify scope and sequence for themes and topics that complement, strengthen and extend subjects covered in school. Your museum can then use these themes and topics to design programs at your museum.
In most locations, it’s difficult for parents to find summer programs for tweens and young teens who’ve “aged out” of traditional day camps but are too young to be camp leaders or hold other summer jobs. Parents are likely especially happy to enroll older children in summer programs that balance the right amount of supervision and structure with independence and autonomy so important at that age.
Children’s museums are in a unique position to provide formal and informal information about positive youth development to parents and caregivers.
Parents are likely interested in programs that show them to nurture and support their children’s love of experimentation and learning. For example, evening workshops on easy at-home science experiments or “STEAM Power at Home” can generate additional revenue and empower families to carry out your mission in their own homes and neighborhoods.
Another option is creating and offering continuing education (CE) courses for educators, developed with input from districts and education centers to ensure that they meet your district’s and state’s standards. Some event ticketing and registration solutions designed to support museum education will even automatically generate and email a personalized certificate of completion after the workshop is over.
The educational (and revenue-generating) opportunities that children’s museums can provide are almost limitless. We hope that this brief list will spark ideas for events and programs as unique as your museum and the communities you serve.
Elissa K. Miller, M.Ed., is communications director at Doubleknot, an integrated online, on-site, and mobile solutions provider for nonprofits. As the former development director for a regional nonprofit, she’s passionate about helping nonprofits and youth-serving organizations harness new technologies to streamline operations and support their missions.
By Elissa K Miller, M.Ed.
For many families, the decision to purchase a museum membership is based on a value calculation: are the benefits of membership greater than the cost? To increase the perceived value of memberships, many children’s museums are exploring options beyond the standard “free admission and discounts” to create new member incentives that are valuable to families and fun for kids with minimal loss of potential revenue.
The entrance is, of course, the beginning of a visitor’s journey through the museum. Some museums are fortunate to have entrances designed for excellent visitor flow with seamless transition from purchasing tickets to entering the exhibit area. Others, however, may be constrained by size, design and/or budget and find that lines for ticketing and admissions are too long at peak times. Unfortunately, slow-moving lines may sorely test the patience of children (and their parents). Members may be especially frustrated if they’re waiting in the same line as nonmembers purchasing tickets.
For these reasons, providing a members-only entrance can be a valuable perk during peak times. If your floor and staffing plans don’t already offer rapid entry for members, you can provide the service during busy periods with an ad hoc member check-in station. Some membership management systems provide scanners or mobile apps that allow staff to scan and validate membership cards on smartphones and tablets. Because the scanners or apps are integrated with the membership database, member visits are recorded and available for reporting and analytics.
Creating ad hoc or pop-up members entrances during peak hours is a valuable service for members that can improve the visitor experience for nonmembers as well. Because members are no longer waiting in combined ticketing and admission lines, the overall line length is reduced and nonmembers can also enter the exhibit areas faster. (Plus, seeing members skip long ticketing and entry lines may motivate nonmembers to join so they can also breeze past the lines.)
Another common way to make members feel special is to provide members-only hours, typically before the museum opens to the general public. Children and families appreciate the luxury of less-crowded play in their favorite areas with fewer interruptions. Some museums offer members-only hours both before and after public hours, while others choose to open the museum for a full three-hour block in the evenings when they’re usually closed. (No matter how many times a child has visited, everything can seem more exciting to children at night.) If you schedule members-only hours with the soft launch of a new attraction, members and children will feel like VIPs and you can gather important observational data about how children explore and interact with the new exhibit or play area.
Another attractive perk that generates revenue is offering an evening members-only event just for kids (think pajama parties and movie nights) so parents can have a night out. These are especially popular during the holiday season. Like summer camps and other “parent drop-off” events, a set of permission, liability, medical and contact forms will be required. Some organizations charge a small fee for kids-only nighttime programs to cover the costs of after-hours staffing, operations, and program supplies.
If your museum’s camps and classes are usually filled to capacity with lengthy wait lists, giving members the opportunity to register first can be an even bigger incentive than a member discount! Especially if your membership management system is integrated with your camp and class registration software, you can open registration early to families with memberships so they can make sure their children are in the programs they want. (Some museums rely on the honor code, because their registration software can’t check whether the membership is valid. This places the burden on administrative staff to ensure no one is accidentally or intentionally taking advantage of the program.)
Priority member registration can also be a helpful recruiting tool. If your membership software allows visitors to purchase or renew a membership and receive immediate benefits registration, you may find a spike in memberships correlated with early registration for your most popular programs.
Another valuable membership perk is reserved members-only spots in camps and classes. If your registration software lets you set different capacities for different registrant types, members may find that they can still sign up their kids for programs even after registration is closed to nonmembers. Once again, this benefit can also inspire families to purchase memberships.
Only allowing members to book birthday parties may not be the right choice for many museums, but a list of potential incentives wouldn’t be complete without it. If your museum is overwhelmed with more birthday party requests than available dates and times, requiring a membership to book a party can help reduce requests to a more manageable number. Or, you can choose to make certain premium party areas or options available only for members while still providing enjoyable options for nonmember parties.
These are just a few common examples of general low-cost and no-cost benefits to recruit, reward and retain members. Only your museum can design incentives that work best for your museum —supporting your mission and delivering meaningful opportunities for the unique communities you serve.
Elissa K Miller, M.Ed. is Communications Director at Doubleknot, which offers online, POS and mobile solutions for museums’ visitor-facing business operations. She’s passionate about using technology to promote creativity, increase engagement and empower educators.
by Isabel Diez
How do you design a museum that seeks to sustain peace in a city once described as the most dangerous place in the world? When Sietecolores was entrusted such a task, the only answer we found was to involve the community throughout the entire development process—and beyond.
From 2008 to 2012, Ciudad Juárez was considered the most dangerous place, not only in Mexico, but the world. This home to 1.3 million people was consumed with violence and crime, resulting in a huge social crisis that rapidly hit rock bottom. When local leaders came together to create an action plan for rescuing the city, a museum quickly became part of the conversation.
The idea of creating a permanent interactive learning space had been in the mind of locals since 2004, when the city of Chihuahua, near Juárez, hosted Papalote Móvil, a traveling museum created by Papalote Museo del Niño, with huge success. In 2009, a group of business leaders approached Sietecolores—our team of museum developers, initially created within Papalote—to design a space where children and their families could learn and heal. Because the museum would be key for sustaining peace in the soon-to-be transformed city, placing the project in the scope of peace education, which seeks nonviolent resolution of conflict and the transformation of social structures that perpetuate any type of injustice, was important.
Despite the evident complexities of the situation, Sietecolores was up for the titanic challenge. Where to begin, though? We knew that peace cannot be externally enforced—at least not if we wanted long-lasting results—but can only be achieved from within. With this in mind, we were guided by the idea of participatory museums. Nina Simon, author of The Participatory Museum, defines these institutions as places “where visitors can create, share, and connect with each other around content.” Visitors actively construct meaning, curate content, share ideas, and discuss issues. In consequence, our team introduced strategies for including Juárez’s citizens in the design process, such as holding interviews and focus groups, visiting indigenous communities, and inviting local artists, from potters and weavers to comic-book creators, to participate in specific projects.
In 2013, Rodadora Espacio Interactivo opened with the motto: “Celebra la vida” (“Celebrate life”). Its key role in the peacebuilding efforts of Juárez has been undeniable, proven by its sustained growth and success throughout its four years in operation. So, what exactly makes a peacebuilding, participatory museum tick? Sietecolores has identified three fundamentals to the culture and work of Rodadora:
Putting the community at the center means listening to diverse perspectives, intentionally seeking participation of all groups, and giving voice to those who have been excluded—something essential for battling structural violence. But, when fear has taken over people for a long period of time, many important topics remain unspoken or become taboo. Museums can find creative mechanisms for visitors to feel safe enough to end that silence.
The alebrije sculpture at Rodadora
At Rodadora, one such strategy is the popular “nightmare-eating monster,” a giant alebrije—that is, a colorful Mexican folk art sculpture of an imaginary creature. Children and caregivers write down their worst nightmares, which disappear by “feeding” them to the monster. Sietecolores adapted this idea from Papalote, but Rodadora has taken it to a whole new level: it not only serves as a mechanism for visitors to externalize their fears, but also as a way for the museum to identify their needs. Education Director Mónica Félix explains how, throughout the years, it is clear how children’s fears have changed: four years ago, common nightmares included violence, death, or kidnapping, now children write about the dark or scary cartoon characters. The reality is different for adults, who will need more time to heal their scars. But visitors’ answers are a constant source of inspiration for new programs and initiatives. For example, Rodadora decided to produce a play for adults every November addressing the theme of death.
Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung suggests that igniting dialogue is the bedrock of all nonviolent conflict resolution. This became a priority and a guiding design principle when we realized the community needed new ways to communicate. But how do you get visitors to share and discuss ideas when they are not accustomed to doing so? Begin with the simplest and subtlest of initiatives.
Sietecolores helped Rodadora start a program called Libro Viajero (Traveling Book). The museum “abandoned” copies of a book throughout the space for people to find and start reading. When staff discovered a copy with an underlined passage and comments on the margins, they decided to leave writing tools along with the books. This became a powerful way for visitors to start dialogue with each other, the museum, and the authors.
If we understand peace as the presence of justice, it’s not only a goal, but also an ongoing process and effort. Rodadora is always finding ways for visitors to get actively involved in the same spirit that originated the museum.
For instance, Sietecolores invited a local collective of urban artists to paint a mural for the museum before opening day. Rodadora also recently created a space called “Urban Art Garden,” which contains three more murals painted by local artists in collaboration with the Juárez community. The museum has also planned workshops and programs in the garden throughout the rest of the year.
Museums can become catalysts of social transformation—as Sietecolores has seen again and again in the more than a dozen learning spaces we have designed over the years. By taking a community-centered, dialogue-based, and action-focused approach, we created a participatory museum that continues to instill Juárez citizens with a sense of possibility, a desire for change, a promise of hope. After all, as writer Vaclav Havel said, “it is hope, above all, that gives us strength to live and to continually try new things, even in conditions that seem hopeless.”
Isabel Diez is a researcher at Sietecolores Ideas Interactivas, a museum and exhibit design firm based in Mexico City. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Pedagogy by Universidad Panamericana and a Master’s in Education (Arts in Education Program) by Harvard University. isabel.diez@sietecolores.mx / www.sietecolores.mx/en/
