Posts
Financial Stability
Weeksville, a Haven for Free African-Americans Before the Civil War, Is Fighting for Survival
This article highlights a case of precarious financial sustainability and what is at stake when museums can’t make ends meet. The Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn, which …
Closing the GAAP on Direct Care
As lawyers with backgrounds in horticulture (Lori) and material culture studies (Sarah), we never thought we would be passionate about an accounting rule. Yet here we are. In 2015 we wrote …
When Dual Leadership Works, 1+1=3
What is dual leadership and how does it work? Recently, over coffee, I asked these questions of Cheryl Donaldson Moses and Donna Jared, the Co-Executive Directors of the Fort Collins Museum …
Is It Time to Break Your Museum’s Organizational Mold?
Over the course of the twentieth century, and into today, museums have witnessed dramatic changes in their organizational and funding environments—some driven from within the museum field, …
If You Build It: Fundraising success will come to small museums that implement a set of best practices.
If I had a dollar for every time a well-intentioned board member, volunteer, or staff member suggested one of the above fundraising tips, my organization would have a Harvard-like endowment …
Exploring the Explosion of Museum AI
Here are five good reasons you should join me in Miami Nov 1-2 to explore how museums can use artificial intelligence to fuel their work (illustrated by recent news): AI can help users in …
How AI Is Changing Sales
This article discusses five business applications of artificial intelligence–price optimization, forecasting, upselling and cross-selling, lead scoring, and managing for …
FASB’s Proposed Changes to the Design of Nonprofit Financial Statements and What it May Mean to Your Museum
After nearly 20 years of living with the current not-for-profit reporting model, users of financial statements of nonprofit organizations in many cases still do not have a true …
Your Museum Needs Money—Now What?
Finding and securing funding opportunities for your museum can help advance not only your museum’s goals, but your personal ones as well. It can be a daunting task and many give up or take …
Alt Funding
“Will museum collections stay ‘inside the walls’ while fundraising moves to mobile phones, or is there some way that creative museum folks can move both their collections and their …
Fighting for Philanthropy
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2012 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership. Imagine a group of children settling in for a sleepover in a history museum. …
Why Is the Form 990 So Important?
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2011 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership. The revised Form 990 is much more than a tax document—it’s your museum’s …