Explore dozens of articles, member resources, and On-Demand Programs on financial sustainability in museums.

Who Makes the Best Advocate for the Future of Museum Funding?

Good futures scanning should include all the STEEP categories. As I’ve confessed before, I sometimes have trouble with the P—political/policy trends. Today, Gail Ravnitzky Silberglied, the Alliance’s vice president of government relations …

Museum Jobs That Didn’t Exist in 2003

(& what that says about the evolution of our field.) A couple weeks ago, I read a post on Coexist called “Eight New Jobs People will have in 2025,” projecting openings for Digital Death Managers, Un-Schooling Counselors, Digital Detox …

Flower Power: A Story of Organizational Re-Blossoming

A reporter recently asked me to name the biggest barrier standing in the way of museums adapting to the forces shaping the future. My reply was “ourselves—the funding and organizational structures that tether us to outdated models and …

TrendsWatch 2013 Mid-year Update: The (ever) Changing Shape of Giving

In the first half of 2013, we’re seeing a growing resentment on the part of nonprofits about the some of the expectations being projected on to them by funders, and the beginnings of concerted action to re-shape public expectations …

Futurist Friday: Nonprofit Apartheid and the Overhead Myth

I posted some brief musings this past Monday about the blurring boundaries between nonprofit and for profit options for young professionals seeking to do good in their careers. In the comment section, “Albert Nonymous” posted a …

Balancing the Equation

I had the pleasure, last month, of addressing attendees at the League of American Orchestra’s conference in St. Louis. They invited me to share some insights from the museum world about the forces shaping our shared future. As is often …

The Class System of the Future

In creating their scanning frameworks, many of the “test pilots” in the first flight of CFM’s Digital Badging Projects identified “wealth inequality,” “wealth gap” and other variations on these terms as being issues worth monitoring as …

Who is the Development Staff of the Future? Look in the Mirror

/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-priority:99;mso-style-parent:””;mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt …

A Case Study in Survival from the Sacred Realm

Museums can learn a lot by looking at how other sectors—for-profit and nonprofit—are responding to the same trends and events that shape our operating environment. Religious communities, for example, are challenged by changing …

The (Ever) Changing Shape of Giving

At the rate the world changes, CFM will never run out of work. It’s only four months since we released TrendsWatch 2013, and already my co-author, Phil, and I are scrambling to assemble updates. This post shares some of the material we’ve …

Latest Stories from AAM

Civics on View: Using Museum Collections to Foster Greater Civic Knowledge and Understanding

At a time when much of the nation is thinking about what citizenship means, museums, …

The Formula for Relevance

Category: Center for the Future of Museums Blog
I love finding examples of museums that use their resources to boost the fortunes of …

Museum Ethics in a New Gilded Age

Category: Center for the Future of Museums Blog
Readers of this blog may remember Erik Ledbetter, who served as the Director of …

AAM Member-Only Content

AAM Members get exclusive access to premium digital content including:

  • Featured articles from Museum magazine
  • Access to more than 1,500 resource listings from the Resource Center
  • Tools, reports, and templates for equipping your work in museums
Log In

We're Sorry

Your current membership level does not allow you to access this content.

Upgrade Your Membership

Subscribe to Field Notes!

Packed with stories and insights for museum people, Field Notes is delivered to your inbox every Monday. Once you've completed the form below, confirm your subscription in the email sent to you.

If you are a current AAM member, please sign-up using the email address associated with your account.

Are you a museum professional?

Are you a current AAM member?

Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription, and please add communications@aam-us.org to your safe sender list.