Sharing Outcomes from “Don’t Raid the Cookie Jar” – Opening remarks by Laura Lott
This post is adapted from opening remarks made by Alliance CEO Laura Lott at “Don’t Raid the Cookie Jar: Creating Early Interventions to Prevent Deaccessioning Crises,” a convening held December 14-15, 2017 in Cambridge, …
How I Rewrote the Future of the Anthropocene
The digital edition of Museum 2040 has been downloaded over 2000 times, and I’m tremendously encouraged by the feedback I’ve received from readers. As I’d hoped, museum people are using this exercise in immersive future fiction as a …
Building a National, Distributed Museum
It sometimes seems like every new museum with national ambitions wants to be located in DC. Near, if not on, the National Mall. This despite the difficulty of succeeding in the shadow of the fabulous, free Smithsonian museums (a challenge …
A Funder’s Take: How Museum Professionals and Citizen Artists Are Reinventing Our Cultural Institutions
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2017 issue of Museum magazine. As a funder, I know that cultural institutions are critical to the vitality of our communities. But in the past decade, the philanthropic sector has …
Membership Isn’t the Top of the Mountain
Eric Bruce is the Head of Visitor Experience at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia). This is the third article in a series we are presenting on how Mia has expanded its audience. In this series of posts about the Minneapolis Institute …
To B Corps or not to B Corps—A Case Study
Some people think that because museums are nonprofits, they are not allowed to make money. Cue my mantra: nonprofit is a tax status, not a business strategy. A financially successful nonprofit can use surplus income to improve services, …
Companies with Benefits, Part 2: B Corps or not B Corps, that is the question
Tuesday I blogged about Benefit Corporations—a relatively new kind of “hybrid” legal structure for mission-driven for-profits. Today’s post is about B Corps—companies participating in a certification program that measures their impact on …
Companies with Benefits, Part 1: Benefit Corporations
I’m going to ask you to bear with me as I engage in some deep, extended geeking about business models in coming weeks, via a series of essays and guest posts exploring changes in business and philanthropy that are reshaping the niche …
The Witte Museum – A Catalyst for San Antonio on the Rise
Laura Lott is the President and CEO of the American Alliance of Museums. Have you heard about The New Witte? When you take the bold step of investing nearly $100 million in entirely reinventing a 90-year old beloved institution called The …
Philanthropy in the Age of Scale: MacArthur Foundation 100&Change
Last year the MacArthur Foundation launched 100&Change—a competition for a $100 million grant to fund a single proposal to make measurable progress toward solving a significant problem. They invited proposals to address any critical …
