Museum Pricing for Affordability and Profit
What does it cost to buy an airline ticket, book a rideshare service, or make a hotel reservation? Nowadays the answer to that question may vary minute-to-minute, as companies use data analysis and clever algorithms to calibrate their …
Sustainable Investing Part 3: Case Study of the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens
In parts one and two of this series, Anna Raginskaya introduced readers to sustainable investing, discussed its relevance to museums, and provided some practical advice for organizations interested in adopting the practice. In the third …
Teaching the World to Value Collections (while making some $$)
I hope you will join me later this month for a webinar exploring how museums can build income streams around their collections and win hearts and minds in the process. While the session is formally pitched at natural history research …
Toxic Philanthropy
We live in a time in which the public is hyper sensitive to the ethics of where money comes from, and where it goes. As I observed in TrendsWatch 2015, nonprofits don’t get a free pass in this era of soul-searching. Now the ethical …
Sustainable Investing: A Practical Guide for Museums – Part 2
This is the second of a three-part series on sustainable investing. In part one, Anna Raginskaya, Financial Advisor, Blue Rider Group at Morgan Stanley reviewed the concept of sustainable investing and presented several reasons why museums …
Sustainable Investing: A Practical Guide for Museums – Part 1
Earlier this year a guest post on this blog advocated for museums harnessing their endowments to mission-related goals through a financial practice known as impact investing. In today’s post, Anna Raginskaya, Financial Advisor, Blue Rider …
Sharing the Wealth: Museums as Equity Engines
Recently, I’ve been speaking of museums as banks—repositories of enormous wealth of reputation, knowledge, and influence, in addition to the sheer value of their endowments. I’ve advanced the thesis that by managing this wealth as a type …
Collecteurs: Social Responsibility and Accessible Art
Regular readers of this blog know that I’m always on the hunt for museum-like organizations that live just slightly outside the traditional museum sphere. Such business can illuminate public demand, explore new business models, and test …
Trading Labor for Food
As I revisit my “diary of the future” from a decade ago, I find myself examining how my speculative vision of 2019 has converged with or diverged from reality. Some of my stories were, unfortunately, spot on. Anti-immigrant …
When a Private Museum Has Massive Public Support
Even before the 2008 financial collapse only 56 percent of museums received support from local government, and that funding made up about 10 percent of their overall operating budget. The most recent financial analysis by Grantmakers in …
