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Toxic Philanthropy

By Elizabeth Merritt

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

By Anna Raginskaya

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

By Anna Raginskaya

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

By Elizabeth Merritt

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

By Evrim Oralkan

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

By Elizabeth Merritt

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

By Alexandra Nicholis Coon

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 …
From For-Profit to Nonprofit: Evolution of the International Spy Museum

By Elizabeth Merritt

Next up in my exploration of museum business models, a conversation with Tamara Christian, president of the International Spy Museum. The Spy Museum is the first museum I’ve found that has operated as both a for-profit and a nonprofit …
In Which Penny and Frank Wash Up at the Villa

By Elizabeth Merritt

The best part of futuring is inviting other folks to play along. For the fifth entry in my 2008 diary of the future, I recruited my real-life companions to contribute to the plot, and they jumped in with gusto. (Thank you Penny!) We …
(Co)Working in a Museum

By Cindy Foley

In a 2017 post on this blog, Tui Te Hau, the director of the Te Papa museum’s Mahuki innovation accelerator, offered some advice for museums considering starting their own coworking spaces. In today’s post Cindy Foley, Executive Deputy …