The Alliance has compiled this set of community engagement resources from throughout the nonprofit and museum sector.
4 Ways Historic House Museums Can Create More Meaningful Visitor Experiences
The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) provides this blog post on what it takes to be considered one of the top history museums in the country.
Americans for the Arts sponsors Animating Democracy, a program to foster arts and cultural activity that encourages and enhances civic engagement and dialogue. They provide tools, templates, and sample materials for planning, implementing, and evaluating arts- and humanities-based civic engagement projects, as well as technical assistance.
Nina Simon freely shares The Art of Relevance, a publication that explores how mission-driven organizations can matter more to more people. Ms. Simon offers examples, case studies, research-based frameworks, and practical advice on how museums can become more vital to their community.
This helpful flyer to give out at your museum provides insight into the Blue Star Museums program for military families. (PDF, 1 page)
The Wallace Foundation provides this helpful set of reports, videos, tools, infographics, and other material about building audiences for the arts. The resources are arts-focused but the lessons can be applied to museums of all types and sizes.
Making History Matter: Toolkit for Communicators
This toolkit, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, provides evidence-based strategies for reframing history, developed and tested by the FrameWorks Institute in partnership with the American Association for State and Local History, the National Council on Public History, and the Organization of American Historians. The toolkit includes common communication traps, how to keep conversations on track, sample communications, and answers to communicators’ most common questions about strategic framing.
Nina Simon freely shares The Participatory Museum, a publication that explores how museums can experiment with programming and education to engage and interact with audiences.
Tools and Approaches for Transforming Museum Experience
The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s Interaction Lab developed this toolkit following a series of workshops with 15 museum professionals doing groundbreaking work across visitor experience-related roles. The toolkit contains ideas about why transforming museum experience is necessary. It includes a set of questions to help leaders move toward designing transformative museum experiences using tools and approaches from multiple areas of practice.