Funding – American Alliance of Museums

A Snoopy license plate delivers more than mere peanuts to California museums

By Phil Kohlmetz

A special interest license plate is certainly an unconventional way to raise money for museums, and Snoopy’s path to plate-dom was certainly unconventional. But in late 2015, after nearly fifteen years of effort, California got its first …
The Most Important Question to Ask in a Capital Campaign

By Nina Simon

Nina Simon is the Executive Director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History and author of The Participatory Museum (2010), The Art of Relevance (2016) and the popular Museum 2.0 blog. This article was originally published on Museum …
Monday Musing: the future of philanthropy

By Elizabeth Merritt

I included an essay by David Callahan in last week’s edition of Dispatches from the Future of Museums because I was struck by his projections of how government budget cuts may promote the rise of “crisis …
The Freegan Museum: Notes from an Experiment in Progress.

By Elizabeth Merritt

This Monday I posted some brief thoughts on free museum memberships, sparked by the experiment being launched by the Dallas Museum of Art. Bob Barzan, director of the Modesto Art Museum wrote to share his museum’s experience with going …
Monday Musings: The Price of a Free Membership

By Elizabeth Merritt

Monday musings are my way of sharing brief, off-the-cuff thoughts about something I have read recently, with the hope that it will generate discussion and response. With that in mind, what do you think of this?: I’ve been following with …
How Museums are Like Bellybuttons and What That Tells Us

By Elizabeth Merritt

I think it’s time to share my omphalic classification scheme for museums. I started using this metaphor while I was directing AAM’s excellence programs (MAP, Accreditation) to capture my observations about major differences about museums’ …
Making the Most of What We Have: Museums & Collaboration

By Elizabeth Merritt

Yesterday, at the orientation for Museums AdvocacyDay, deputy director Cora Marrett of the National Science Foundation predicted that, in a future of increased resource constraints, museums will need to collaborate on competitive funding …
The Future of Funding

By Elizabeth Merritt

Everyone wants to know what the next business model for museums may be. Will they morph into hybrid nonprofit/for-profit social benefit corporations? Lose tax exempt status entirely? In today’s post Carl Hamm, immediate past chair of the …
Steampunk, Crowdfunding and the Power of Social Media

By Elizabeth Merritt

Or, How One Exhibit Company Pulled A Brass Elephant Out Of A Hat This week’s guest post is by Peter Overstreet. Pete and his wife, Cat Taylor, founded the exhibit and event design company Aeronaut Productions LLC. Pete was a full-time …
The Transformative Power of Innovation

By Elizabeth Merritt

This guest post is by Richard Evans, president, EmcArts Inc. AAM is partnering with EmcArts, with the generous support of MetLife Foundation, to offer Innovation Lab for Museums. The Request for Proposals for the Lab has just been …