Funding – Page 2 – American Alliance of Museums

The Future of Development: Crowdsourced Funding

By Elizabeth Merritt

When AAM conducted its 2009 Museum Financial Information survey, a quarter of respondents had a capital campaign in progress. We don’t even have stats on how many museums regularly run annual giving campaigns, but it sometimes it …
Trends in Tax Exempt Status

By Elizabeth Merritt

I’ve written about the trend for cities to establish PILOTs (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) for nonprofit organizations. These payments (nominally voluntary) can be seen as a civilized way for museums to be good neighbors, supporting …
Where Might the Boston PILOT lead us?

By Elizabeth Merritt

When I leading forecasting exercises, helping people to question assumptions and imagine alternate futures, one scenario that participants repeatedly create is one in which museums no longer have nonprofit status. Why does it come up so …
Shaping the Financial Future of Museums: A Commentary by Marie Malaro

By Elizabeth Merritt

This week’s guest blogger is Marie C. Malaro, a lawyer, author and retired university professor. For many years she was legal counsel for the Smithsonian Institution, and later was Director of the Graduate Program in Museum Studies …
Making the Most of the Traditional Business Model

By Karen S. Coltrane

Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of CFM has encouraged me to share some insights from my experience as director of the Children’s Museum of Richmond (CMoR) in dealing with the current economy. Elizabeth has confirmed my feeling, based …
Will it Play in Peoria?

By Elizabeth Merritt

This article appeared recently in PJStar.com: “There’s No Plan ‘B’ for Peoria Museum”. It reports on a town hall meeting about the proposed Downtown Peoria Riverfront Museum and Caterpillar Visitors Center. Being blissfully ignorant of …