Political Trends – Page 2 – American Alliance of Museums

Another Way to Split Nonprofits

By Elizabeth Merritt

Last Thursday I blogged about a potential “dark future” in which the nonprofit field fragments, as society and policy makers come to view “social service” and “cultural” nonprofits as fundamentally …
Dark Futures: Nonprofit Fragmentation

By Elizabeth Merritt

I wanted to start the year on a positive note, I really did. But I find myself writing about a middle-of-the-night worry, instead.What gave me nightmares? Not a bad dinner, unfortunately, but a steady diet of sobering news. I spent most of …
As Goes Kansas, So Goes the Nation?

By Elizabeth Merritt

Every time I travel, I come back with new perspectives to bring to bear on my forecasting. Case in point—last week I was speaking at the Kansas Museums Association Meeting, and in the course of prepping for the talk and schmoozing with …
Who Makes the Best Advocate for the Future of Museum Funding?

By Elizabeth Merritt

Good futures scanning should include all the STEEP categories. As I’ve confessed before, I sometimes have trouble with the P—political/policy trends. Today, Gail Ravnitzky Silberglied, the Alliance’s vice president of government relations …
Museums are the Future of Education

By Elizabeth Merritt

Earlier this year, I shared some thoughts regarding the future of education with face-to-face and on-line attendees at Museums Advocacy Day. My thesis, which I’ve advanced on this blog before, is that we are on the cusp of transformative …
Should Museums Be Thankful?

By Elizabeth Merritt

Last week, before I began my big cooking blitz, I tried to make a list of things museums should be thankful for, but I came up dry. I’d spent the week trying to beef up my political scanning, and the results were pretty depressing. No …
One from each Category: Part 2

By Elizabeth Merritt

Time for a brain stretch. This is part two of a quick review of recent scanning hits in five STEEP categories of forecasting—this one covers economic, environmental and political developments. (You can read part one, on social and …
Scanning for Political Futures

By Elizabeth Merritt

Though I’ve worked in D.C. for over ten years, I know very little about politics. I’m a biologist by training. My colleague and partner-in-scanning, Phil Katz, is a historian. This inevitably shapes our reading, if only because we …
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’ …
Advocacy Day 2027: museums fight to regain nonprofit status

By Elizabeth Merritt

I looked across the table at the poised young woman politely scanning the figures I had pulled up on the airscreen between us. “Ms. Guerrera,” I said, palms sweating, “as you can see, in the ten years since the Federal Government withdrew …