Hello and welcome to our Museums for All informational webinar.
My name is Helen Wechsler, and on behalf of the Institute of
Museum and Library Services, I'm pleased to welcome you to this
webinar about one of our national initiatives, the
Museums for All program.
There are three speakers during today's session.
In addition to myself, we'll be hearing from Brendan Cartwright,
who is the program manager at the Association of Children's
Museums and the coordinator for this special initiative.
And for a participating museum perspective, we will also hear
from Ken Meifert, Vice President of Sponsorship and Development
at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
To set the stage for more detailed information that we'll
be sharing about the program, I'd first like to present some
general introductory information.
Museums for All is a cooperative venture with the Association of
Children's Museums with the goal of expanding access to the
nation's museums by offering free or reduced admissions for
EBT or electronic benefit transfer card holders.
EBT cards hold food assistance benefits.
Over the past 10 years of this initiative, which started in
2014, IMLS has been working closely with ACM to recruit
museums as program participants.
One of the strengths of this nationally branded program is
name recognition.
Member museums know that they're part of a large nationwide
effort.
Policy makers are becoming familiar with the program and
visitors who might not otherwise be able to visit know that
Museums for All participation means they will be welcome.
Another strength is that access provided by this program is not
limited to certain days or specific times.
Museums for All participants are dedicated to providing access to
everyone during their normal working hours, every day of
every week.
We began the program with a pilot for the children's museum
community, but since then, participation has been open to
all museums around the country.
We're thrilled with how much the program has grown and
flourished.
And there's always room for more museums to participate.
So I'll hand it over now to Brendan to present the
initiative's guidelines.
All right.
Thank you, Helen.
So the goal of Museums for All is to be easy for all museums to
adopt and potentially to adapt.
We have a set of broad minimum guidelines that make it an easy-
-to-use program, sort of ready out-of-the-box.
Those guidelines include offering a general admission
rate of no more than $3 per person for up to four people
when one individual displays a SNAP EBT card, and that can be
from any state.
This is an easy way to identify a visitor who qualifies as
having a financial need in a minimally intrusive way.
Museums have the freedom to decide what their admission
price will be free, $1.00 per person, $2.00 per person,
etcetera.
And they're only obligated to offer that price for a basic
general admission.
If there are add on attractions at your exhibits, you know,
you're not obligated to include those in your Museums for All
offering, although if you decide that you want to, again, that's
where there's the potential to adapt it.
You're welcome to if you'd like.
The Museums for All rate would be offered during all normal
operating hours.
You know, I mentioned about being able to adapt the
offerings for some museums.
This includes accepting WIC or Medicaid or other forms of
identification that they'll accept for the Museums for All
price.
It can include discounts on special exhibits or events.
And some museums choose to offer a discounted membership.
We've seen really massive success for this program so far.
In the 10 years that it's been going, over 1,400 museums have
begun participating.
This includes museums in all 50 states, the District of
Columbia, and the Virgin Islands.
As Helen mentioned, we did pilot the program in children's
museums, but now every type of museum is represented.
We've got history museums, art museums, zoos, aquariums,
multiple presidential libraries, and so on.
And there's also another - Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame participates in this as well.
Anyway, museums in cities, in rural areas, large museums,
small ones, all types.
This was a little more interesting back before all 50
states had a participating museum, but it's a visual
representation of states where museums are participating in
Museums for All, everywhere.
And in case you're wondering how your particular region is doing,
New England looks like it's lagging a little bit.
There are over 30 sites that are counted under the single
banner of "Historic New England" though, for instance, so it it's
not quite as large of a gap.
Many states are doing very well.
California, New York, Florida and Pennsylvania have the most
participants, but Ohio, Texas and Virginia have been growing
very rapidly as well.
As I mentioned, the Museums for All program was piloted in
children's museums.
Just one reason that we see a pretty large number of
children's museums that participate, but we've seen
quite a lot of enthusiasm in history museums and art museums
as well.
Some of these museums are free admission anyway, but they
choose to participate to really drive home their commitment to
extending the invitation to every member of their
communities.
And it's also a good way to get recognized.
If someone has gone to another participating museum and they
see your free admission museum on MuseumsForAll.org, they might
be likely to visit you as well.
As you can see, there's been steady growth over time.
With our latest round of reporting, we're at over 10
million visitors that have used the Museums for All program to
visit a museum.
The visitor numbers took a little bit of a bump during the
COVID shutdowns and the diminished capacities that
museums were at, but people still use this program and as
you can see, the numbers have rebounded quite well.
A similar program to Museums for All, which some of you may
participate in is Blue Star Museums, which gives free
admission to military members and their families during the
summer and there are around 2,000 museums that participate
in that.
Museums for All, which runs year-round and is aimed at helping
families with financial need, is at about 70% of that total.
So doing pretty well there.
One phenomenon that we've begun tracking are Hubs or cities that
have three or more museums that participate in Museums for All.
As you can see, many big cities that you might expect like New
York, Houston, and Chicago are on here, but they're also places
like Greenville, South Carolina, Missoula, Montana, and
Springfield, Illinois.
In a Hub, museums can work together to really strengthen
their Museums for All offerings.
They can also recruit other museums to join or at least
demonstrate the benefit of joining.
We've seen that in places like Richmond and San Antonio, Pueblo
and Grand Rapids.
We'll talk a little bit more about Hubs later but for right
now we have 118 Hubs.
Although as Ken mentioned, we might put be missing Cooperstown
on there.
They do have three museums that participate, but I was being
very technical and saying that two were sort of operated under
one umbrella, so maybe it didn't count.
And he said I think it should.
But either way, at least 118 Hubs, 42 states, plus Washington
DC,
all have at least one Hub.
And you know, this used to just be one slide, but we had to
split the cities up over two so they'd be legible to read.
So registering for Museums for All is very easy.
We have a dedicated website which is www.Museums4All.org
with the number four, and there's a button to register
there.
The actual process should probably take you less than 5
minutes, and it's free to do.
We provide support materials like access to branded
collateral, a dedicated group site, virtual hangouts, webinars
like these, and more.
We'll also send you a window cling to use at your site, and
there's a searchable map on the website as well, and all the
participating museums are listed there.
Some of the other resources that we provide include previous
webinars that have been archived, infographics that you
can use on social media, press release templates, examples of
every state EBT card, and staff training recommendations.
We also have a profile dashboard of all the participating museums
and you can use that to sort of compare and contrast and, and
separate them out by various filters to see what you might
expect from similar types of museums.
As you decide to participate in Museums for All and we
periodically create and add more resources.
So don't be shy and telling us what you'd like to have.
And we've, we've created some resources specifically for those
Hubs that I mentioned as well, some different sample press
releases, template agendas, and slide decks for holding meetings
as a collective.
So now that you've gotten some of the background on Museums for
All and gotten an idea of who's participating, what kind of
support is offered, Helen will let you know about why
participating in this program can be valuable to your museum.
Thank you, Brendan.
I'm going to talk to you a bit more about the value of
participating in Museums for All.
So now that we've told you all about the guidelines and who is
participating in the initiative, you're probably wondering, "Why
should I join?"
Maybe you already have access programs.
Most importantly, participation affirms that museums are meant
for all members of their community and that they are
committed to equitably expanding their community outreach.
This effort typically fits easily within museums, missions,
visions, and inclusion plans.
Also, the Museums for All is yet another way to increase
community access to your research, your collections, your
programs, and exhibitions as it reduces all barriers.
We make it as easy as possible by providing free customizable
collateral such as press releases, templates, and branded
opportunities to make it even more successful.
Another benefit is the power of participation among multiple
museums in a single city or region.
Forming these Hubs, as Brendan talked about, is allowing
museums to market the program jointly and offer a menu of rich
opportunities for families in their area.
Museums in Hubs are working together to build new
partnerships with social service organizations and other
community-based organizations and to have a louder and unified
voice when approaching municipal leadership or local funders for
support.
Here's a couple comments from visitors to participating
museums that show the value of the program.
The variety of individuals on food assistance is wide.
While these quotes illustrate two examples, the nature of food
insecurity varies from one community to the next.
Museums in this program serve people who may have experienced
a change in their life.
Remember the pandemic? Either going on to food assistance in
hard times or getting off of it due to better fortune.
But be sure that all those served through Museums for All
will remember that the museum was there for them when they
needed it most.
But a better way than reading quotes,
we have with us a real live museum participant.
So now I will turn it over to Ken Meifert from the National
Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum to talk about his experience
there.
I'm unmuted.
Thanks so much, Helen.
Appreciate that.
Let's go to the next slide.
So for those of you who are not familiar with the National
Baseball Hall of Fame, we are located in Cooperstown, New
York, which is rural community in upstate New York.
Our population in the village of Cooperstown is about 1,800 year-
round residents and the museum welcomes about 250,000 visitors
a year post-COVID.
We opened in 1939.
So this is celebrating our 85th anniversary this year.
And the museum continues to thrive as the cultural and
spiritual home of our national pastime and really evolving
beyond our national pastime to really a global game at this
point.
So we're starting to see more international visitors as well.
Next slide.
So as museums, we're all focused on our mission.
Our full mission statement is there on the slide, but we
really sum this up in six simple words.
We preserve history, we honor excellence, and we connect
generations.
Next slide.
This is one of my favorite quotes about the museum.
And this is a quote from a guy named Dr. Gerald Early.
He's a history professor at Washington University.
And this quote was actually used in Ken Burns
baseball series back in the 90s. Dr. Early was featured in eight
or nine of Ken Burns films, including "Jazz" and others.
"There are three things that America will be known for 2,000
years from now when they study this civilization: the
Constitution, jazz music, and baseball.
They're the three most beautifully designed things this
culture's ever produced."
So just an amazing summation of why we still refer to baseball
as our national pastime.
Next slide.
So what started in 1939 as a one room museum has grown into a
world class museum with more than 60,000 square feet of
exhibit space.
As I mentioned, about 250,000 people visit each year from
around the country and around the world.
And Cooperstown has become a national brand that represents
excellence.
I can't think of another example where the museum's name, right,
you can say, "He's going into the Hall of Fame" or "He's going to
Cooperstown so that the words are almost, you know,
synonymous.
Next slide.
So why did we decide to participate in Museums for All?
Accessibility.
And I think first and foremost, Cooperstown, for any of you who
have been here, is not an inexpensive place to get to.
We're about four and a half hours from New York City or four
and a half hours from Boston.
This is an expensive vacation destination.
Our normal admission is $30 for adults and $21 for juniors,
which for us is age seven to 12.
Over age 12, you're, you're paying the adult rate.
So when we found out about the Museums for All program, we
jumped on this because we really felt like the chances of a
family, you know, two adults and say two kids, eight and 10,
you're talking about somewhere north of $100 bucks for them to
get in the front door.
And we really feel strongly about making this institution
accessible to everyone and not just the folks who, you know,
have the extra cash or disposable income to drop to get
in.
So when we found out about the program, we reached out to two
other museums in town, the Farmers Museum and the Fenimore
Art Museum, and all three of us signed up at the same time and
joined.
We joined in June 2022, and we offer 100% free admission
through the Museums for All program.
Next slide.
So I talked a little bit about adapting the program in June
2022, we offer free admission with a valid SNAP or SUN
Bucks EBT card, which the Museums for All program,
I think added that to their suggested cards to allow free
admission and we've welcomed 5,671 visitors,
this is as of September 30th of this year, since joining the
program.
And from a discount standpoint or revenue
standpoint, we really believe that these are 5,671 people who
would not have walked through our front door had it not been
for the Museums for All program.
So for us, it's a boost in attendance and we don't believe
that there's any loss in revenue by
participating in this program.
We only believe that it's making the museum more accessible to
more people.
We'll also say that as we saw these numbers start to grow and
we do not have a sponsor to cover the cost of the Museums
for All program, but we designed another program to offer free
field trips to schools within our region.
And I'm talking about cities like Syracuse and cities
like Utica who have very diverse populations and very high
childhood poverty rates.
And we were able to secure a sponsor for that program where
the sponsor is paying for transportation, literally buses,
buying these kids lunch while they're in town.
They're participating in our educational programs and, so far
this fall semester, we've welcomed more than 1,500
students and teachers to the museum who would have never
otherwise been able to get here.
So not only, you know, directly through the Museums for All
program, but inspiring our team to come up with new ways to
make the museum more accessible to audiences who
couldn't otherwise visit.
The program is prominently promoted on our Plan Your Visit
page.
And really, all folks need to do is show up with their SNAP card
and their ID, and they're in the museum in a snap, and hopefully
they're having a great time.
Next page.
Whoop.
I'm out of slides.
All right.
Yeah.
Thank you, Ken.
You bet.
And as I alluded to earlier, and as you all know, it's kind
of a bummer to talk about, but I am, museums have been
affected pretty greatly by COVID-19.
You know, even now some museums are operating at either a
reduced capacity or maybe a changed operational system
because of it.
But in something of a surprise, we still saw about
eight museums a month continue to register for Museums for All
during the height of the pandemic, even if they were
closed at the at the time.
We increased the number of participating museums during
that main period
by over 400 and it proves the continuing necessity of the
program's mission.
You know, unfortunately, that it was the case that some of the
museums that were participating in Museums for All had to close
permanently.
But you know, with one exception, every other museum
kept their commitment to offering Museums for All rates
to its visitors.
And the one museum that stopped eventually started offering
Museums for All rates again.
So that was a pretty powerful testimony to me that in the time
that the admission revenue was really at a premium,
nobody dropped this program.
And in fact, a couple compensated for their reduced
capacities by offering their Museums for All rates to every
visitor.
There were operational changes that were made during the
pandemic to ensure reduced capacities.
Most museums required guests to buy their tickets online or at
least to pre-register and a bunch of them have kept this
system or something like it in place.
It's a bit of a challenge to Museums for All visitors who
merely had to show their SNAP EBT cards at the admissions desk
before.
So when you're building out this new admissions
system or if you're adding Museums for All to it, it's very
important to keep in mind how your museum is still going to
accommodate Museums for All visitors.
So are you going to have an option at that ticket price on
the menu?
Will folks have to present their SNAP EBT card in person when
they show up?
Will you just direct Museums for All visitors to buy their
tickets in person?
You know there's not a right answer to it, but whatever your
museum chooses, it should be explicit and easy to follow on
your website so folks know how to get their tickets.
And when you're allotting the tickets by time, make
sure that there are enough for Museums for All visitors.
On average, about 3.5% of a museum's attendance is coming
from Museums for All visitors.
That does vary by type of museum.
It can be higher for children's museums, a little bit lower for
art museums, for instance.
One other thing that museums did during the pandemic, while they
were closed or unable to welcome as many guests as they'd like,
was to really increase their community outreach.
And whether that was offering virtual museum tours and
activities or distributing STEM kits to schools, the museums
embraced their roles as community pillars, and they made
active overtures towards their communities.
And at its core, that's really what Museums for All is all
about, you know, extending that active invitation to everyone,
making sure they know that the museum is for them and that it
wants them there.
So museums recognize that access and inclusivity are important
bedrock organizational values, and Museums for All is one way
to help with DEAI efforts.
So an organization's commitment to inclusivity usually extends
beyond just Museums for All.
And in fact, Museums for All works best when it's part of a
suite of offerings.
Many museums offer reduced admission for seniors, for
children, perhaps educators or military.
Many will offer some sort of monthly free day or even have
free memberships that can be checked out of the library.
All of those are wonderful, and Museums for All supplements them
rather than taking the place of any of them.
And while the only requirement to participate in Museums for
All is to accept SNAP EBT cards, as I mentioned, several
participants also accept WIC, possibly Medicaid.
The Madison Children's Museum, for instance, has 21 different
identifications that it will accept for their $1 admission
fee.
About 10% of the participating
museums also offer some sort of reduced membership program as
well.
They're taking the next step of getting people in the door on
daily admissions and then turning them into members with
more solid museum-going habits.
Some of them are also using the opportunity to catch visitors
that Museums for All might be letting fall through the cracks
a little bit, such as foster families.
And these museums are stepping up and supplementing Museums for
All and other ways to try and catch as many of those families
as possible.
One part of joining Museums for All, and Ken kind of mentioned
this, is broadening your visitor base, but another part is taking
the time to work on assumptions and biases that exist within
your own staff.
So one participating museum that was located in a college town
was surprised to see how many grad students were using Museums
for All to visit.
They hadn't expected that many to be on food assistance.
And there's some wonderful resources around Diversity,
Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion on the AAM website.
And the Cultural Competence Learning Institute, or CCLI, is
another fantastic resource for museums looking to improve their
own approaches to inclusivity.
One complaint that does come up is why people on SNAP assistance
deserve this admission discount.
Or rather, why can't someone not on food assistance get the same
rate?
You know, for our purposes a cut off had to exist
somewhere.
And we felt that a government issued card would work well and
the least intrusively to demonstrate the need for some
help in removing a financial barrier.
But one of the reasons why we think Museums for
All works best as part of a suite of options is so that
those who don't have SNAP EBTs, some kind of appropriate price
can be found for them.
Helen, we'll turn things back over to you.
Thanks again, Brendan.
OK, so leveraging participation, sometimes museums or their
boards can be wary of joining Museums for All.
They see that it calls for very deep admission discounts in some
cases and worry that it will be a hit to their budget.
We took a look to see if this is really the case.
In 2018, we engaged Aurora Consulting to do an evaluation
of Museums for All and the experiences that participating
museums were having with the museum.
The complete results of the evaluation are available on the
website, but here are some pertinent findings.
Most museums reported no change, but over a third of the
respondents said they saw increases in ticket sales and
attendance.
25% of museums saw increases in development revenue and
membership and program sales.
Only one of the museums that responded to the survey reported
a decline in their revenue since implementing the program.
Museums for All is a great opportunity to add new
development streams, either soliciting funding that directly
pays for the program or finding grants and sponsorships that
will help.
It's a program that helps an often-underserved segment of the
community, and there are foundations or banks, or other
local funders that want to be part of it.
We're in the midst of wrapping up another evaluation because
2018 is longer ago than you think.
So we'll see how things may have changed.
The results of the evaluation will be available soon.
One of the other things that we do with participants in Museums
for All is that we connect them with other museums in their city
or area that are also participating in Museums for All
to form these Hubs.
And we don't call them Hub Cities anymore, even though it
says it on the slide, because we recognize that we other regions
or rural areas might have a group of museums that work
together. We found that museums can better promote this program
within their communities by working together.
In December 2018, we invited representatives from seven of
these Hubs, San Diego, Chicago, Akron, Missoula, Chattanooga,
Worcester, and Grand Rapids, to attend a convening so we could
determine how museums can work together to get the most out of
Museums for All.
We found that several opportunities for cooperation
exist, and not just between museums.
They can use Museums for All as an entry point to establish or
deepen connections with local food banks, or transit
authorities, in ways that help remove other barriers potential
visitors face in making it to the museum.
These actions build trust among community organizations and the
people they serve.
It shows that museums are serious about their commitment
to having everyone visit, that the invitation being extended is
real and genuine, and that museums are willing to put in
the work on their end to make it happen.
The complete report from the Hub City Convening is available on
the Museums for All website.
Then in 2022, we convened another group of Hubs, including
Richmond, Cincinnati, Providence, Tulsa, San Antonio,
and San Diego.
We wanted to know what better ways we could support them.
Based on these sessions, we created some new resources
specifically for Hubs, including a special press release
template, a flyer for distributing around the
community, a one-pager to give to local SNAP offices, simple
meeting agendas for recruiting other museums or potential
partners, and a slide deck for use in those meetings.
These are all available for all museums in Hub Cities and
regions to use.
So if all this sounds intriguing to you, it's very easy and free
to register for Museums for All at www.Museums4All.org.
We certainly hope the information shared today has
interested you in becoming part of the Museums for All
participation family.
We'd love to have you join.
If you have any questions after the webinar, please do not
hesitate to contact us.
Listed here are our email addresses for both Brendan, and
Ken, and myself, and we are more than happy to answer questions
you have about the program.
You can also contact the general mailbox at info@Museums4All.org.
That's with the number four.
And we encourage you all to connect with all of the latest
Museums for All news via Twitter @MuseumsForAll, F-O-R, just to
be a little confusing.
So now I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Elizabeth
because it's time for questions and answers.
Thanks for joining us today.
And we'll be posting, again.
We'll be posting the video recording along with slides and
a transcript on the IMLS website at imls.gov/webinars.
It should be available within a couple of days.
All right, Elizabeth, take it away.
Thank you, Helen.
Hi, I'm Elizabeth De Leon-Jones and I work with Helen at IMLS. I
am taking your questions today and I see we have one question
in already. "Hi," it says, "Can you explain any more about how
free museums can make the most of this initiative?"
Yeah, I can talk a little bit about that.
So, you know, it, it always kind of seems to me that free museums
should all really be participating in Museums for All
because it's kind of the easiest thing to do.
There are some that you're obviously not giving a
discount on the admission, but there are some who try
to find other types of ways.
They might give us a discount in the museum shop, for instance,
if there's a paid membership that they offer, they can do a
discounted membership there.
And it is also helpful, especially if you've got
other museums in your city or area, to be able to partner with
them on Museums for All.
I mentioned a little bit about how if someone goes
to another museum that participates in Museums for All
and they see, "Oh, this free museum is also in town and is
part of this.
I know that I had a great experience at this other museum
that was involved in Museums for All.
Let's go check this one out."
So it's some nice marketing on your behalf as well.
We do host hangouts, informal hangouts, usually on a monthly
basis, and we've discussed the role of free museums a couple of
times on those.
So we have the recordings from those hangout sessions as well
that I'd be happy to share with you to get some more ideas.
But that's kind of the gist of it.
The one tricky part for a free museum participating, comes when
it's time to share attendance reporting.
You know, we don't want to have you going out of your way to ask
your visitors if they're coming in with a SNAP EBT card or not.
So for the free museums, we generally just get your total
attendance and we get attendance reports on a
quarterly basis.
So for those three months, we just get your total attendance.
If you happen to have discovered in some way that someone is
coming specifically because of Museums for All, you're welcome
to report it that way.
But you know, otherwise we can just track your total attendance
over time.
It's a lot more important to us that the visitors are feeling
welcome and included and are able to come rather than getting
the most accurate count of who's coming and why to the museum.
So you know, that is kind of a little "nut" with free museums
that we haven't really cracked over the lifespan of this
program.
But you know, it's also of secondary importance in the
grand scheme of things.
Go ahead, Helen.
I was just going to add one other little thing, which is
that families may not know about your museum or know you're free.
And a great part of the program is that it interacts with social
service organizations and other community organizations who do
serve those families.
And often that's where they hear about the program and that's
where they hear there are amazing museum resources in
their communities that will welcome them.
So they're coming at you from a different way.
And that's another reason to be part of the effort.
Thank you, Brendan and Helen. We have another question here.
It says, "At PacSci [Pacific Science Center], we currently
have Access memberships instead of Access tickets.
Do you see benefits in getting museums to have both?"
Actually my supervisor is Keni Sturgeon, who used to work at
the Pacific Science Center, and she likes to tell the story of
how, at the time, they were weighing whether to get involved
in Museums for All or to offer an Access membership.
And you guys chose the Access membership.
But they kind of go hand in hand.
Museums for All, at its core, is set up to be there for a daily
admission to make that easy.
But a lot of museums, especially once they get started
participating in it, they decide that they want to add on a
membership component to it as well.
And that's beneficial in a lot of ways, primarily in that it
gets the visitor feeling a little bit more involved
in the museum. One other really nice benefit of that is they'll
get a membership card.
And so whatever kind of lingering stigma there might be
with showing a SNAP EBT card, you can eliminate that by, you
know, they get to show their museum membership card.
So yeah, they really go hand in hand.
I think the benefit of Museums for All is it
allows the visitors to dip their toe in the water first, you
know, they don't have to jump all in on a membership. And the
discounted memberships, we don't have specific guidance on what
those should cost.
But sort of organically, the museums have largely landed in a
$20-30 range for an annual membership for a family of four
with their reduced price and that's a really good deal for a
membership.
It may be a little bit more, like $30 might be more than a
family wants to spend on that day.
Maybe they just want to go visit the museum and if it's $2 per
person, they just have to spend $8 to go visit.
So that's some of the benefits of the strict baseline Museums
for All program versus a membership.
But they really go hand-in-hand honestly. There are a few
museums that have registered and they use a discounted membership
rate rather than a discounted daily admission as their way of
participating in Museums for All.
So that can work in certain cases.
But usually the ones that have a membership offering are doing
that in concert with the daily admission as well.
Thank you.
We have another question here:
"Other than reporting quarterly attendance figures, are there
any other reporting expectations?"
So those are the only expectations.
We do have optional spaces on the reporting form.
If you have gotten a sponsor, sort of like Ken mentioned, if
you have created any new partnerships with any other
organizations in your community through Museums for All, we like
to know about that.
And one of the best ones, is the testimonials or comments.
So any kind of feedback that you have for us that's not an
attendance number can go in that box.
That's usually where I get the really good stories of
people that come in.
One of my favorites was of a father who came and brought his
family to the museum and then realized that it was going to be
a little too expensive.
And they asked, "Do you have a SNAP EBT card?"
And he did, and he was able to bring the family into the museum
and enjoy it.
And it just really highlighted to me that the desire for people
to visit the museums is there to the point where they'll take the
risk of going to the museum without necessarily knowing that
they can afford to go in once they get there.
And if they're able to go that far, then I think it's a really
great thing for the museum to say, "OK, you've come this far,
we're going to go the rest of the way to meet you and make
sure that we can get you into our museum because you want to
be here and we want you to be here too."
So we're making that happen via Museums for All.
Thank you.
There's a couple of similar questions:
"How can my museum make the best use of the program if we are not
located in a Hub City?"
And then another question: "How do you recommend getting a Hub
started?"
Ken, maybe this might be good for you to talk about since you
were discussing with the Farmers Museum and the art museum
in town too.
Yeah for us, we found out about the program and decided to
enroll and really it was about picking up the phone and calling
our colleagues at the other museums and saying, "Hey, we, we
came across this great program.
Would you like to participate with us? And we can do a joint
announcement together."
And they took a few days to think about it and jumped right
on board.
So we started a Hub with one or two phone calls.
But again, I think for us and before we actually signed up, I
talked to a number of museums in upstate New York who were
participating ahead of us.
And everybody felt like these were new visitors that were
walking through the front door.
And as Helen mentioned, no impact on budget, there's no
lost revenue.
It's just more guests who otherwise wouldn't be coming
through the front door.
And I think when you approach it with that kind of attitude and
you can share that with other museums in your community, this
program becomes a real no-brainer, right?
And it becomes something that our staff and the rest of the
leadership team here is really proud of our participation.
And I think that's an important thing too.
It's a sense of pride that we're all doing this good work and to
make it accessible to people who otherwise couldn't walk through
the front door that makes you feel good every day.
So, I think there's a lot of benefits, you know, additional
visitors and that sense of pride in making the museum accessible.
I think it's an easy conversation to have with other
museums in your community, especially if you're on board.
We convinced them before we were even on board.
So, just sign up.
Yeah, sometimes it does take a champion on staff to get the
that decision pushed through for the higher-ups.
But at the end of the day, it's a very mission-driven program as
well.
It's about expanding your outreach as a museum and just
helping your community all that much more.
And I will say that the Museum for All site is great and being
able to search by community and type of museum, as both Helen
and Brendan mentioned. IMLS is pushing this out through social
service organizations and people are aware of this.
And they're looking for stuff to do in their community or in
their region.
So they may find you on the Museums for All website, and
come visit you whether you're a free museum or not.
They may not have known that.
So, great site.
"What information is required in order to register a museum to
participate?"
So the registration form is there on the website as well.
But it's really just some basic contact information.
We ask how this will fit into your overall outreach plan and
then choosing what level of admission you'd like to
charge and letting us know which date you'd like to go live with
it.
And that's when we'll put you on the website.
So there's really not very much information that we require from
you.
I guess it's also important to say that there's not any
kind of expectations really on our end either.
If you are not having anybody come through the door, even if
you're trying, you're making outreach and no one's coming,
that's OK.
You know, it's there.
And if you're making the invitation, the other person
does have to say yes.
So it's a two-way thing.
Even if you just have the Museums for All logo on your
website, but that's the extent of the outreach you do,
it's just there in case someone wanders in with the SNAP card.
Yep, that's OK, that's fine.
It's one of those "you get out of it what you put into it" kind
of things.
But you know, the important thing is that it's there. Also,
there's not a time commitment to any of this either.
So if you register, you're participating and then for
whatever reason, you're saying, "OK, I think we don't want to
do this anymore."
You can just let me know.
We'll probably ask you a couple questions like an
exit interview thing to find out what wasn't working and how we
can address that for other museums in the future.
But just let me know and we'll take you off the website and no
hard feelings or anything.
But also the vast majority of museums, once they get started,
they're like Ken basically, "This is great,
we like it."
If this program were to stop tomorrow, I think the vast
majority would still keep it in place and probably like it
better because they wouldn't have to give me their quarterly
reports.
But it is a very good mission driven, easy to use
program, and pretty easy to explain to visitors as well.
And you know the feedback that we get from museums is that
the visitors are so happy to have this to enable them to
come.
I think we have time for this last question.
We have a few minutes. And it says, "It was mentioned that
visitors can be charged full add-on prices for special
exhibitions or events.
Is there a recommended approach for determining prices for these
add-on exhibitions or events?"
I don't have a recommended approach to it.
It's a thing where this program has to make
sense for visitors, but it also has to make sense for the
museums that are participating.
So I guess I would just say that because it's an add-on, it's
going above the basic requirements that we have of
you.
It's not subject to the requirements.
So if you had a special exhibit that charged more, you wouldn't
necessarily have to cap that at $3.
You could give it some kind of discount.
But it's not necessarily subject to the Museums for All basic
guidelines.
You can say, "We're charging you $10 for this one that normally
costs $20," as part of your Museums for All package.
They're not here, but I'm going to volunteer them anyways -
the Cincinnati Museum Center is one that went from just having
their basic admission covered by Museums for All.
And then they did add special exhibits under that umbrella as
well.
So I think checking in with them to see how they did things,
I would recommend that as well if you're interested in learning
a bit more about that.
I'm sorry, I realized I was muted.
I do not see any additional questions in the in the Q&A.
Well, then we will say thank you very much.
And we truly, truly hope that you will consider signing up for
Museums for All.
And of course, contact us if you have any other questions that
you think about later.
And shameless plug, remember that IMLS funding opportunity
deadline is coming up on November 15th.
So if you have good project ideas, write up a proposal and
send it our way.
Yeah, thanks everyone.
And thank you, Ken, for helping us out on this.
Thanks for inviting me.
Yeah, thank you, Ken.