The Detective Returns - WWII U.S. Air Force Edition

Years ago, my mother and I were going through her parents’ items from when her father was in the U.S. Air Force, and among the papers were a number of photos of airplanes that, to me at the time, looked like they were WWII airplanes that had been shot down. (Why did I think they were WWII airplanes that had been shot down? Really only because I knew my grandfather was in WWII, and the airplanes either didn’t look whole or looked kind of shabby. Therefore, they MUST have been WWII wrecks, right?) I took three of the photos to keep for myself; two of them have good close-ups of the nose art, which have ladies in skimpy (or no) outfits. At the time, I didn’t know that was common, and was appalled that my grandfather would take a picture of a pornographic airplane. Some time after I found these pictures, we visited the Historic Flight Foundation on Paine Field in Everett, WA, where I saw other planes with women in skimpy (or no) outfits or named with innuendo, and that’s when I learned about naming your plane for ladies and having it decorated in a risqué manner. (And I tried very hard not to blush when the older-gentleman docent was talking about the Impatient Virgin?.) 

The California Sunshine... at least she has clothes on

But what are these planes in my grandfather’s photos? And where were these pictures taken? None of the photos are marked with any information (except the third photo, which is labeled as “What’s left of a Jap Zero”; despite the very washed out photo, I’m pretty sure that’s not a Japanese insignia on the main plane in the photo), or with any clue as to why my grandfather took them. I chalked it up to that attitude of “I’ll always remember what this was and where I was,” as well as not realizing someone else might look at the pictures after you’re gone. (And that led me to remind myself: Always label your photos, even if you think you’ll remember the details. Someday you might not remember, or someone else may be looking at them.) So I put them in a box of photos with other photos from my mother’s family, and moved on. 

"What's left of a Jap Zero"... but that's not a Japanese insignia

Last night, while cleaning out my closet, I was going through that box and found the pile of family photos. Surprise, surprise, there are those three pictures of WWII-looking airplanes. Between the time I snagged those photos for myself and now, I’ve worked at (and been laid off from) a military aviation museum, so when I looked at those photos again yesterday, I was even more intrigued than I was when I first saw them. It was no longer only “I wonder what that plane was and I wonder where my grandfather was when he took this picture…if he’s even the one who took it,” and being curious about the grandfather I never met; it was now also “Ooh, what is this? What type of plane is it? Did we have one at the museum? What’s its story? When was it built?” In the intervening years, too, the internet has grown more, I’ve visited and researched the collections of other aviation museums aside from the one I worked at, I know now how to locate serial numbers on an airplane, and I’ve learned that there’s a large community of military aviation enthusiasts, and if you know where to look (Hello, Google!), you can find lots of information about WWII airplanes online. So, to Google I go! 

I’m especially curious to find out where these pictures might have been taken and what types of planes each of these were (I’m not sure I’m going to be able to figure out anything about the so-called Zero, since the original picture is so washed out and I don’t have that aviation knowledge to be able to look at a plane’s frame and know exactly what type it is), but also what their missions or purposes were, and what happened to the crews. Since I first found the pictures, I’ve also learned that just because a plane looks shabby doesn’t mean it’s been shot down: it could simply have been decommissioned or deemed unairworthy. 

My mother made a scrapbook of family pictures while doing genealogy, and the book includes a couple of my grandfather’s pictures of airplanes on a runway in Papua New Guinea during WWII. I always meant to ask the mechanics I worked with at the museum what kind of airplanes they were, but I never got brave enough. More Advice From Tiffany: Don’t let the opportunity slip away. If it’s important enough to think about it, act on it before it’s too late. I now have five pictures in my possession (three loose, two in a scrapbook) that are a major piece of U.S. history, and I’m going to have to rely on my research skills and what I can find on the internet to give me even a scrap of what could have been a fascinating piece of family history. 

So, with pictures and magnifying glass in hand, I shall take to the internet to find out what bits of American and family history I have in my possession! Off we go into the wild blue yonder, Nancy Drew!

Will Small Museums Outlast COVID-19?

I don’t know if this is a crazy idea, or if it’s something everyone in the museum industry is already talking about – as opposed to little ol’ me, who wants to be in the museum industry, but is still on the outside looking in – or if it’s completely far-fetched, but I began wondering the other day: could small museums/historic sites be the institutions that outlast COVID-19, while larger institutions are wrecked by it? 

I was reading the Autumn 2019 issue of AASLH’s History News (yes, I’m far behind. But now that I don’t have a job, I have more time to read!), and first of all, about the last half of the magazine felt like topics/statistics that are no longer relevant, or are relevant in new ways: visitor data, the upcoming National Visitation Report, The Tenement Museum, fundraising… it felt like everything was strangely irrelevant, yet going to be newly relevant, all at the same time. Everything we thought we knew or were learning about visitor habits and statistics, notable museums and organizations to look to as models, and financial health has been blown out of the water this year (What visitors are coming anymore? What scheduled fundraising events happened this year as planned?), and yet, when/if we reopen, all of the specifics we learned are probably going to be invalid, but the ideas behind them will still be worthwhile as we rebuild and make a new world, The New Normal. We’re going to have to learn new habits of visitors, figure out the new demographics of visitors (Fewer travelers? Fewer elderly visitors? We’ll need to try even harder to reach out to younger visitors, families, and our neighbors), new ways to fundraise (Virtual fundraisers? More one-on-one experiences, to limit the number of participants in one space at the same time, as prizes/money-raisers?), and a greater need for fundraising to make up what we missed in 2020. But I digress. 

The article about the National Visitation Report had some pretty amazing “Wha huh?!?” insights about museum size vs. admission price vs. budget vs. visitor numbers for 2018. The summarized results showed that 

• sites with no entry fees received more visitors (about 16,600) on average than those that do charge entry fees, but those with entry fees had a larger increase in visitors during the survey window; 

• sites with no entry fees tended to be organizations with the smallest budgets; those with admission fees were from a range of budget sizes; 

• institutions with annual budgets of $250,000 or less made up 72% of sites with no entry fee, but 44% of those that charge entry fees; 

• small-budget organizations that don’t charge admission had larger visitation growth than both small-budget paid-entry sites and large-budget free-admission sites. 

The question of why organizations with the smallest budgets are the ones more likely to provide free entry made me pause for a moment. Of all of the museums I’ve been to or volunteered at, it seems that the small, neighborhood ones have the smallest budgets and they don’t have admission (they might suggest donations, but no actual admission prices), but the bigger, fancier ones with a broader focus (all of a region’s history, all of a state’s history, all of natural history, science, aviation history, etc.) do charge admission. Now, on the one hand, you could say it’s because the bigger ones have more to support: those large sites and facilities aren’t cheap, those artifacts aren’t going to keep themselves maintained, and new items for the collections aren’t free. But on the other hand, the smaller institutions seem like they would need or want more money – which would mean raised admissions – to be able to seek out and purchase items, or pay for at least a handful of employees to maintain the organization (a paid Collections Manager who knows how to properly take care of the artifacts, a paid Programs or Education Manager who knows how to bring in the crowds and spread the organization’s message, etc.). 

And that, in part, led me to my next thought, which is where the “revelation” (I’m not going to say this was a real revelation; it’s been a partially formed thought in my head for a while, but finally jelled, and I doubt I’m the first one who’s had this thought) came from: So how do these small organizations, small enough even that they’re not getting community or government grants, survive if they’re not charging admission? From my experience, many of them rely on fundraisers. Now, I already pondered earlier about how the stereotypical fundraiser, with big crowds, maybe black tie, maybe a dinner or auction, could change with The New World. But many of these small institutions that I’ve been a part of have relied on direct-mail fundraisers that go out to their members and/or mailing list. If I’m a small, local-history museum or society and you’re a member of my organization, once or twice a year I send you a special letter or postcard that says, “It’s time for our annual fundraiser! Please return this card with your donation,” and we both go along our merry ways. This type of fundraiser doesn’t rely on close proximity of attendees, we don’t have to go in public that might have restrictions on how many people can be in one room at a time; it’s just sit-at-home-write-a-check-mail-an-envelope. Those types of fundraisers might not be in dire jeopardy. There is still the problem that people who aren’t working because their jobs have been put on hold, they’ve been furloughed, or laid off may not be able to donate as much or at all, but… is it outlandish to also point out that a lot of donors are retirees? They may not have as much of a financial change due to COVID as younger donors who are donating parts of their paychecks that now don’t exist. 

So these smaller organizations potentially aren’t going to experience as much of a downturn in their fundraising activities as the larger organizations could. And if these smaller organizations also aren’t charging admission to begin with, then fewer visitors won’t affect them either, unless they’re getting grants based on the number of visitors. Additionally, these small groups typically don’t have paid staff, or have just a few paid employees, so lack of admission isn’t affecting a payroll, either, which means they’re not laying off people, which means there isn’t a downturn in the labor being performed (there’s still someone there to maintain their collections, someone to plan the few fundraisers, someone to plan programs and exhibits… no paid staff means no layoffs which means likely no change in who’s available to do what). 

So now we have small organizations that may not experience a big change in their fundraising model or their attendance revenue, versus the larger organizations that rely on in-person fundraising events, younger donors who may have been affected by COVID-related job reductions, and paid admission that’s no longer coming at previous levels. Am I nuts to think the small, neighborhood organizations could weather the COVID storm better than large institutions? 

The American Alliance of Museums released a report in July saying that one-third of museums could close forever as a result of COVID-19. The report says that respondents from a June survey represented a “broad cross-section of the field geographically, by size, and by discipline,” but doesn’t break down where those possibly-closing museums fall in the range of budgets. Could it be that the larger museums make up the majority of the one-third that could close? 

Laura Lott, President & CEO of AAM, said that “costs will outweigh revenue”… but if we’re looking at our free-admission institutions, their costs were already outweighing their admissions revenue, and that was their natural state, that’s just How Things Are for them. 

The survey respondents also reported that 87% of them had 12 months or less of operating reserves, but again, small organizations – at least the ones whose nitty-gritty I’m familiar with – typically operate with only one- to two-years’ budget available at a time, so having 12 months’ worth available is nearly the norm. 

I began having this wild vision of the super-large museums being paralyzed by COVID and having to shut down, crumpling to the ground like Godzilla being taken down (NOT saying that big institutions are bad, destructive monsters like Godzilla; just comparing sizes). Meanwhile, there are these small, neighborhood museums, relying solely on their community members for support, and while not Strong like Godzilla, they’re at least able to stand up, dodging whatever is attacking Godzilla. Once Godzilla goes down and the threats of both Godzilla and whatever took him down are gone, the small, neighborhood museums are still there, and they emerge from the rubble. No more Godzilla-museums means they’re the only museums in town; will people now flock to them to get their historical/cultural fix? Will these small, independent, neighborhood museums become The New Norm of what a museum is? And then, over time, will they become stronger and bigger, raising funds from more than just their direct-mail supporters? If so, the next time a pandemic or similar catastrophe strikes, will they then be the behemoths that don’t survive? 

Looking at it another way, I’m currently reading After the Blast: The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens. The author, Eric Wagner, describes various theories about how plants live, thrive, and compete in an ecosystem. Wagner says that Frederic Clements, a botany professor in the early 1900s, “believed that climate and habitat, rather than interactions between the species, did the most to dictate what species would survive where,” and that competition happened within each species, rather than against other species. Wagner explains Clements’ view that tree species 1 is actually competing against tree species 2, rather than tree species 1 vs. shrub species 1; and shrub species 1 is competing for space and nutrients against shrub species 2, rather than grass species 1. These competitions go on and form units of succession, with whoever the current victors are for each species making up one unit of succession: “tree species 1, shrub species 1, and grass species 1… thrived for a time, but eventually gave way to tree species 2, shrub species 2, and grass species 2.” Museums may not be competing with each other in the knock-down, take-your-nutrients-and-run manner, but we are competing for visitors’ attention and dollars, and community/government funding, if there is any. But with the pandemic causing the big museums (museum species 1) to close due to lack of visitors, admissions, and donations, are the small museums going to be museum species 2, thriving as the dominant type of museums? Will they be the reigning museum species until the next environmental factor (actual environment or situational environment) causes a change in the ecosystem? 

(I again add the caveat that I’m just basing this on my experiences, and I only have super-in-depth knowledge of the operating intricacies of one small, local history group and one medium-size museum, with medium-depth knowledge of a few others of various sizes. There’s also the caveat of “Well, if the organization is run only/mainly by volunteers, how do those volunteers pay their bills? They may have a job, and that job could now be gone, which could affect their willingness to volunteer [no paycheck means no gas money to get to the organization, for example] or could mean they have to look for a job that changes their availability to volunteer.” So many extra factors, and I think we’re still going to be seeing how this plays out for a long time to come.)

Interactives: Thing of the Past?

Are interactives at museums about to become relics themselves?

Reading Dan Spock's "A Post-Coronavirus Museum," it hit me that interactive activities at museums and science centers may quickly become a thing of the past.

As COVID-19 started to spread through the U.S., museums began talking about temporarily removing their interactives. No more touchy stations for kids, no more equipment for them to climb on, but just for now, as a precaution. At the museum I was working at, there was discussion about putting hand sanitizer stations in the room of touch-screen interactives, rather than completely closing off the room.

But it's now five months later, and "for now" and "temporarily" are still going. Many museums are currently closed, so their interactives are a moot point for the moment, but at some point, they will reopen (Won't they?), and there will need to be discussions about all of those hands-on activities for kids and adults.

Spock states: "One museum I’m aware of is already discussing plans to pull all interactive activities from its exhibits in anticipation of reopening," and refers to "the idea that children’s and other museums might ... revert to static displays like the ones I grew up with five decades ago."

Wow. That idea of possibly getting rid of all interactives is just... wow. How much time have museum professionals -- exhibit designers, curators, education departments -- spent researching interactives and thinking of how to incorporate them into each museum? How much time have we spent thinking how a physical activity could be integrated into the theme of our museums or science centers -- hammering away to build a railroad, pushing buttons to create tides, spinning a knob to make a sign light up, touching a screen to make your choice in a game, using building blocks to construct a bridge or high-rise, touching a plasma ball to see electricity and how it's conducted -- especially as a way to help a visitor make a connection with what they're learning? As far as I know, interactives are still a relatively new thing (booming within the last 10-20 years), and now we're having to either rethink what an "interactive" could/should be, or get rid of them altogether? How much time have we invested in these aspects of museums and learning, and now they may have to become obsolete?? That realization blew my mind.

If we can't touch things, or should be touching many fewer things, what will "interactives" look like in the post-Coronavirus world? How will those multi-sensory and tactile goals be accomplished? Will everything be virtual reality? For me, one of the great things about most interactives was that they forced you to look at something in the real world, and to get physically involved, rather than staring at a screen, as if you were at home watching TV or streaming movies online. It can be argued that some virtual reality activities require involvement, but there are others that are "Sit there, put on this headset, and watch this," much like the "Stand there, look at that wall, and read this" of gallery spaces.

On the other hand, in episode #79 of the "Museum Archipelago" podcast, exhibit designer Paul Orselli lists a number of other options, like interactive touch screens or projection systems that are activated and controlled by foot, rather than by hand, allowing social interactions while being socially distanced. "[It's] sort of full-body and it doesn't involve people touching their hands."

He describes what he calls "empty interaction," such as "a flip label [with] one piece of text and information on a little flap or a door, and to encounter the rest of the information, or to get an answer to a question, you have to open up the flap," as well as push-button interactives. Those are certainly easy interactives (and kind of fun, with that moment of "Here's my guess. Did I get it right? Let's see!" and "What's going to happen when I push this?"), but as Orselli laughs, "That might be about the lowest level of interaction possible." He then asks whether there's a way to create a more intellectually engaging version of a flip label.

Orselli says that possibly having to get rid of these simple interactives could be a good thing, forcing us to ask ourselves, "How could we provide a satisfying experience, and what are the interfaces or other kinds of opportunities that we could provide that would carry the content, would carry the emotional ideas that we want to carry across?" As Orselli concludes, "Constraints are a good thing for creativity, and now we've just been thrown some public health and perceptual constraints. We have to think about that because certainly our visitors are going to be thinking about that, and if we don't show that at least we're sensitive to that, our visitors could rightfully think that we are insensitive not only to those design constraints and those design considerations, but insensitive to them as people who want to have fun and want to be safe." This gives us new things to think about, new approaches to interactions for our visitors, new ways of learning. It's going to be a whole new world.

Someday (maybe soon), is there going to be a Museum of Interactives? Lots of old flip panels, push buttons, and hammering toys, all sitting on shelves? We'll visit with our kids or grandkids, they'll then visit with their kids, and say "Back in the 2010s, there were things called interactives. You had to do stuff with your hands to make them work. Look at that old technology!"

Oral History Detective

(Note: a version of this originally appeared on the blog I wrote for the historical association I volunteered at long ago, so I never put it on my own blog. However, I was pretty proud of it, and it was one of the “A-ha!” moments I was most proud of, so I’m revising the post and putting it here.)

In April 2014, I was working on transcribing a 2009 oral history interview with a woman I’ll call JAR. In JAR’s interview, she mentions a class picture she brought in to donate to the historical association*. As I was transcribing the interview, I thought of all the boxes we had in our collections room -- boxes not yet processed, boxes not properly processed, boxes processed but lost -- and wondered where in the world that picture might be, where it could have been put in the past five years. I thought about all the different class pictures we had -- all the many, many class pictures we had -- and I thought about how much I’d love to find the picture and include it with the interview transcript on-site, as well as use it as a visual aid on the web version of the transcript. Now, if only I could find that picture…

The next time I was working on organizing our collections and entering them into our database, I reminded myself I needed to find that picture. I had been planning how to try to find it: I could search our database for JAR’s name, to see if it was donated under her name (But was it an actual donation? And was it donated in her name? Would she have donated it under her maiden name or her married name? And would her name have been recorded as JAR or as J A R [Think about half the duo who played Michelle Tanner on Full House: would the cataloger have recorded her name as Mary Kate, or properly as Mary-Kate?]?); I could search our database by the school name (But everyone seemed to have a different way of calling the school, so was it cataloged as “Alderwood School,” “Alderwood Grade School,” “Alderwood Manor School,”…?); I could search by the grade level or year (But was that information included with the picture when it was cataloged? And did she say what grade/year it was in the interview?). So I had a few possible routes to search, but wasn’t sure any of them would lead to results. I was already disheartened without even starting my search!

As I was working in our database, reminding myself of all the ways I wanted to look for the picture, thinking of all the potential roadblocks, and reminding myself of the names JAR had mentioned as being in the picture (KS, MS, AN), I just happened to go through our collection of class photos, completely unrelated to looking for that picture. And then… there… My eye was caught by the name MS. “Wait!” I thought to myself. “Could it be… ?” Then I saw KS’s name listed with that same picture. “Could it…?” And then AN’s name! “No… This is too good to be true!” But there it was: a class picture, third grade, 1941-1942.

It was a beautiful, glorious moment. The clouds parted, the sun came out (Okay, I was in the basement of our building, so I don’t really know if the clouds parted and the sun came out), angels sang! “I think I’ve found it!”

The true test, though, was something that I hadn’t planned on looking for, but that popped into my head as I was investigating this picture: JAR had mentioned a little boy with holes in the knees of his pants. I checked the front row, like I remember JAR saying in her interview, and squinted hard. Sure enough, front and center, there’s a little boy with what looks to be a hole in the knee of his pants. Eureka! I’d found the picture!

Doing the history of a place from before you were there is always tricky. No matter how much studying you’ve done on the subject, you’re at some amount of a disadvantage not having lived through it first hand. For this particular organization, I was seen as a newcomer, being much younger than everyone else and living in the city after it incorporated so many other nearby parts, rather than coming from one of those country parts that was incorporated. As a result, I didn’t know a lot of the history and people that our members all seemed to know, and a lot of my knowledge about the area’s past came from research: reading books, listening to others, transcribing oral histories, entering donations. Because I didn’t have that first-hand knowledge, I wouldn’t have automatically known that this picture was JAR’s class, or known by looking at the faces that these were the same kids she was talking about. So when I could research (or, to some extent, just get lucky) and find something specific to a project, or to a story I’d heard, it was a huge deal for me. And when I miraculously found the exact picture that someone referred to in an interview, and when I stumbled over that picture without even searching for it, that’s one of those Eureka moments I just love!

2010.FIC.059A

*Because I find it so charming, here are the relevant passages of the oral history:

JAR: But you know, I do have a picture here, a photograph of our third grade. A lot of kids in this class, and there are at least nine now that are still alive and come to our school reunions or to special events here... . And these boys, like for instance, well, KS, I’ve known him since the first or second grade. ... and then there’s AN. I see AN, who is in business still to this day, at an automotive agency. And of course MS, who was my friend. And MS2; her mother was a teacher at Alderwood Grade School. And she’s also in this picture. Just cute kids. RD, ... and she just lives down the street from me, believe it or not. I didn’t know it for a long time. And then there’s AS. Now, these people I see at various events, and I’m sure that there are many others, too, but I haven’t—I’ve lost contact with them. But this picture is wonderful, and I want you to have a copy of this to show with this interview, because the children all look—they’re so innocent [laughs], and they’re so cute. They’re in third grade. Some of the boys are kind of hamming it up, and mimicking, and doing little things. And the girls just sit there and smile, with their hands folded. It’s just priceless.

CR: Very innocent time.

JAR: Very innocent time.
CR: Did you have a different feel for when you moved in to the city and had to go to the city school—
JAR: Oh, yes—
CR: —after you’d gone to the country school for so long?
JAR: Oh, yes. I remember sometimes kids would come to school here in Alderwood in bare feet. I remember one time the principal sent them home, probably for their own safety, you know. But they would— There they were. If you look at this picture, you’ll see a little boy here in the front row, and his pants, he’s got holes in his knees. His pants are kind of torn, you know. And it’s just— It’s a whole different time, and a whole different lifestyle. When I went in to northern Seattle, everybody was dressed, dressed well. It was a more serious life there. More organized. Out here, it was just free.

Keeping Volunteers Engaged During a Shutdown, part 2

So now the COVID-19 timeline is in April, and our museum is still closed. What's a volunteer coordinator to do? You don't want to lose your volunteers due to boredom and inactivity, and you know that THEY want to be helping, too. They want to share their knowledge and their love of your museum and its content with the public. How do you keep them engaged even when you're in your second month of no contact? 

1. Helping with online outreach. At this point, we were looking for ways to stay relevant and to engage with our audience, just like every other organization in the world. And just like for every other organization in the world, the easiest way to reach a worldwide audience is to use the internet. We began beefing up our online content through our social media, namely Facebook posts, games and activities posted on Facebook, and image-based games on Instagram. And hey, we had a group of experts right at our fingertips. I suggested using our volunteers to help create some of this content, such as online presentations (narrated PowerPoints) in lieu of presentations they would have normally given at the museum, and kids activities. I also hoped to later do a "Get to Know the Volunteers"-type series, where we'd profile a different volunteer each week.

Surprisingly, though, I didn't get many takers on these projects. I expected our speakers and docents to want to do online talks, and we have a couple of former teachers I thought would jump at activities for kids. I had a few express interest in the recorded talks, but none completely followed through, and no one for the science activities. I still haven't figured out what the missing key was to this. Swing and a miss on having them help reach out to the public.

2. Socializing with other volunteers. They were, though, still in to the socializing aspect of engagement.

2a. The weekly e-mails. The weekly reading/viewing recommendation list continued, with volunteers sending in suggestions for the others. It even started to branch out to topics that were tangentially related to our organization, which then branched out to things that were related to the tangent. For example, a volunteer recommended the movie Lawrence of Arabia for the history, and commented that its length required an intermission in the theater; another volunteer took that intermission aspect and provided us with a list of four or five other movies with intermissions, some not related in any way to our museum. I enjoyed when our volunteers took these side tracks.

Our volunteers are also taking advantage of these mailing lists as a way to proactively learn or get advice. The all-volunteer e-mails and my call to "Send me anything you want passed on to the others!" has allowed them to interact with other volunteers that they wouldn't normally be in contact with (Wednesday-only docents are rarely at the museum at the same time as Saturday-only docents, for example, event-only volunteers don't see the daily docents, and new volunteers may not know which volunteers know the information they're interested in). Volunteers have sent me questions they've always wondered about our artifacts or related history, and our amazing volunteer base has responded with extremely knowledgeable answers.

Similarly, I got an e-mail from a new volunteer who's interested in getting his pilot's license, and he thought he remembered hearing that some of our other volunteers have their licenses. So I put it in the next mailing that someone was looking for advice, and within a few hours had a number of responses of people willing to chat with him and answer his questions. This makes me feel warm and fuzzy: even from afar, our volunteers are helping each other and bonding (and, *patting self on head again*, they were able to do it through the weekly mailing list I started).

2b. "Face-to-face." We also decided to have a Zoom meeting for our volunteers. We all know how much Zoom and other video conferencing services immediately became an everyday part of our lives while working from home during this closure. Meetings you used to have in person are now through Zoom, and even meetings you WEREN'T having before were suddenly popping up all the time, and held via Zoom. So why not let our volunteers have some socializing time through Zoom? We set up a "virtual gathering" where our Executive Director, Marketing Assistant, Restoration Manager, and I gave our volunteers updates on the museum's COVID closure and projects we were working on, and let them ask us questions; they also got to see us and each other face-to-face (even if not in person), rather than everything being over e-mail.

3. Volunteer Appreciation Week. Let me tell you, I had Plans -- Big Plans -- for Volunteer Appreciation Week. I was going to outdo anything our organization had done recently. It was going to be fun, individualized for each volunteer, but not expensive. It was going to be Awesome. But then this stupid virus happened, and Volunteer Appreciation Week became a virtual celebration.

But just because they were at home and the museum was closed didn't mean we appreciated our volunteers any less, or should forget about the week altogether. So Volunteer Appreciation Week 2020 became Volunteer-Appreciation-Week-While-Sheltering-In-Place. I asked the staff to write shout-outs to our volunteers, and let them decide whether they wanted to thank a generic group (all volunteers, all docents, etc.), a specific group (e.g., our Saturday docents, our event set-up team), or individual volunteers. I found pictures to go along with each thank you, and figured that between our three social media platforms, we could show our appreciation for a whole lot of volunteers, even if we couldn't do a celebration in person.

I can tell that our volunteers are getting frustrated that the museum is still closed, but at least there have been opportunities for them to interact with the public and each other. For those of you out there who have volunteers, how are they feeling if your organization is still closed? How are you keeping them interested, even while your doors are closed?

... But then life happened

When we last met here, it was apparently April (!! Where did the time go?!?), and I was explaining my strategies and projects for keeping volunteers engaged, even during our COVID-19 closure.

Then my computer died, and I had none of my drafts backed up anywhere.

Then it was announced that our museum would be closing.

It's been a rough month and a half.

But I promised I was going to start writing here regularly again, so I'm back. Again. Or at least trying, again. So, where were we?

In March, I focused on keeping our volunteers connected to the museum, to our mission, and to each other.

• I was reminding leadership that our volunteers should be informed of changes -- closures, potential reopening, precautions being taken to prepare for a potential reopening -- before the public, both because they keep us running, and as a sign of our appreciation for them. "We appreciate everything you do for us, and your dedication, so we're going to tell you before we tell everyone else." 
• I also started a weekly "Reading & Viewing Recommendations" list: volunteers could send me anything relevant to the museum, its themes, its artifacts, or general updates about what they were doing while we were closed, and I would send them out to all of the volunteers once a week. This was a success: as with any group, you have your vocal members and your silent members. Our vocal volunteers were VERY vocal, and sent me a lot of stuff relevant to our museum, including articles they read online, books they were reading, videos online and YouTube channels, pictures they took at other similar museums, research they were doing... there was so much good stuff. I also tried to change it up a bit with conversation starters, like including a game of "Would You Rather?" one week, and asking how/where they were getting their sports fixes with no sports being played another week. Again, the vocal ones were vocal and responded to my silly conversation questions, some with some HYSTERICAL answers that completely lightened the mood of still-stuck-at-home gloom. 

But here's the thing: even a good number of the silent members spoke up. They didn't send articles to share or their answers to "Would You Rather?", but they wrote to me and thanked me for the updates and weekly lists. When you can get even the passive or quiet ones involved, even just a note that shows they didn't automatically delete the e-mail, you know you're doing something okay.  (*pat self on back*)

So now the COVID-19 timeline is in April, and our museum is still closed. What's a volunteer coordinator to do? You don't want to lose your volunteers due to boredom and inactivity, and you know that THEY want to be helping, too. How do you keep them engaged even when you're in your second month of no contact? Join me next time for my answers 😊

Keeping Volunteers Engaged During a Shutdown

[Note: This was originally written in mid-March. Obviously, many things have changed since then, but this is a representation of where my mind was at in the early stage of our COVID closure. Unless we reopen soon, another blog post later will catch up on where we currently are, and what’s changed since this was first written.]

So there I was, recently given the Volunteer Coordinator duties for the museum I work at until a new coordinator could be hired. I was so excited: I’ve led fellow volunteers at a number of organizations I’ve volunteered with, and at our museum I see our volunteers on a daily basis. I was pumped to take on the role of Interim Volunteer Coordinator.

But then our museum’s leadership decided it would be best to close our doors due to the spread of COVID-19 in the Seattle region. I was still trying to get my bearings of my new role – sorting out the volunteer onboarding process for our upcoming event season, understanding the previous coordinator’s tracking system, learning the minutiae of the training our docents are supposed to get – when suddenly, we were closed. No more volunteers for me to coordinate. 😞

Rather than being thankful that I could use our closure time to get caught up, I knew we had to keep our volunteers as one of our top priorities. We have 140 volunteers who contribute to the museum in a variety of ways, including event set-up and tear-down, collections and research, and nearly 40 docents who come in on a weekly basis. These people help us because they love what we do at the museum, and the majority of the 140 are dedicated volunteers who come back week after week, or for each major event throughout the year. I absolutely did not want them to feel forgotten just because we weren’t open.

With that in mind, I reframed the Volunteer Coordinator position to be responsible for three overarching objectives during the closure:

1)    Keeping the volunteers updated. How do we show our volunteers that they’re important to our organizations? By keeping them informed, preferably giving them updates before the rest of the public. Prompt updates about the closure not only show that we understand their time is valuable – we want them to know as soon as possible how our schedule will affect them – but it’s that added benefit of being the first in the know as a thank you for their dedication to our organization. Plus, with how devoted so many of them are to our museum, it feels like family, and wouldn’t you want to know how your family is doing in troubled times?

2)    Keeping them engaged and connected with the museum and each other. Even though our volunteers are adults who can find ways on their own to pass the time, it’s still fun to get ideas of things to do while we’re in “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” mode. For that, I created an impromptu “Reading & Viewing Recommendations” mailing the second week we were closed. Our volunteers often send me things they find online that are related to our museum or themes we cover, so once a week, I share the best 3-5 with the whole group. It’s a way for them to stay engaged with the mission of the museum, maybe gain a few tidbits they can incorporate into their tours or at events, and keeps them connected with each other. They’re loving giving and receiving recommendations, as well as reading reports about what other volunteers are doing (So-and-so is building a model airplane; so-and-so had a virtual dinner with friends, etc.). An added bonus for me is that it means I’m not always the voice of doom and gloom. At the beginning of the shutdown, they were getting so many e-mails from me saying we were going to stay closed, or this and that events had been cancelled, but once a week, they at least get one happy e-mail from me!

3)    Reminding them we appreciate them and care about them as individual people. I feel like the most important thing I can do for our volunteers right now is remind them that we care about them as individuals. Now that thousands of people are getting sick from this rampant disease – and to be honest, the majority of our volunteers are in the high-risk group – I want them to know that we care about how they’re doing. Not just to know whether our group of 140 bodies will be ready when we reopen, but how each individual, as well as their family, is handling this situation. Whenever we talk about a possible reopening date, and even before we closed, I’ve reminded them that their wellbeing is far more important than whether or not we have enough docents for a shift. Each individual will be ready to come back – or not – on their own timeline, and their health, physical and mental, is most important.

What’s surprised me is that with every e-mail I send out, whether it’s an update on the closure or a list of interesting videos, I get replies thanking me for keeping them informed and staying in touch, and appreciating the well-wishes.

As we continue on through this challenging time, I’m advocating within our organization for more ways to keep our volunteers engaged with the museum and what we’re doing while the facility is closed (more on that in a later post). So far, though, I feel like I’m on the right track with keeping them connected to the museum and each other, and letting them know we value them as individual people with worries and concerns, and not just as bodies who fill positions at the museum.

This goal of appreciation and connection should go beyond the current shutdown, too. Any time our organizations are closed, whether unexpectedly or planned, we should keep our volunteers in mind and consider how we’re going to keep them engaged and feeling appreciated. If we don’t, we run the risk of alienating them and having no volunteers left when we reopen our doors.

If you’re a volunteer manager, how are you keeping your volunteers engaged while you’re currently shut down, and have you created plans for volunteers in case of future shutdowns? If you're a volunteer, how are you being kept in contact with the organization(s) you volunteer at? I’d love to hear what others are doing or planning.

Image from Washington State Coronavirus Response (COVID-19) website: https://coronavirus.wa.gov/

Reading List: Volunteer Management 101: How to Recruit and Retain Volunteers by Allen Madding and Dan King

A few weeks before COVID-19 became so widespread in the Seattle metro area that businesses began closing their doors, the Education/Volunteer Coordinator at the museum I work at took a job at a different museum. To fill his position until a new coordinator could be hired, a number of our staff members took on various parts of his job, and the Volunteer Coordinator responsibilities were given to me (Yay!).

Fast-forward a short two weeks, and our museum closed “out of an abundance of caution” to protect the employees and public from the COVID outbreak. With a new – albeit temporary – role at the museum, and unexpected time on my hands, I took the opportunity to pile up a bunch of volunteer management books that I’ve been wanting to read.

First up is Volunteer Management 101: How to Recruit and Retain Volunteers by Allen Madding and Dan King.

This is a tiny book, and an extremely quick read. This is like the introduction to the introduction text on volunteer management. If you’ve managed volunteers before, been around volunteers before, been a volunteer before, have common sense, or have read or are planning to read probably ANY other volunteer management book, this one isn’t necessary. It’s got great tips, but stuff that should come up in most other volunteer management training or books.

That said, if this IS your first time managing volunteers and you need a quick book to get you up to speed, this is a fine one to start with. It’s super short, has bite-size pieces of advice and guidance, and will give you enough of a start until you need to get a bigger book to cover meatier topics.

I will say that even though a lot of what Madding and King say is old hat for experienced volunteer managers, there are some good quotes and inspiration, things experienced managers might have forgotten if they’ve gotten jaded or complacent in their jobs. A lot of it is commonsense, but nice reminders.  

The upsides:
• Some good quotes and inspiration, things to keep in mind
• Easy to skim for later reference  

The downsides:
• Example scenarios can be too long
• Grammatical and spelling errors! There aren’t really that many, but they still made me twitch.
• Some chapters are organized in a way that doesn’t completely make sense to me, and some chapters seem like they should be placed elsewhere in the book.
• Some reviewers online were bothered by the number of God/religion references. The authors are volunteers/volunteer managers for different church groups, so yes, a lot of their references end up being about church. I don’t really have a problem with this, since this is where their experience comes from, other than going back to the previous point that their example scenarios can be too long. I don’t mind reading about their church groups and volunteering with them; I mind there being so much unnecessary text about their church groups and volunteering. Edit!
• Their “case studies” are also a weird mix of Bible stories forced into the “a good leader does…” mold. Once they analyze the passages and tell me why they’re relevant, okay maybe; but… get there, and get there faster. And was this even needed to begin with? (And still, some never seemed to get to a relevant point.)

Volunteer Management 101: How to Recruit and Retain Volunteers, 2018
Allen Madding and Dan King
114 pages

Overall: Good advice for newbies, reminders and inspiration for others. A good starter kit for people who have never been in charge of volunteer management before, but for experienced volunteer managers, this isn’t one that needs to be read.

Does this thing still work?

At the beginning of the year, I decided I needed to get back into blogging -- 1) because I used to enjoy writing, 2) for career advancement and marketability, and 3) to force myself to have thoughts (Do you ever have that feeling like you haven't had a Thought in a long time?). But I never felt like I had anything good to say, so nothing got posted. Then I was motivated by an article I read in Exhibition magazine, but I couldn't make heads or tails of what I was trying to say, so nothing got posted.

But now that we're under this COVID-19 "Stay Home" order, I have no excuse to not get back into this. Even if a post requires work, I have time! (Except not really, but that's for another post.) So here I am. Back. Again. Trying. And okay, my county has been under "Stay Home" suggestions for well over a month, and I'm just now tackling this For Real, but ... better late than never?

Okay, let's give this thing a try. *fingers crossed*