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.)
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