Reading List: Community-Based Exhibition Model by Cassie Chinn

Long ago, when I first really started getting into the idea of working in a museum, there was a post on LinkedIn asking for recommendations for good books about exhibits. One of the books listed was Community-Based Exhibition Model from the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, so I put it on my list of books to read someday (although I couldn't find it for sale anywhere).

This past September, I attended the American Association of State and Local History's virtual conference, which had a number of staff members from the Wing Luke Museum presenting sessions. In their sessions, Cassie Chinn and Rahul Gupta each touched on the idea of partnerships with the community, and in other sessions, both from presenters and attendees, the Wing Luke's community-based model -- the book, and the general idea -- were mentioned. That made me want the book even more.

In October, Jessica Rubenacker, current exhibits designer at the Wing Luke, spoke to one of my Museum Studies classes; I LOVED listening to her, which made me decide I Need This Book Now. I was finally able to find it for sale on the museum's website (why didn't I ever look there before??).

In this short book (26 big-sized pages, with charts and images), Cassie Chinn describes the museum's process for creating their community-based exhibits, where museum staff let community members guide the development of exhibits -- including themes, education and public programs, sources for artifacts and interviews, and even fundraising -- and uses the 2005 "Sikh Community: Over 100 Years in the Pacific Northwest" exhibit as a case study for their approach.

The upsides:

• The chart of the community-based model, showing how the Community Advisory Committee, participating community members, museum staff, and contractors all relate to each other and work together. 
• How to select Advisory Committee members and community partnerships  
• The meeting schedule - Chinn lays out what topics are covered at each of their (sample) meetings (Meeting 1 is introductions, sharing project background, presenting a timeline; Meeting 4 is creating the exhibit's storyline; etc.)
• How to facilitate a meeting with the Advisory Committee, a lot of which are just good points for leading any kind of meeting (making sure everyone's voice is heard, sending meeting minutes, respecting people's time, etc.)
  
• The Sikh exhibit case study shows in more detail how the theoretical model and timelines presented earlier in the book play out for real
  
• The honesty about what worked and what got the Sikh exhibit project off schedule
  
• The honesty about challenges presented overall by this model 
• In the AASLH sessions as well as sessions of the New England Museum Association's virtual conference on working with the community and partners, over and over panelists talked about being flexible, giving up control, and admitting that you don't know everything, and these key points are also highlighted in this book. 

The downsides:

• I would have liked maybe one more case study. The Sikh exhibit study gives good insight, but a second example could have possibly presented even more highlights and lowlights (things that worked and things that didn't) that the reader could learn from, and could also show how the museum learned from the challenges of the Sikh (or a previous) exhibit. Then again, this book was written soon after the Sikh exhibit was completed, so perhaps if they had an updated version, there would be more projects available to use as case studies.

Overall: A good tutorial for people who want to create exhibits with their community. The Wing Luke obviously has a great connection with their community and partners (otherwise they wouldn't want to help the museum with their exhibits), and Chinn does a nice job of presenting the framework for a community-based project.

Community-Based Exhibition Model
by Cassie Chinn

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 😊