Current Issues in Canadian Museums and the Non-Profit Sector
Current Issues in Canadian Museums and the Non-Profit Sector
Current Overview of the Non-Profit Sector
The non-profit sector has always been unique, largely because of the social mission at its heart. In the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, this philanthropic purpose was tested greatly as community needs and service demands shot up while donations, volunteering, and other forms of support declined. It was a difficult time for organizations that struggled to continue providing services. Traditional funding methods were unworkable, and some organizations were likely running at a deficit. They may have had to terminate programs, lay off staff, or even close their doors.
Nevertheless, they persisted. As the pandemic dragged on, non-profits rallied. Thanks to generous donations, government supports, and their own initiative, philanthropic organizations transformed challenges into successes and found imaginative solutions that helped them stay afloat and even flourish. In a 2022 survey from the Nonprofit Finance Fund, a staggering 88% of non-profits surveyed said they have changed the way they work, and more than half of those think that the changes are here to stay. As we usher in a post-Covid-19 future, what will the new normal in the non-profit sector look like?
Digital-First Approach
The non-profit sector sometimes lags behind in innovation. Nevertheless, the pandemic forced organizations to modernize and innovate, which brought positive transformation to how they communicate, engage donors, and raise funds.
Communication And Planning
A philanthropic organization’s work is as effective as the people who perform it, who must communicate smoothly and plan wisely to get the job done. Thanks to digital tools, the days are gone of herding bored volunteers into stuffy meeting rooms and hoping that somebody takes notes.
There are many virtual conferencing platforms and communication chat platforms available that enable lightning-fast interaction with staff, volunteers, and donors while reaching wide networks of supporters. Organizations can collaborate more efficiently than ever before with virtual project management systems that keep track of schedules, milestones, priorities, and deadlines.
Outreach And Engagement
While non-profits remain rooted in their local communities, they can use digital technology to raise awareness, deliver education, and encourage contributions from donors. For example, they can run playful social media challenges and organize live-streamed events.
Fundraising
In the early stage of the pandemic, traditional, in-person methods for obtaining contributions and revenue were no longer viable, so many non-profits began fundraising virtually instead. For example, organizations can hold virtual auctions and bake sales or read-a-thons and walk-a-thons that take place entirely online. They can also inspire donations through crowdfunding and peer-to-peer campaigns or try using donation pages or donate buttons on their websites.
Even as in-person events gain traction, non-profits can continue organizing unique, hybrid experiences that include online registration and sales, mobile bidding at in-person auctions, and the use of QR codes to facilitate education and giving, for example.
Data Driven Strategy
By taking advantage of data, non-profit leaders may be able to make wiser policy decisions, improve communication, and boost engagement.
Constituent And Donor Segmentation
As non-profits evolve, lists of donors and constituents can become extensive. Of course, not all of those supporters will be the same, and making them feel valued can be a challenge. Donor and constituent segmentation software lets non-profits gather valuable information about their supporters. They should then use that information to deploy personalized messaging without the time-intensive process of creating individual communications.
Analytics
For-profit companies have long known the importance of data analytics. In a rapidly evolving tech landscape, non-profits are catching on to the value of analytics to increase revenue, make the most of budgets, and streamline operations. Most organizations already gather plenty of program data (such as transactions, addresses, event attendance, and donation reports), and they should analyze it to highlight giving patterns and trends, which can make communicating with donors easier. They can also use their data to help predict donor behavior and provide insight into what programs and outreach efforts are working, which enables organizations to craft compelling messaging and plan memorable experiences.
Adaptive Working Environment
The pandemic revamped work culture, hours, and practices, and many non-profits demonstrated that they can adapt and evolve.
Flexibility
For organizations resistant to flexible work models, the pandemic demonstrated that they are both practical and welcome for many employees. Studies suggest that post-Covid-19, the demand for flexible work will continue. In one PwC survey, over half of employees said they would want to work remotely at least three days per week as pandemic concerns ebb. Flexibility allows employees to prioritize family and other commitments while boosting their sense of autonomy and working from home has only increased productivity. Hybrid schedules, reduced hours, job sharing, and compressed work weeks will characterize working life more and more, which is good news for retaining top talent.
Remote Work
While some organizations welcome staff back into the office, many employees will likely continue working remotely post-pandemic. This is an especially important solution for those who must remain local to care for relatives and loved ones. Since remote work won’t look the same in every organization, it will be crucial for non-profits to implement standards training and to outline clear, coherent policies and guidelines for remote workers, from how to schedule deadlines to how to access data.
Agility
Some organizations took a step beyond flexibility during the crisis to incorporate agile work practices. Unlike flexibility and remote work, agility is less about location and more about the process. An agile workplace can be in-person or remote or a little bit of both, and it should prioritize swiftness, responsiveness, and effectiveness over lengthy processes and traditional measures of success, like logging a certain number of hours per week.
The Pandemic Has Changed Giving Strategy for Many Wealthy People
One third of wealthy donors – 35 percent – expect to change their giving strategy over the next two years, according to a recent study of high-net-worth investors. Of those who plan to change their strategy, sixty-eight percent say they plan to increase their giving and 51 percent say they plan to contribute to more organizations. In March, the wealth-management firm BNY Mellon surveyed 200 adults with at least $5 million of investments, asking about how and why they give to charity. More than two in five wealthy donors say they’ve changed their giving strategy since the pandemic began. That’s good news for fundraisers, as many wealthy donors reported giving more.
Giving was a key feature of almost all respondents’ wealth-management strategies, researchers found. Younger donors were most likely to say they thought about giving to charity as they planned their investments. Every Gen X supporter in the survey – 26 respondents ages 39 to 54 – said that, as did 97 percent of millennial donors, 29 respondents ages 23 to 38.
While philanthropy figured into most respondents’ wealth-management plans, just 27 percent said they primarily gave to charity to receive tax benefits. The survey asked respondents to rank 10 motives for giving from “not at all important” to “extremely important.” The biggest share of donors — 41 percent — said they gave to support causes and charities to which they had a personal tie. Thirty-seven percent said it was extremely important for them to give because it made them happy.
Researchers also asked respondents to identify the factors they weigh as they decide which charities to support, selecting as many as they wanted from a list of 10, such as advertising or recommendation from a friend. Sixty-three percent selected personal ties to the mission. Other top considerations included family giving traditions — 31 percent — and personal appeals for donations by a charity — 29 percent.
Fundraisers have their work cut out for them: Direct solicitation was a top-three consideration for 86 percent of respondents. Just 29 percent, however, ranked it as the top consideration in their giving decisions.
Of all donors surveyed, roughly a third gave to three to five charities in 2021. Respondents said they favored giving cash over other assets, such as stocks, bonds, or crypto. But the wealthiest donors in the study were much more likely than others to contribute cryptocurrency assets: Thirty-eight percent with $25 million or more invested said they typically made donations in crypto, while just 7 percent with assets of less than $25 million said the same. The volatility of the crypto market may make both donors and recipients more hesitant in the future.
Wealthier donors also tended to be more familiar with a range of giving vehicles. The survey showed charitable LLCs, charitable trusts, and charitable gift annuities were neck-and-neck for the top spot — familiar to 47 percent, 46 percent, and 45 percent, respectively, of the wealthiest donors.
By comparison, 30 percent of donors with less than $25 million invested said they were familiar with donor-advised funds. The next most common vehicle for that group was bequests — with 23 percent saying they were familiar with it. Charitable trusts and charitable distributions from IRAs tied for the third and fourth most familiar vehicles, each 20 percent.
Among the other findings:
· Health care and medical research combined was the top cause, supported by 57 percent of people surveyed.
· Donors with more than $25 million in assets said they were most motivated to give by personal ties to causes or charities and a desire to affect measurable change.
· The highest proportion — 42 percent — of all wealthy donors said they volunteer their time or services to charities. Among donors worth less than $25 million, the second most popular way to show support was by attending events and fundraising events — something 39 percent said they did. Holding a leadership position took second place among donors worth more than $25 million, with 43 percent saying they did so.
Some Donors Plan to Be More Cautious in the Coming Year
With pessimism about the economy building, another recent survey by The Chronicle of Philanthropy suggests that some less wealthy donors are beginning to think about pulling back on their giving in the year ahead. In a June survey of donors who gave more than $20 to charity in the past year, 24 percent said they intend to give less this year or that they are unsure of their giving, compared with 21 percent in a survey conducted in July of 2021. The top reasons donors cited for giving less were their personal financial situation, at 41 percent, inflation (a new option in this year’s survey), at 35 percent, and the economy generally, at 13 percent.
Patrick Rooney, an economist who studies philanthropy at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, said he would have expected donors to be even more pessimistic given current economic trends. “It is surprising that more households did not express more uncertainty,” he said.
The share of donors who say the stock market has negatively affected their giving rose to 19 percent this year from 7 percent last year. Fifty-three percent of donors said they were unsure about what lies ahead for the economy, or they believe it will decline in the coming year, compared with thirty-six percent a year ago.
“It makes sense that the stock market moving into a bear market (20 percent or more reduction from recent peaks) would have a deleterious effect on attitudes about giving, especially for those 45 years and older,” Rooney said. “They are planning on those stocks as being at least part of their ability to retire and their ability to be philanthropically generous.”
Forced to do More with Less: The Impact of Inflation on Charities and Non-Profits
Canada is experiencing an increase in inflation that has not been seen in decades. In our everyday lives, inflation is reflected as a general increase in the prices of goods and services in the economy. Shelter costs have been rising at their fastest year-over-year pace since 1983, and rental accommodation costs have increased by 4.2%. Rising costs continue to be a top concern for the non-profit sector. The number of non-profits expecting operating expenses to increase over the next three months jumped from 37% in Q1 to 52% in Q2, according to the latest results of the Canada Survey of Business Conditions.
Inflation – which is typically measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) – is relevant because it decreases the purchasing power of money. For example, the same basket of goods that would have cost $100 in 2000 would now cost a person $156 in 2022. This is commensurate with a decline in the value of money of 2.04% each year. In other words, the sum of money that could purchase $100 in goods in 2000 can only purchase approximately $64 of goods today.
In order to combat rising inflation, the Bank of Canada has aggressively raised interest rates over the past several months. Many economists are predicting that this strategy, in combination with low consumer confidence due to rising prices, will bring about a recession. While most economists are predicting that the recession will be short-lived, non-profits are still likely to feel an impact as individuals donate less and major funders tighten their belts in response to low returns in the market.
The erosion of money’s purchasing power caused by the high inflation we are experiencing today has many impacts on charities and non-profits, some of which are unique to their sector. The latest survey of consumer expectations from the Bank of Canada finds that among the Canadians surveyed, 57% reported being more concerned about inflation now than at the beginning of the pandemic. In addition, Canadians surveyed perceived public authorities to have less ability to control inflation, citing reasons including climate change and labour shortages that extend beyond the pandemic. Notably, Canadians reported that they view inflation as the most important economic variable, above taxes, and jobs.
The survey also found that workers do not anticipate that wage growth will keep up with inflation (most workers' wages are not adjusted to inflation). This long-term trend creates an expectation among workers that they will have less disposable income in the near future.
Decrease in purchasing power
At the same time, the charitable and non-profit sector must find ways to meet the growing demand despite their purchasing power declining. For organizations within the sector that provide low-cost services, run social enterprises, or engage in revenue generating activities, data from Statistics Canada shows that costs may in some cases be passed on to clients. Roughly 10% of non-profit organizations indicated they were very likely to pass on any increases in costs to customers, below the average of 35% for all businesses and organizations. In cases where it is essential to pass on costs to clients to maintain services, there are concerns over affordability.
Decrease in real funding
The impact of lower wage growth relative to inflation may have serious consequences for the ability of charities and non-profits to raise funds from donors. People’s willingness to donate is often correlated with their excess income. As consumers feel the decrease in their purchasing power, they are less likely to donate. While monthly donations provide charities and non-profits with predictable, secure funding over time, those amounts do not increase with inflation. Studies show that individuals tend to give round amounts ($10, $20, $50). Therefore, unless donors are choosing to give larger one-time sums, those donations will not have the same impact as in previous years.
This reality applies to government funding as well. Multi-year funding that does not have inflationary pressures built-in will essentially decrease each year. The stability promised by multi-year funding that does not account for inflation makes it more difficult for organizations to fill the gaps that were initially created as shortcomings in government policies.
Non-Profit Staff Working Overtime
54% of non-profits report that their staff are going to be working increased hours over the next months due to the ongoing labour shortage. This poses a serious risk of burnout, and of further staff turnover. 41% of non-profits report that they’ll likely hire less suitable candidates to fill vacancies. Worryingly, 18% plan to reduce the goods and services offered by their organizations, demonstrating the tangible impact that the labour shortage will have on the communities that the sector serves.
Actions for Improvement
There are various steps that governments and the non-profit sector can take to reduce the strain on charities and non-profits as inflation rises.
In order to avoid the same issue of the falling real value of multi-year donations, charities and non-profits should inform donors on the reality of how inflation impacts their organizations and offer the option to make inflation-adjusted donations. For one-time donations, this can be more complicated but using a clear example of how much can be done with set donations amounts can be a helpful tool. Even over the span of a single year, the impact of inflation is noticeable to the organization but likely could be absorbed by a donor. Donor behavior can be changed through consistent campaigns, especially if coordinated among multiple organizations.
As inflation continues to rise, charities and non-profits must find ways to adapt to the shifting economic conditions without compromising the services they offer. Multi-year government funding and donations offer organizations financial security and stability; however, imbedding inflationary increases into funding agreements can ensure that the value of the funding isn’t eroded each year. Educational campaigns targeted towards donors can bring that conversation to the public, strengthening the conversation around the value of the donation given. Most importantly, all levels of government have the responsibility of ending poverty and drastically improving the material conditions of everyone living in Canada.
It is undeniable that we’re experiencing challenging times, both in the sector and globally. The need for a strong non-profit sector to address societal challenges has never been more clear. On a hopeful note, the non-profit sector is doing what it can to meet the challenge, despite all of the obstacles in its way. As demand rises, 23% of non-profits have plans to expand their service offerings this year. Over the course of the pandemic, 67% of non-profits report adopting innovations to deal with the business conditions created by COVID-19 – 16% more than the economy-wide average. However, now more than ever, the non-profit sector needs continued support from its partners and funders in order to continue to serve communities at the same levels now and into the future.
Current Status and Future Challenges for Canadian Museums
According to UNESCO, 43% of museums faced closure in the first quarter of 2021 due to the ongoing pandemic. Those that could offered digital experiences to maintain links with their visitors, and for those institutions without the skills or resources to reach out to their visitors, their very existence remained in a state of flux. The central role of arts and culture has rarely been more evident than as the world responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. People turned to arts and culture to cope – not just to pass time in isolation or while socially distanced but, fundamentally, to feel more connected. Perhaps more than other fields of activity, arts and cultural organizations create experiences that have a deep and emotional impact on individuals, communities, and society. At a personal level, arts and culture can illuminate our inner lives and enrich our emotional world. At the local level, they can be a source of social connection and community renewal. More broadly, arts and cultural organizations make a crucial contribution to creating shared experiences that build a sense of common identity and, by extension, a more vibrant and connected society.
While many museums maintained audiences with a mixture of online content, when it was possible to physically reopen, a different clientele was available. Many museums that benefitted from global tourism because of their setting and unique content discovered that this audience had essentially disappeared with the onset of the pandemic. However, this also presented the opportunity to build stronger relations with a local audience, keen to engage with cultural provision in their local areas because of an inability to travel far from home. This can be described as ‘proximity tourism’ where local communities become more aware of cultural heritage of their local regions. For museums and collections that were already cultural providers for local communities, there was an opportunity to strengthen these connections. For those that weren’t a cultural provider in this sense there was a new audience to discover.
Whereas natural history collections and museums began with a focus on describing the
diversity and peculiarities of species on Earth, they are now increasingly leveraged in new ways that significantly expand their impact and relevance. The widespread advent of the internet in the 1990s, and with it the (potential) online access for researchers and laymen to a vast number of natural history institutions, spurred an unparalleled development in digitizing, sharing, and analyzing natural history collection (NHC) data. Researchers in
conservation biology, ecology, evolutionary biology, and global change biology, among other
fields, gained new and unprecedented opportunities to study natural phenomena in space
and time. The vast amount of data made accessible was especially a treasure trove for the study of environmental changes affecting biodiversity on Earth. One reason is that NHCs offer the unique opportunity to study long periods of time, thus potentially allowing to study phenomena before massive anthropogenic effects started taking a considerable toll on nature.
The role of natural history museums (NHMs) to deploy their vast research collections,
systematics expertise, and knowledge of the planet's biodiversity to inform the stewardship of life on Earth, however, had to be reinforced repeatedly. This is especially true for the digitization process: despite already starting in the 1970s and reaching 5-10% of
specimens housed in NHMs worldwide two decades ago, today, for example, in Switzerland approximately 17% of all specimens housed in NHMs are digitized, leaving – trivially – 83% not digitized.
The Value of Arts and Culture
Many arts and cultural activities need subsidies in the form of government grants or private or corporate donations. This means that governments and donors can find themselves in the position of making judgements about whether arts and cultural activities are deserving of funds relative to other public goods, and which types of arts and cultural programs merit support. This places organizations under constant pressure to articulate their value to society, extending beyond statements regarding the broader, less tangible notions of science, arts, and culture enriching daily life. Increasingly, funders expect organizations to demonstrate their economic contribution as well as specific social impacts.
According to Statistics Canada, the direct economic impact of culture industries is $58.9 billion in Canada. Overall economic impact of the culture industries outpaces that of agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting ($39 billion), accommodation and food services ($46 billion), and utilities ($46 billion). The culture industries also have eight times more economic impact than what is provided by sports. StatsCan says the direct economic impact of sports industries was $7.3 billion in 2017, compared to nearly $59 billion for culture. In 2017, culture goods and services contributed $5.3 billion to Alberta's GDP, the fourth highest among the provinces.
With declines in the ability to generate revenue from patronage, post-COVID arts and culture organizations in the not-for-profit sector should pivot to expressing and demonstrating their contribution to society by rigorously measuring their social impact in order to gain greater access to more diverse sources of funding.
Much of the debate around defining arts and culture often turns to the debate about their ‘value’ – a debate that shifts between economic, social, and aesthetic understandings. The arts are often perceived as luxuries worth supporting in good times but hard to justify when the economy takes a turn for the worse. This has been evident in the COVID-19 induced recession. How best to challenge this attitude? One way is to change the question being asked from ‘how much is this benefit worth?’ to ‘what is the impact of this?’
Some proponents argue for a broadening of how we value cultural institutions, highlighting three areas of value: intrinsic value, being the subjective effect arts and cultural experiences have on someone; instrumental value, including outcomes such as employment, tourism, education, or wellbeing for individuals and communities; and institutional value, placed on arts and culture by society as a whole and reflected in how arts and cultural institutions interact. While instrumental value may be the focus of government funders, arts and culture proponents need to consider methods through which they can accentuate intrinsic and institutional value as well.
It is clear that instrumental value is the main focus of government funders. However, arts and culture proponents might want to accentuate intrinsic and institutional value. Organizations can make the intrinsic value of their activities less abstract by conducting methodologically robust evaluations, evidencing a relationship between intrinsic value and tangible, beneficial outcomes such as improved education, mental and physical wellbeing, and social cohesion – in a sense, making the intrinsic also instrumental. The next step is to make a clear case that arts and culture can change lives and communities for the better, and that they are needed more than ever during economic downturns.
It is in this environment that the sector and individual organizations must build a body of evidence demonstrating their social impact. It will not be enough to assume this contribution is self-evident, and it will require overcoming the challenge of measuring and articulating this sort of impact. Making a valid, reliable, and rigorous case for the true value of their work will not only enhance organizations’ ability to secure government or philanthropic funds but will also reinforce the sector’s broader social license to operate.
Having a clear understanding of the intended outcomes of a program is the starting point for designing an evaluation that will collect useful and meaningful data. What is being done and why? The aim is to produce an evaluation that both strengthens the program and enhances the ability of the organization to communicate value to funders.
The Transformative Power of Community Engagement
Community engagement is now a major transformative force in the museum field. The power of this movement comes from its ability to focus on the heart of what museums are all about — meaningful public service. Museums today are challenged to become more active citizens, involved in addressing the social issues faced by communities. No longer are museums measured and judged by their internal resources — collections, endowments, facilities, and staff — but rather by the external benefits and value they create for the individuals and communities they serve. Growing numbers of museums are learning to make their organizations more relevant by involving their communities in ongoing planning and decision-making. They are reframing museum activities to focus on what matters to their communities. By getting involved in community challenges and developing new partnerships, they are identifying underserved audiences and creating memorable visitor experiences.
The central purpose and mandate of museums and heritage organizations is to serve their many publics, at the level of making a meaningful difference in the lives of individuals and of making a significant contribution to the communities they serve. If our museums, historic sites, and heritage organizations are to fulfill their public service mandate, then community engagement, interpretation, public programs, and visitor experiences must be organizational priorities, embraced by all, rather than conceived as departmental functions.
Eight Reasons for Community Engagement:
· To learn more about the community’s needs, issues, and what really matters to people.
· To discover what resources are available, and how they might assist efforts to make a difference.
· To identify the potential target audiences that we might serve more effectively.
· To build understanding of our potential service and excitement about our mission/vision.
· To build good will in the community through meaningful public service.
· To articulate interpretive concepts, themes, and program ideas that are meaningful to both internal stakeholders and to potential community groups and audiences.
· To develop meaningful partnerships with community groups and individuals to provide programs and mission-related sustainable enterprise that make a difference in the community.
· To build museums, historic sites, and cultural/heritage organizations that people care about and support.
Engagement means more than gathering input from visitors (as by traditional audience
research methods) and providing public programs. It means the community has ongoing
involvement in planning, governance, decision making, resource acquisition/allocation, and
program delivery. It is a long-term strategy, not a short-term fix.
Trust and Value: An Examination of Canadians’ Views of Museums
Recently, the Alberta Museums Association (AMA) engaged a variety of stakeholders in the process of reviewing its Strategic Plan. The review revealed that, despite successes of museums in community engagement and education, public funding and private support for museums and heritage lagged behind that for the broader arts and culture sector. Museum workers, trustees, and volunteers expressed over and over their frustration at the difficulty in speaking to community leaders about the significance of museums and museum work. They want to advocate on behalf of museums as important public institutions, but they often cannot find the words to explain succinctly why museums matter. The AMA realized that this issue was not limited to Alberta.
The lack of a clear articulation of public value has implications for the museum sector in
Canada. While museums across Canada have made great progress in engaging
communities and serving diverse publics, transitioning from ‘nice’ to ‘necessary’ institutions in Canadian public life remains a challenge. Learning how to speak with conviction about the
public value of museums requires a better understanding of what Canadians think about
museums, and what they expect from their museums both now and in the future.
In 2019, a consortium of provincial and territorial museum associations (PTMAs), led by the
AMA, received funding from the Canada Cultural Investment Fund to investigate how
Canadians today value museums in their communities, and the role museums and heritage
organizations should play in the lives of individuals, research fundamental to developing a
toolkit for advocacy. Central to the project was a national survey, conducted in
collaboration with Hill+Knowlton Strategies Canada (H+K), designed not only to elicit
information about what Canadians think about museums today, but what they want to see in
museums for the next generation. While COVID-19 changed the implementation plan for the
study, it also enabled a broader outreach across the country through social media and other
online platforms. The survey questions and approach were also informed by a study of
historic data, looking at what Canadians thought about museums in the past and what they
valued. What has stayed the same? What has changed? What will change?
Valuing Museums: Looking Back
In 1971, the federal government announced a new national museum policy based on
the principles of democratization and decentralization. One of the goals of the new ‘D &
D’ policy, as it became known, was to ensure that the largest possible number of Canadians
would have “access to the collected resources of our human and natural heritage.” In the new museum policy, funds for museums were allocated based on what government policy makers assumed the public wanted, but it was soon realized that a major handicap in implementation was “ignorance about the actual and potential audience for museums.”
In 1973, the federal government funded a team of researchers to undertake the first
comprehensive study of behaviour and attitudes of museum-goers and non-goers in Canada.
A total of 7,230 personal interviews were conducted across Canada, and detailed surveys
were left with the interviewees. Over half the interviewees (57%) returned these
questionnaires. This groundbreaking study – The Museum and the Canadian Public by Brian
Dixon, Alice Courtney, and Robert Bailey – was published in 1974 and provides a baseline for subsequent surveys of visitation and attitudes to museums in Canada.
1972: The Museum and the Canadian Public
In 1972, there were 838 museums in Canada, many recently established or expanded as a result of centennial celebrations in 1967. Canada’s population was just under 22.5 million. In comparison with 2021, the population was younger (10% over age 65, now 20%), less diverse (15% foreign born, now 25%), and less well educated (fewer than 10% of Canadians had university degrees; today, more than half of Canadians have a college or university degree).
Visitation
From personal interviews and questionnaires, the researchers learned that:
· About 60% of Canadians had visited a museum or historic site within the past 12
months; 48% visited a museum, art gallery, or science centre;
· Over a five-year period, 84% had visited a museum at least once;
· A core of Canadians – 13% – were non-goers, who had not visited any museum in five years.
The researchers also learned that those who said they had visited a museum within the past year “are likely to be consistent and frequent museum-goers; those respondents who did not attend a museum within the past year are likely to be only sporadic museum participators,”
and when they do make a visit, “they are more likely to be attracted to general museums and historical sites than to other types of museums.” A third of respondents said they had no or very little interest in museums.
The researchers found that in a given year, a small proportion of museum-goers can make
half of all visits – “in the case of art museums, for example, just 8% of the total Canadian
population accounts for 49% of the art museum visits made ... for general museums, 7%
account for 41% of visits, and for historical sites, 13% account for 53% of visits.” Lastly, the researchers found that the Canadians who visited museums most frequently were urban, younger, and better educated, had higher incomes, and were more likely to live in western Canada.
Value
In 1973, over two-thirds of respondents (69%) told the researchers that museums were
among Canada’s more valuable institutions, and they made them feel proud of their heritage. Museums were a great place to take the kids, to learn something new, and to explore nature and the past, and were good places to take visitors. They characterized a museum visit as “educational” (81%) and “rewarding” (82%). Even those people who visited museums rarely, or not at all, still liked the idea of the museum: “A great number of respondents strongly support the concept of the museum while for the most part avoiding the reality.”
Roles
Over three-quarters (79%) agreed that the “main purpose of the museum is to bring the past
into the present and the future,” but the researchers also noted that nearly two-thirds of
respondents indicated that museums might adopt a more present and future orientation:
40% agreed with the statement, “Museums tell me little about the present and the future”;
24% were undecided.
Relevance
Canadians described why they did not visit more often:
· Museums were too far away and difficult to get to;
· Museums were often physically uncomfortable and unsettling;
· Canadians wanted more interactive exhibitions, more learning opportunities, and a
more welcoming place.
People who did not visit museums at all saw them as “unsympathetic, fortress-like,” elitist
(interesting only to scholars), and unchanging.
What would make Canadians visit more often?
Over 50% of respondents wanted museums to:
· Make entry free;
· Bring in artists and craftsmen and create things on the spot;
· Provide free guidebooks and pamphlets;
· Provide more advertising and publicity about what museums are really like;
· Provide more advertising and publicity about museum activities;
· Provide sections designed for young children.
Two Generations Later: What Changed?
By 2016, there were 2,600 museums in Canada, making it easier to visit a museum close
to home. Many museums had more active public programs, including activities designed
specifically for children. The Canadian Museums Association’s 2016 Brief, The State of the
Museum in Canada, reported almost 7.5 million school visits made each year. Museums also integrated new information and communication technologies in their services and
outreach.
Below are some general findings from surveys conducted between 2012 and 2016.
Visitation
Almost half of all Canadians (48%) visited a museum or art gallery once a year. (To put that
figure in perspective, in 2019, pre-COVID-19, about 58% of Canadians visited a movie
theatre once in 12 months.) About 80% of Canadians visited every five years, whether at
home or abroad. Heritage attendance increased with level of education and by income. New
Canadians visited at rates higher than those born in Canada. Attendance was lower among
Indigenous people (64%, compared with 81% of non-Indigenous Canadians).
Value
In 2016, 80% of Canadians said museums contribute to the quality of life in their
community; it was higher for public libraries (94%). In 2012 (the last year in which the
question was asked), most Canadians saw the museum’s roles in preserving the past and
educating children as most important (96%). In addition, almost all Canadians (92%) thought children should visit museums.
In the early 2000s, surveys started to ask Canadians how they valued history and who they
trusted to tell them about it. In 2016, 96% of Canadians said museums are credible
sources for information about history. In fact, most people thought that after their
grandparents, museums were the most trusted sources, ahead of university professors and
high school teachers, books, newspapers, and the internet. In a 2009 study, however, less
than half (46%) of Indigenous people surveyed rated museums as a “very trustworthy”
source of information.
Relevance
Non-goers felt the museum was too far away, the exhibits never changed, the cost was too
high, they did not have the time, or they preferred other activities. Most importantly, non-
goers did not think the museum was for someone like them – it was not relevant or they did
not feel comfortable there.
Valuing Museums: Looking Ahead
In 2020, there were approximately 2,600 museums in Canada, and Canada’s population is
now over 38 million. The Canadian population is aging: in 2020, there were more seniors
over 65 than children under 14. The population is increasingly diverse, especially in urban
centres. Since 2006, the Indigenous population has increased by more than four times the
growth rate of the non-Indigenous population, and Indigenous Canadians are visible and
active in all sectors of society. More than one-fifth of Canadians are people of colour;
in 2018–2019, 44% of first-year university and college students identified as people of
colour. Canada has one of the most highly educated populations in the world. As of 2020,
more than half (56%) of Canadians aged 25–64 have a college or university degree. The
rapid increase in mobile device ownership, the rise of social media, and an increasingly
globalized internet have transformed the way people access, share, and shape information
and knowledge. Almost all Canadians (94%) have access to the global information web.
In late 2020 and early 2021, the consortium of PTMAs led by the AMA with H+K consulted
over 3,000 Canadians to find out what people think about museums today and how they
serve (or do not serve) their communities, what museums could become in the future, and
how to turn that vision into reality.
Visitation
· About 40% of Canadians visit a museum once a year.
· Half of these are avid museum-goers, visiting two to six times per year, and younger people in this group visit more often.
· An additional 43% of Canadians visit a museum every few years.
· Indigenous people visit at about the same rate as other Canadians.
· Lower-income Canadians visit less often.
Community museums attract fewer Canadians. 33% reported visiting at least once a year,
and 25% once every few years. When asked about the role of local museums, 83% agreed
they were a place to learn the history of the area, and 74% felt they brought value to the
community.
Value
Over half (54%) felt that museums reflect their interest in collections, exhibitions, and
programs, and 80% of respondents agreed that museums are highly credible sources of
information, though Indigenous respondents were somewhat less likely to find museums
highly credible. The majority of Canadians continue to see museums as providing learning
(81%), and a good place to bring children (80%), but a third of respondents aged 35 – 44
(those likely to have children) were concerned about the cost of visiting.
Roles
A large majority (87%) agreed that the role of museums is to preserve knowledge and objects from Canada’s history, and a slightly smaller percentage agreed that museums should show and explain objects from the natural world. In 2021, 81% also felt museums should preserve knowledge and objects from Indigenous history. When asked more specifically about the most important functions of a museum, respondents in 2021 ranked in order:
· Education (73%);
· Preserving history (71%);
· Helping visitors and tourists learn about a place (41%).
When asked, however, if museum functions will change in the future, more than a third of
respondents thought the roles listed below might become more important:
· Providing context and inspiration regarding today’s pressing issues like climate
change (42%);
· Helping people understand social and cultural issues (38%);
· Research institutions advancing knowledge (35%).
The majority of Canadians (70%) agreed that museums should be neutral and unbiased in
the presentation of materials; however, 40% of respondents also agreed that they want
museums to take a stand and challenge the status quo.
Relevance
Just over half of Canadians (56%) felt their museums fulfill their cultural needs in
collections, exhibitions, and programs. Almost half of respondents felt community
members should be involved in the creation of exhibitions, and over half supported
dialogues with communities to ensure that what museums present remains relevant.
While four in five (80%) participants aged 65 or older agreed or strongly agreed that
museums should be neutral in their presentation of materials, only two-thirds (65%) of those
aged 18 – 24 voiced this opinion. Half of Canadians felt museums do not reflect today’s world (compared with 40% in 1973) and over a quarter (28%) of the 18 – 24 age group felt
museums reflect only European approaches to culture. A third of respondents aged 25 –
34 are ready to volunteer, and almost a third in this age group are more likely to donate to
museums. Almost a quarter of respondents (23%) felt that museums are an expensive form of recreation.
Takeaways
· The percentage of Canadians visiting museums has not changed significantly in
50 years.
· Most Canadians no longer see museums as elitist.
· Museums are considered by some groups to be expensive.
· Museums may not reflect the heritage of many museum-goers today.
· Museums continue to be seen as good for children.
· Museums continue to be seen as trusted sources.
· Preserving Indigenous collections and knowledge is important.
· Education as a central role is declining in importance.
· Museums are not just for tourists.
Changes and Challenges
Over the next 20 years, Canada’s population will become increasingly diverse. By 2036,
immigrants will represent between 25% and 30% of Canada’s population. These would be
the highest proportions since 1871. Thinking about the projections below will help museums
proactively meet the needs of their communities:
· By 2036, immigrants and second-generation individuals will represent between 40%
and 50% of the population;
· By 2036, people of colour will be about one-third of the population;
· By 2036, almost three-quarters (71%) of people of colour will likely reside in
Toronto, Montréal, or Vancouver;
· By 2041, the Indigenous population will be 2.5 to 3.2 million, at an average annual
growth rate between 1.3% and 2.3%;
· By 2050, roughly 25% of the population will be over the age of 65.
Technology and climate changes are other important factors for museums to consider. By
2026, 39.26 million Canadians (almost everyone) will have internet access. On the climate front, Canadians will be living in a warmer country. Between 1948 and 2016, the mean annual temperature increase for Canada as a whole was 1.7°C and 2.3°C for northern Canada. Most Canadian Arctic marine regions will be sea ice-free for part of the summer by 2050.
What Does This Mean for Museums?
How Canadians think about the past and understand heritage is changing, particularly in
regard to Indigenous histories and cultures. How will museums reflect the heritage of
Canada’s increasingly diverse population? How will museums embody reconciliation with
Indigenous peoples?
Museum attendance tends to decrease with age, often due to disability issues. How will
museums ensure improved accessibility for the growing number of Canadians over 65?
Frequency of museum visiting increases with level of education, and the majority of younger
Canadians have post-secondary education. How will museums ensure that content is credible and appealing to this audience?
Canadians are also confronting significant global changes in climate and the environment,
and they want museums to provide unbiased and credible content and context around these
issues. How do museums plan to address the climate crisis?
As more and more people seek information online, museum education programs are no
longer the only place to learn about nature and the past. How will museums ensure they
reach a learning audience online as well in the museum?
Canadians today still like going to museums, and they still trust them. They see
museums, like public libraries, as community institutions, but they are uncertain if
museums can rise to the challenges the future holds.
Funding Museums in Canada
In 2016, the Canadian Museums Association (CMA) issued a brief stating that musuems across the country have been undervalued and ignored by governments, especially at the federal level. The federal government has invested significantly in its own national museums to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, but it has paid scant regard to the other museums across the country. The Canadian patrimony is not all located in national museums and the real stories that shaped this country are found in local, regional, and small museums and galleries across the land. This is a rich tapestry knitted together by the love of volunteers and some generous donors.
Museums employ more than 32,000 people and over 103,000 volunteers (who contribute over 5.6 million hours per year) across the country. The Government of Canada has a special responsibility for federally owned and operated museums such as the National Museums, National Historic Sites, and National Defence Museums under the Department
of National Defence. In addition to these important institutions, which act as federal agencies with significant support from the federal government, the vast amount of our heritage is held in non-profit, provincial, regional, and local museums and galleries located in every region of the nation. These organizations are run efficiently by private non-profit bodies, dependent upon dedicated volunteers and resourceful techniques to survive. They provide a useful model to be nurtured and require new tools for survival in these uncertain times.
Canadian museums and art galleries retain their popularity through the development of a variety of programmes, exhibitions, and services. As centres of lifelong learning, they are valuable resources in the research, preservation, and interpretation of Canada’s heritage. Museums and galleries foster a better understanding of Canadian life and its history with new Canadian citizens and promote Canadian identity beyond our borders.
The CMA stated that the current state of non-government museums is generally one of extreme neglect. Museums house incredible resources for our society but they have been long ignored. As a result, we face many crises over preservation, scholarship, education, and sustainability of these valuable assets that need to be addressed.
Most museums have lost or are losing specialist curators, which to many in the museum
community signals a crisis. A lot of emphasis is placed on the “front of house” activities of
museums (educational programs, exhibitions, tours...) rather than specialized “back of house” skills (conservation, curatorial expertise, restoration...). Without curators and specialists able to understand and interpret museum collections, museums are nothing.
Typical Sources of Financial Support for Canada’s Museums
While museums and heritage organizations have relied heavily on government support in the past, this is increasingly not the case today. Many museums are diversifying their sources of income, especially through earned revenues (e.g. admission fees, store sales, rentals, sponsorships). As an example, the volunteers at the Galt Museum and Archives in Lethbridge harvest heritage seeds from the native plants garden and sell more than 40 kinds of seeds in 5 retail outlets. These seeds support the museum’s garden development and encourage low-water use gardening in the region.
The focus needs to be on creating the right conditions for Canadians to donate more robustly to their museums and heritage organizations, enabling them to increase their revenues and long-term stability. Private sector donations are a key source of this earned income. While the Government of Canada has increased tax incentives for private donations to charities (including museums and heritage organizations), few have been able to take advantage of this new incentive structure due to lack of fundraising expertise and heavy competition from more sophisticated charities. The fact is, donations of cash or publicly-traded securities have not increased significantly. Other sectors, such as health care, universities, and hospitals have been very successful, but museums have not been due to profile, image, and expertise. At the same time, experience also shows that impactful programs are a powerful incentive for existing private donors to increase their donations as well as for new donors to come on board.
Earned revenue has increased greatly at museums (gift shops, rentals, admissions, etc.) but still needs to be supported with greater resources and professional development. CMA offers a Museum Enterprise Conference annually, which focuses on the development of retail and other earned revenue opportunities for museums. The CMA also offers a wholesale program to diminish overhead costs while increasing earned revenue and
recognition at local museums.
Other important museological questions that need to be addressed are the care of aboriginal collections, their return to their rightful owner, the employment of more
Indigenous curators and directors, and ways of facilitating reconciliation.
Although larger museums can plan marketing and promotional expenditures as part of their
operational budgets, the majority of local/community museums tend to rely on free
advertisement or marketing opportunities when available. Museums across Canada would
greatly benefit from a national public appreciation campaign to not only raise awareness
about museums, their programming and impact, but to also create greater appreciation for
what these important institutions contribute to Canada.
Marketing Challenges
The word “museum” is used to define venues and collections – physical or virtual – that possess historical, aesthetic, scientific, environmental, or social meaning and is derived from the Greek mouseion, meaning the mythological “home of the Muses,” the nine daughters of Mnemosyne (Memory) and Zeus (the king of gods). During the Roman Empire, the word was used to indicate places where philosophical discussions were held but evolved in Europe between the 15th and 17th centuries to describe collections of art and “cabinets of curiosity” belonging to the aristocracy and high clergy, which were accessible to a privileged few. It was only during the 18th and 19th centuries that museums were established as institutions for the preservation and exhibition of cultural material to the public, although still in an elitist manner and not as a right of all people.
In the 20th century, museums gradually became more accessible and were positioned as major collectors (object-oriented) under a positivist and paternalistic ideology, with the European colonizers as custodians of universal truth. A renewal began in the 1970–1980s with the New Museology, which was influenced by the social criticisms of the 1960s and the politics of cultural democratization. New Museology inaugurated the public-oriented mission, conceiving the idea of the museum as an interdisciplinary, decolonized, and decolonizing instrument of social change and a locus of community participation and symbolic exchanges.
Museum management must ensure the fulfillment of the multiple functions of a museum: acquire (collect, document), conserve (classify, safeguard), research (produce knowledge) and exhibit (disseminate, educate) their collection. Owing to the competition museums are facing from the educational, leisure, and entertainment sectors for the attention, time, and money of consumer-visitors, marketing has become an indispensable tool in museum management. Additionally, marketing strategies and tactics can assist museums to address the post-pandemic challenges, which are demanding a sustainable and collaborative restructuring of the tourism and cultural sectors.
The application of marketing in museum management emerged in the 1960’s, as documented in the classical text Broadening the Concept of Marketing by Kotler and Levy: to change the perception of museums as “cold marble mausoleums that house miles of relics that soon give way to yawns and tired feet,” the director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York explored marketing tools to increase attendance.
Between the 1980s and 1990s, the professionalization period of museum marketing research and practice, studies have focused on data collection and the recognition of the applicability of the discipline in the management of artistic and non-profit institutions. Most comprehensive studies emerged at the turn of the millennium along with those that examined strategic specificities, such as exploring audience segmentation, visitor satisfaction, museum brand management, and methods of measuring museum perceived social value of museums.
Following the advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs), museums are integrating augmented reality, virtual reality, games, mobile applications (apps), and other interactive equipment to the visitor’s experience design, which has been of emerging interest to researchers and museum professionals.
The digital channels, initially developed to support and improve the physical visits (e.g. information on schedules, address, prices, programming, maps, booking, and ticket sales), are today an important part of the museum–public interaction and also provide exclusive online services, including information about the collection and exhibitions, interactive games, and distance learning courses. When appropriately designed, used, and tested, websites and mobile applications foster interest in museums, increasing the number of visitors (and potential donors) and creating unique experiences.
As the only mode of visiting during the pandemic, the online Place is a faster and safer alternative, allowing the public to explore the museum in a photographic or 3D reconstruction and to shop at the online store, any time of the day, from anywhere in the world. Although not yet universally available, nor equally adopted by museums, the digital presence has become mandatory and normative, configuring the era of the post-digital museum.
Given that museums are non-profit organizations with a social function, establishing the Price – the cost of the museum experience to the visitors – encompasses educational and cultural policies, economic viability, and perceived value of the museum. Recent studies have emphasized that the entrance fee of a museum does not radically alter the profile of visitors, whereas others have maintained that free admission is vital for a more diverse and fair access and increases the attendance rates of paid museums within the same area. Between the two extremes, strategic pricing based on segmentation is a useful tool for balancing accessibility and the financial demands of museums. This could include, for example, granting the admission of students, retired individuals, and members from vulnerable social strata (socio-demographic segmentation); creating annual membership programs for repeated visits (behavioral segmentation); and charging additional fees from those who opt for special attractions and services (psychographic segmentation), such as the opening of temporary exhibitions, light shows, skip-the-line tickets, etc.
ICTs have also changed the way museums relate with the audiences through the Promotion: besides the traditional advertising, promotional activation, public relations (PR) and direct marketing, museums can explore the interactive modes of communication and interaction with the public, such as through social media, (video) blogs and apps, among others. In today’s hyper-connected world, organizations are no longer the only big disseminator of information about themselves and their offerings; consumers, tourists, and citizens are co-creators of the brand meanings and experience through commenting, reviewing, and sharing opinions and stories. It is no different with museum brands.
Recent studies and successful practices in increasing attendance rates indicate that museums should be oriented to the needs and expectations of visitors, offering welcoming, supportive, engaging, and rewarding environments for fun, socialization, and learning. Museums should also reinvent themselves as participatory platforms and as a social space for the circulation and co-creation of content and experiences before, during, and after the visit. This new orientation often requires a change in the paradigm of museum management.
Museums and Digital Culture: Digital Communications During the Pandemic
The rapid global spread of COVID-19 came as a shock to both public and private museums. It revealed the interests and structures of the cultural sector and highlighted the increased role of online media. Additionally, it has hastened the digitalization of museums by expanding the time and space of experience and knowledge, which in turn, increase user participation and change the relationship between museums and their users. Understanding this relationship will be important for the future of museums and for a competitive post-pandemic era.
Digital evolution has upgraded the way of life, more than it has done in the past. Digital technology not only promotes digesting vast amounts of information that could not be handled in the past, but also provides whole new experiences. While such changes bring many advantages, if not properly prepared, they may cause many social problems. Amid these social problems and changes, the role of museums is becoming more important, and there is an increasing need for them to constantly innovate and keep pace with such changes.
From this point of view, museums play an essential role in cultural and social life. This may be possible because museums are powerful catalysts for ushering social changes in their communities. Furthermore, although museums are generally defined as non-profit permanent institutions, they contribute to the social economy. The number of visitors/users has a huge potential for the future growth of local communities, and, therefore, helps the sustainable management of museums. From this perspective, digital technologies are opening new dimensions of museums, as well as changing users’ experiences and behaviours towards museums, which in turn are making new contributions to the industry. This situation is linked to ‘New Museology’ — a new approach to museum practice based on critical thinking — that appeared at the end of the 1980s. It provides evidence of the cultural tastes of particular social groups and unfolds possibilities for the growth of users. It also makes a positive contribution to the national economy and supports sustainable well-being. In this context, it may be useful to understand how the expansion of experience in the digital age creates new types of museums based on the transformation of relationship between their users.
Traditionally, museums, as a medium, exhibit their collections in a physical space, and the collections provide historical knowledge and aesthetic experiences for viewers. Various stakeholders collaborate to display their collections in exhibition halls and create a social discourse through diverse cultural expressions. Even when curators organize exhibitions, they focus on the appreciation of the collection and its interpretations. Traditionally, the exhibition hall is the medium in which the story of the museum begins. Therefore, the museum provides visitors with an interface, and its physical space is the mediator.
The COVID-19 pandemic limited the existing physical interface of museums and a whole new interface was required for people to have a museum experience. In this situation, the most important trend is digital. Due to the pandemic, many museums closed their physical space. As a result, museums have been looking for other channels to communicate with users, and digital networks have emerged as a new interface for communication. A study of the reaction of Italian museums during COVID-19 found that the crisis triggered the openness of cultural messages and made museums more interesting for online communications. Digital technologies are reshaping the museum value chain in an information environment, where boundaries between the offline and online worlds are becoming blurred.
The museum has been transformed into a place where members of society can exchange ideas and formulate opinions about society through the production of experiences and interpretations of collections, beyond information transmission. In this social context, the expectation that museums would change from an ‘old’ to a ‘new’ museology has shaped their exhibition functions. Supplementing this, the interrelationship of digital media plays an increasingly important role, in that it is easy for users to participate and manage. In this situation, Google Arts & Culture, which is considered to have been the most successful, has created a new channel through the internet, emphasizing the active interpretation of viewers through virtual reality (VR). Researchers recently analysed the effectiveness of AR and VR to enhance visitors’ experiences in cultural heritage museums. Many museums have participated in this online platform, and efforts have been made to convey knowledge and experiences. Researchers surveyed the digital provisions and engagement opportunities of Memory Institutions in the UK and US during COVID-19, and explained their preferences related to content requiring digitization from the audience’s perspective. This stands out in the fields of history and art. It complements the experience of the exhibition hall with an independent channel, and thus provides it with a different experience. The expansion of knowledge and experience using digital media is an innovation issue for museum managements involving user change. Digitization is essential for the expansion of experience and knowledge provided by museums, and COVID-19 has accelerated this trend.
The service of the museum is completed through the user. The process of expanding knowledge and experience of the interface improves the quality of service and expands usage. From this point of view, a new interface (new media) beyond the existing exhibition space (old media) can be added to the existing service, so that more users can utilize it, contributing to stable management. The museums’ new approach combined with social media beyond the existing exhibition space reinforces the user-centred environment, which is one of the advantages of new media. This is well coupled with participation programmes for social discourses that museums have been pursuing. This process is expected to contribute to the sustainability of museums as a result.
Museums’ use of new media plays an important role in retaining users and is an effective tool to enhance their sustainability. Therefore, the COVID-19 pandemic acted as a trigger for museums’ recent attempts to attract users amid changing social context. Furthermore, the solidarity of local communities using online media contributes to the sustainability of museums, in that it presents an opportunity to continuously expand the participants of museum management.
The knowledge and experiences provided by museums are being extended through the openness, connectivity, and mobility of the internet environment. The development of digital technology makes it possible for users to directly engage with museums. The trend of museums using digital media to convey information about their collections has changed with the times. Initially, digital media was used as an electronic brochure and digital metadata archive. After the 1960s, it began to be used as an effective tool for learning about museums with interactivity. This has led to the use of digital technology combined with the museums’ exhibition sites. For example, many museums combine an exhibition guide application with a QR code to provide information on collections accumulated in a digital archive on-site. Museums’ interests are in showing visitors not only collections, but also encouraging interactions with users.
In the process, museums can explain information about the learning networks prepared so far in an online space through lectures by related experts. For example, a docent tour-guide robot explains the work, museum educators or academics speak on specific issues to explain the collection, and a conservator presents scientific information about new discoveries and details of the work. This direct engagement of users explains a lot of information from different perspectives and diversifies the perspective of viewing the collection, which stimulates users’ historical imagination and complements their appreciation. Short and insightful conversations, involving people with considerable experience in the field, attract more visitors, build better relationships, and improve the use of technology to open up museums’ products. Even though online museums are not the same as on-site experiences, the process of knowledge transfer through online museums can certainly reduce the psychological distance of viewers to the collection and create new cultural values. As users’ direct engagement becomes possible, more diversified value is created. There has been a growing movement in recent years based on the belief that museums will not be competitive without communication and engagement with users. In particular, with COVID-19 increasing the importance of digital, the degree of engagement with users will be directly linked to museums’ competitiveness.
The pandemic has made the dimension of visitor behaviour more complex because limited personal experiences during the pandemic increase the desire for conversations. A museum is a place where visitors explore and/or maintain particular aspects of their identity through the communication of other visitors’ experiences. These social needs, attitudes, and values influence the direction of technology used to overcome personal isolation and becomes the energy for museum innovation. Museums are now moving from being a provider to providing a platform. They create the role of a mediator in the process of constructing and creating meaning through user-centred programmes. The inclusion of users in museum services changes the concept of the museum itself and gives it a new social role.
The reinforcement of users’ communities stimulates their activeness, alongside the enjoyment of using education and entertainment in museums. This is because users also have the opportunity to observe and evaluate other users, rather than just looking at their collections through the museums’ communication channels. This improves the quality of users’ appreciation of the collections and raises interest in them, contributing to the sustainability of museums. As the number of users participating in the museum increases, the utility gained from consuming the product increases, and this is directly related to the competitiveness of museums. As part of the larger digital supply chain, museums are positioned to transform user relationships and stabilize the museum industry as active supporters; consequently, museums could expand social discourse boundaries and issues. This can be seen as an attempt to retain and create existing users while enhancing the museums’ capacity and making them more visible in the social context.
From an economic point of view, they specifically play a positive role as concrete supporters of the museum. Participants influence not only other users on the museum’s online platform, but also motivate actual visits to the museum, and serve as a positive factor for the influx of new users. This change increases the number of connections between users, resulting in network effects, leading to an improved experience as more people participate in the museums’ activities, thereby changing their ecosystem. It affects other users through transactions and communication. As the relationship between users becomes more diversified and dispersed, the number of users of the museum increases and the museum’s value changes positively, which supports its sustainable development.
Virtual Museum Visits Improve Well-Being for the Elderly
Weekly online museum visits can help improve quality of life for seniors who are at increased risk of poor health outcomes due to social isolation, a new study suggests. Canadian researchers, partnering with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, found adults over 65 who attended virtual guided tours each week over a three-month period experienced significant improvements in their well-being.
For the study, researchers recruited 106 people aged 65 and older living in the Montreal metro area. Half of participants attended guided tours online once a week, while the other half did not participate in cultural activities during the same three-month period. The weekly 45-minute guided tour was followed by a 15-minute question-and-answer period with a guide.
Researchers said the greatest benefit for seniors discovered in the study was related to frailty — a “vulnerable condition exposing individuals to incident adverse health events and disabilities that negatively impact their quality of life and increase health and social costs.” “Our study showed that art/cultural/educational-based activity may be an effective intervention,” the study’s lead author Olivier Beauchet, a professor at the University of Montreal, said in a media release. “On a global scale, this participatory activity could become a model that could be offered in museums and arts institutions worldwide to promote active and healthy aging.”
Previous research shows viewing art online for three minutes can have a significant positive impact on one’s mental health. The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, found that even briefly viewing digital art can lead to lower negative mood, anxiety, and loneliness, as well as higher personal view of well-being.
Future Proofing 21st Century Museum Practice
The concepts of museums as businesses and museums as community hubs are the two core pillars that many within the sector believe will support the future of museums. The foundations of these pillars are digital tools which are forecast to play an increasingly
important role in all aspects of society, from e-commerce to co- production. Contained within this structure are numerous practical and ideological components that the museum
sector has begun prioritizing through strategic planning. Museums continue to place collections and authenticity at their heart, recognizing these elements as their unique selling proposition within an increasingly competitive tourism sector. From the business perspective, this relates to the value of collections as economic assets alongside the practicalities of their management and exploitation, from acquisition to disposal. For communities, the authenticity of collections is central to engagement and the linchpin for sharing trusted narratives in an increasingly virtual, ‘fake news’ world. Collections, therefore, represent museums’ key resource for creating social value. In this relationship, digital tools enhance the potential of collections to form the hub around which museums can contribute to cognitive, spiritual, and emotional development and well-being among their users.
Connected to collections is the issue of sustainability. Regarding administration and business logistics, this encompasses overheads and income streams: museum architecture (energy efficiency, rents, repairs), access (physical and virtual), retail, staff, content development (events, exhibitions, resources), policy, marketing, and data collection. But it also includes vital elements of social responsibility/social value: museum ethics, diversity, repatriation, intellectual and emotional access, provision of community services, and the evaluation of users’ needs and experiences. All aspects of sustainability are tied up with perceptions of museums as safe spaces and trusted institutions. As such, there is a delicate balance to maintain in terms of developing an ethical, yet reciprocal, relationship between the ‘business’ of sustaining an institution financially and the social value of sustaining the ‘community’ who shape a museum’s outputs. It is for this reason that participation, co-creation, and sharing (online and in person), as well as the role of museums in facilitating debate, are perceived to be increasingly important.
Museums need to offer a context to meet the needs of a broader audience and allow people to live a global experience (leisure, culture, education, and social interaction) supporting increased loyalty and involvement of the visitors in the future, while also promoting inclusion in the museum’s community and enabling value to be co-created and personalized experiences to be had, thus increasing the general appeal of museums. Indeed, this could be critical in the case of young people and probably of those generally not so interested
in museums and natural history. As forums, museums create tailored experiences for visitors who appreciate how the museum becomes a platform and a place where they can talk and engage in discussions. These visitors also expect a societal relevance and agency from museums so that they can transform their views, opinions, and concerns into higher
conversations.
Successful Museum Fundraising: A Case Study from the Smithsonian
The Smithsonian raised nearly $2 billion in its inaugural capital campaign – and showed the world it isn't "some dusty attic".
It took 165 years for the Smithsonian Institution to get around to running its first comprehensive capital campaign. But it was a doozy. The organization raised nearly $1.9 billion in a seven-year effort that exceeded its goal of $1.5 billion. The Smithsonian is the world's largest museum and research complex, making the campaign a Herculean undertaking that brought together fundraisers, curators, scientists, and others from across the organization's 19 museums, the National Zoo, and nine research and educational units. Although no other museums can match the Smithsonian’s largesse, they can learn some lessons from its approach to fundraising.
There was nothing stodgy about the august institution's strategy. The campaign used a variety of techniques, including online fundraising, direct mail, email, crowdfunding, live events, and membership efforts. The campaign grew out of an ambitious strategic plan created by Wayne Clough, who led the Smithsonian from 2008 to 2014, to modernize the organization, shore up its finances, digitize its offerings, renovate its campus, expand programming and research, and endow director positions, all of which was going to cost a hefty sum.
The Smithsonian's endowment stands at more than $1.5 billion, a relatively small sum for such a large and diffuse institution. It receives approximately 60 percent of its annual operating budget from federal appropriations. That money pays for things like utilities, security guards, and essential staff. It does not support research programs, curatorial work, exhibitions, expansion, or the like, so officials must raise that money from other sources.
At Clough's behest, the institution conducted a systemwide feasibility study to learn how much money was needed and what a comprehensive campaign might look like. After about 18 months, the organization gave the green light to the campaign, which then quietly launched in 2010. Each unit -- consisting of the museums, the zoo, and research and other centers -- created its own fundraising goal. All were given guidance and help from the Smithsonian's central development team on things like case statements and how to communicate about the campaign, but it was up to each to secure gifts.
Many officials were concerned that donors wouldn't understand why they were being asked to support the federally funded institution, said Alan Spoon, one of four campaign co-chairs. Wouldn't they argue that their tax dollars were already helping the institution? Spoon said it turned out that wealthy donors weren't inclined to think that way. Many of moderate means, however, did assume the Smithsonian was fully funded by the government, said campaign director Cynthia Brandt-Stover. Preparing for that assumption helped Smithsonian leaders better explain the government's limited support and show donors that giving to the campaign was a wise investment. "The presence of steady, stable federal funding as a vote of confidence in the Smithsonian helped me and others talk to potential contributors and say, 'If the government has confidence in this organization and our governing board and Board of Regents, then this is worth putting your money into,'" said David Skorton, who currently leads the Smithsonian.
The campaign's online-fundraising efforts, such as its crowdfunding projects, turned out to be a big success: "Because tens of millions of people saw the Kickstarter press, it engendered this dialogue of 'I didn't know the Smithsonian required gifts from people like me.' And so that's one of the big successes of that effort, getting that message out," said Brandt-Stover.
Throughout the campaign, the Smithsonian ran several Kickstarter efforts, including "Reboot the Suit," a program to conserve, digitize, and display the spacesuits of astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon. More than 9,400 donors pledged a total of $719,779 toward the project. Together, all crowdfunding projects brought in $2.4 million from more than 23,000 donors. While those programs were successful, such efforts require a lot of time and effort and might not be a good fit for all non-profits, said Laura Gleason, director of advancement at Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
"Crowdfunding was definitely a learning exercise. We'd never done anything like that before, and it was a very big effort and wildly successful. But at the end of the day, I think advancement offices have to evaluate what the return on investment is," said Gleason. "The exposure was fabulous, but is it time better spent to be really focusing on the major gifts as opposed to doing a mass effort like that?"
One of the biggest fundraising programs the institution implemented during the campaign was a series of regional outreach and stewardship events billed as "People Passion Purpose," in which the institution took small groups of its curators, scientists, and other experts on the road to speak to audiences in 30 cities nationwide about how their work at the Smithsonian has a broader impact on the outside world. The presentations, which Brandt-Stover compares to a "tasting menu" of what the Smithsonian has to offer, amounted to something akin to an eight-minute TED Talk and gave the institution's experts and potential donors an opportunity to connect.
Brandt-Stover said the institution developed the talks by pulling together a corps of about 35 speakers from across the Smithsonian's many units, giving them speaker training and organizing them into small groups to try out their lectures on one another. Since some of the experts didn't start out as natural public speakers, her team took pains to make sure they were well prepared and supported and that staff was on hand to help them succeed. While some of the speakers were reluctant to participate in the beginning, said Brandt-Stover, "now people call our office and say they want to be part of reaching new audiences or talking to the public about our work, so it has been part of a cultural shift at the Smithsonian over the course of our campaign," she said.
These events helped the different units present the Smithsonian more broadly to donors who may have been familiar with only one of the museums or research centers. The regional events introduced donors to other units that might turn out to be of interest and helped to immerse them in the entire institution and its work, an overall goal of the campaign, said Spoon. Gleason said before the campaign launched it often felt like many of the units were living in their own bubble, hesitant to get involved in the massive effort for fear each museum and research center would be competing with the others for funding. "What I learned very quickly is it's very powerful when you can present a case like this for the entire institution and really create an awareness that we're one piece of a much bigger organization," said Gleason. "A lot of this campaign was building our base, the middle tier, which will position us well for the next major campaign."
The financial success of the Smithsonian's first campaign wasn't its only bright spot. By making more of an effort to put its people -- curators, scientists, historians -- in front of the public, the institution showed a wider audience the work it's doing across all units, something Brandt-Stover hopes will change people's perception that the Smithsonian and museums are only interested in preserving their collections. "We really wanted to make the Smithsonian come alive and be relevant and feel just the opposite of some dusty attic."
Old Institution, New Ideas
The success of the Smithsonian's campaign was the result of a variety of fundraising techniques. The venerable Institution used its reputation and some its most prized assets to help raise cash through:
Road Shows: A series of events similar to TED Talks featured Smithsonian curators, scientists, and others who spoke to audiences throughout the country about their work. The events gave donors a chance to connect with the Smithsonian's top experts.
Crowdfunding: The institution ran several Kickstarter efforts, something it had never done before. One was "Reboot the Suit," a program to conserve, digitize, and display the spacesuits of astronauts Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong. Another crowdfunding campaign celebrated yoga-related art.
Decentralization: The Smithsonian's individual museums, research centers, and the National Zoo all participated in the fundraising. For example, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, launched a campaign aimed at bringing design classes to K-12 schools across the nation. The National Zoo created a program that allowed people to text $5 to help save endangered species.
535,000 individuals, foundations, and corporations donated to the campaign. Nearly half were first-time donors to the Smithsonian.
Conclusion
When COVID-19 forced itself into our lives in March 2020, it sent shockwaves across
the globe; suddenly we faced “lockdown”. We said goodbye to the way it was but did not
understand what this brave new world of isolation and separation would mean and how it
would impact life as we knew it, including our identity, relationships, and the freedoms
that we enjoyed. We wondered what daily routine post-COVID-19 would look like, while
the experiences defining life itself were for the taking. With social distancing, masks, and
work from home mandates, the arts and performing arts, from theaters, museums, galleries,
and the public square, were shuttered. Their very existence was challenged and spiraling
out of control as staff were laid off, exhibitions cancelled, while concurrently creating an
urgency to go online to dwell in cyberspace, the new daily destination.
Well before the pandemic, museums had already made a paradigm shift from collection-
centric to user-centric in the context of human participation and interaction. Suddenly faced with the COVID-19 crisis, museum doors shuttered, their visitors gone — and so, often, was a main source of revenue. What will happen to the public places we abandoned during COVID-19, and what will motivate people to come back, and will museums attract new audiences?
Enter digital artists, designers, and museum curators – those who know how to use
the digital to make art and marketing pieces and engage audiences, to tell stories and be contemporary as well as relevant. Digital professionals, whose presence in museums is often sorely lacking, must now assume a more central role in the digital integration and visualization of human digitality. While information and technology services can be outsourced or remote, curators remain at the heart of defining collection content and context but need the collaboration of artists on new narratives and ways of thinking, which in turn enable museums to reimagine collections in ways that encourage museums to engage with more diverse communities, artists, scientists, and audiences.
The pandemic has affected all museums, from the size of the Smithsonian downwards. A survey in the United Kingdom has studied the effect of the pandemic on the online content for 21 museums. The pandemic has certainly caused changes and presented significant challenges for museums. Virtual tours have become more popular in association with museums. Digital initiatives in museums, and in particular the use of social media by museums, have increased during the pandemic. However, it is difficult to assess the precise effects for the future.
The area of museums and digital culture is an emerging field. To date, there has been little research from the perspective of the heritage/museum experience and human digital behavior. There is also little research on the culture of “digital culture”, and the divide in museums between history, art, scientific collections, and technology remains an issue. The 2019 book Museums and Digital Culture breaks new ground in the realm of “digital culture”, as opposed to considering digital technology being the driving force. It is only very recently with the advent of COVID-19 that the schism between real and digital aspects at museums is being addressed. Museums are only beginning to take an integrative approach, considering the uncertainty and dynamic nature of the pandemic, which requires heritage institutions to be more agile and seek to incorporate VR, AR, and MR, both onsite and online.
Increasingly, the aim is to form a dynamic system between these various aspects and to embrace this transformational shift from the staider non-participatory model, so long in place, to one that deeply engages the audience. A major trend for museums will be
working in partnership with digital artists and designers, including experience design tied
to human digital behavior research, as museums embrace the integrative and inclusive
museum model.
As we re-emerge from the void of COVID-19 life, how will we put reality back together? The lacuna in the public square left by COVID-19 veered from occupied to empty, stranded between lockdowns and protests. Filling that void in a physical sense, and in our hearts and minds, presents an existential challenge to human existence — life as we knew it and what it might become. Museums are now asking, what will be a sustainable model of the future under the impact of the newly-formed principles of digitality? Museums and Digital Culture takes up the notion of the museum beyond its walls, connecting it to its community, both local and global, merging the museum’s online identity with that of the physical museum, rethinking how museums can generate income, and what opportunities there are for partnerships, new roles for government, and philanthropy. Some initial consideration might be found in those that build on existing resources and strengths. The book devotes a chapter to museum education through the lens of the MS Museums and Digital Culture master’s program introduced by Giannini at the Pratt Institute in 2016, which illuminates current issues and looks beyond 2022 to new ways of thinking and teaching.
COVID-19 has raised the stakes on implementing and investing in new intelligent systems, as they reduce labor costs, increase productivity, avoid duplication across GLAMs (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums), address hidden collections, and broaden the scope of selection while reducing prejudices that are inherent in individual selection and in authoritative knowledge systems. Repetitive work will be superseded by automated
systems, and this will be the case in the museum, archive, and library world, and will enable
their professionals to focus on important tasks requiring higher levels of human intelligence,
creativity, critical and abstract thinking, innovation, communication, interpretation, and
storytelling. With this approach, collections come alive and are open to discovery from the
perspectives of curators, visitors, and users. This results in a more inclusive democratized
system and more sharing for the cost-reduction of routine activities while shifting resources
to working teams of artists, scientists, curators, and creative computing designers for main-menu immersive and educational visitor experiences, interactive exhibitions, and the like.
We see education moving en masse to online, shopping online reaching unprecedented levels of participation, and eBooks, together with other forms of digital information, holding sway among users. During the same time, museums, libraries, and archives were forced to close and move online, leaving behind their traditional modes of operating in the physical museum for a virtual presence on the internet. Thus, these institutions, especially museums, are scrambling to find alternative paths to financial sustainability. Ultimately, although the answer will be in an integrated model of onsite and online, during the coming years the internet will play a key role. One approach might be partnerships with corporations such as Netflix and Disney, as well as seeking commercial sponsors of exhibitions who might also contribute to the show itself. Museums might also consider fee-based programs such as expanding their education programs to include credit degrees, such as a master’s program in museums drawing on existing resources, collections, and curators, particularly since over the past several months museums have deepened their online presence and connection to their audience and are becoming adept at using 3D, AR, VR, MR, and AI. Over time, such degree programs could become hybrid, adding focus to experiential learning onsite. Further, there is a need for museum programs that prepare professionals to engage the social and curatorial challenges of the field as they strive to connect with a more diverse audience, and are especially effective in visual modes of communication, increasingly the norm, as the old text-dominated world fades.
Society is on a journey to more and more digitality, digital integration, and inclusion in the future. What remains to be addressed if museums are to embrace the digital even further —
what would that look like? At this critical juncture, what seems most needed are fresh
insights for new conceptual models that bring creative ideas to identify structural change,
and a move away from old-school notions, legacy systems, and that identify digital tasks
that can be outsourced while others are redefined. Still, the question remains, how will
museums accommodate rapidly evolving human digital behavior and expectations? What
museum activities sit at the core of museum transformation? How will museums marshal
their precious resources so that, as post-pandemic visitors return, things will not look
the same but, rather, more exciting, more visually engaging in ways that integrate digital life,
and that define a spirit of creativity and innovation — not dusty, not old, not unconnected to
the current environment, but presenting fresh museum stories, narratives, and relationships
past to present that shows awareness of social issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity.
In today’s digital disruptive world, public institutions must Reach, Connect AND Engage. Engagement is more important than attendance for digital natives. And increasingly today, engagement starts not on bus advertisements or at the gate of our institutions. But rather when parents browse Facebook, when teenagers flip through lnstagram on their cellular device, or when a ten-year old sees something he or she likes on YouTube. Even more important for museum sustainability, engaging is cheaper to produce in the digital world than the physical one, and it leads to true co-creative environments between museums and the public which they serve. Engagement is about an exchange, and it requires museums to become true Digital Citizens in order to exchange in both realms, the physical and the digital: to engage in debates online, openly; to enable the public to classify online museum archives for themselves; to trust public historians more and enable them to dynamically contribute to the provenance of artefacts — in real time. We must change our mindset completely as an institution if we are to achieve this new reality, consequently achieving greater relevance, and therefore ensuring sustainability. Why not let the public catalogue artefacts online? Why not leverage the power of the masses? Transform our role from the provider of the sole source of the truth, to be online engagement specialists, content coordinators, and quality control overseers? This factor is critical because digital natives are born creators. They are born collaborators. Digital natives are used to interacting with celebrities on Twitter, discussing issues via Google Hangout, etc. Frankly they are exactly the type of clients museums dream of but many are simply failing to reach them en masse and let go, just a little, of existing models of operating in order to unleash a new museum collaboration era, one more in line with today’s broader market realities.
The exponential growth of digital tools over the last 25 years has forced the sector to reflect more deeply on the opportunities and uncertainties that may shape future museum practice. This report encourages researchers, cultural policymakers, and cultural heritage professionals to develop innovative programs that better understand, expand, and diversify the audience and strengthen the legitimacy and relevance of cultural actors and activities to transform them into inclusive, accessible, and sustainable institutions.
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