December 4, 2017
BY: EMILY WELSH
The final week! Bittersweet is the best word to sum up our final class of the term. Today we focused on the methods and tips for collecting funds from the community - the private and earned income revenue streams.
Class Learning
Museums may complete fundraising campaigns to raise funds for a specific project or general support for the museum. These campaigns should be completed exactly like you would any other project! To begin, complete your project plan and build your project charter (aka case statement). Understand and be able to communicate your goals for the campaign, the need for it and the benefits its results will enact. Create a budget for your fundraising campaign and develop your marketing strategy! Who will you target and how will you reach them?
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| Which types of donors are you trying to reach and what is the best way to do so? Use a mix of methods! Source. |
After planning and approving your campaign, it's time to enact it! Complete your activities and evaluate how well your project did! For a campaign these activities will take the form of acquiring pace setting donations, launching the public campaign, collecting donations and recognizing your donors' contributions (with at least a thank you!). Also ensure you make it as easy as possible for donors to respond to your ask for funds! For example, enclose an addressed return envelope in the direct mail campaigns or a link to an online donation site in digital materials.
Collecting funds from the community as earned income can appear in many forms (these will be discussed in the reading insight below). Our lecture raised important points in regard to museum entry pricing. The price of admission can provide the museum with difficulty when soliciting funding from governments and private donations. Museums must also be aware of their visiting publics' threshold; if museums raise their admission prices above what visitors are willing to pay, attendance will fall and could negate the benefit on revenue by raising the rates in the first place! Museums shouldn't arbitrarily raise admission without completing marketing research.
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| Make sure your museum entry price is within the rates your visitors are willing to pay! Source. |
Reading Insight
My final reading insight comes from a previously mentioned book, Kotler, Kotler and Kotler's Museum Marketing and Strategy. Chapter 12, "Setting Pricing Strategies", looks at setting pricing levels for museums' many earned income strategies. The authors explain that the pressure for museums to find new sources of revenue has led them to explore a variety of charged strategies including:
- admission
- memberships
- loaned objects
- traveling exhibits
- special exhibitions
- events
- gift shop items
- food services
- rentals
The short chapter provides an excellent discussion of the concerns, strategies and examples of how museums determine their pricing for each of these items. The section on the multiple ways to price for museum admission is quite extensive and insightful. In order to set admission prices, museums must think about their objectives for the revenue this charge will bring in. The discussion provides negative and positive impacts of the choices. Museum must also consider their "costs, competitor prices, and a visitor's perceived value" (Kotler, Kotler, & Kotler, 2008, p. 412).
The authors address the opposing views surrounding the presence of admission fees in museums explaining that museums have found ways to earn revenue while keeping their services accessible to all of the public in some shape or form (e.g. free nights). They state:
"Moreover, earned income for many museums no longer is a discretionary choice but rather a necessity to ensure financial sustainability. The question is not whether to raise earned income but how to do it in ways congruent with a museum’s missions and circumstances and community expectations" (Kotler, Kotler, & Kotler, 2008, p. 411).
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| Museums have been investigating a variety of earned income strategies that have become quite normal for today's visitor. How many museums have you been to that don't have a gift shop? Source. |
Happy Planning!
Resources
Kotler, N. G., Kotler, P. and Kotler, W. I. (2008). Setting pricing strategies. In Museum strategy and marketing: Designing missions, building audiences, generating revenue and resources (2nd ed.) (pp. 409-428). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.