Robins posting got me thinking as the new copy of Inc. just hit my
mailbox. Most museums are small business-like in operation, and they have
a review of the current crop of small business books. I especially like
the products put out by Upstart Press, mostly written by David Bangs,
Upstart Publishing Co., 12 Portland Street, Dover N.H. 03820. These are
concise and to the point, written for folks that don't have a helluva a
lot of spare time. Basic stuff on not-for profit management: Drucker,
Thomas Wolf's Managing a Non-profit Organization is also useful. Bear in
mind that museums are fundamentally different from other forms of
businessnad not-for-profits in that they have two audiences: the varigated
ones that are around now and the IMS and other funders want us to
understand, and from whom all cash flow. Then there is the audience of the
future, and that is the one that soaks up expense in collection builindg,
conservation, preservation etc. We are not very good as a culture in
generating resources for this audience, to wit our national debt.....
 
On a related subject does anyone know of hard statistical research that has
been done on museum operations? I'm thinking about things like ratios:
dollars spent per visitor, volunteer hours vs. staff hours, inquiries vs.
reference service dollars spent, earned vs. contirbuted income in all its
various breakdowns etc. What we are talking about here is standards, ways
to measure your operation against others. Here you may also be able to
develop potentially useful goals. I remember setting up some spreadsheets
to analyse IMS GOS support requests to draw comparisons among a group of
museum of similar subjects but of widely differing sizes. It gave useful
benchmarks and comparisons. What has happened (happens to all of the
hugely useful data that the IMS collects?) I know it sounds like stuff a
B-School graduate would do which I'm not.
Ben Fuller
seabag enterprises
[log in to unmask]