Hi all,

I just read this article about the Higgins Armory closing. One
sentence really stuck out at me: “Higgins’ biggest challenge is our
lack of a deep endowment, but we’re strong in virtually every other
facet of museum operations,” says (trustee) Maas.
(http://higgins.org/integration-worcester-art-museum)

Now I understand that museums need money to survive and the Higgins
was in an old building with c. 1930s HVAC and thus needed a lot more
money just to mitigate that. But in today's economic climate where
stock markets just aren't what they used to be and large donations are
fewer and fewer between, are the old models of museum economics the
way to go?

I've seen many crowdfunded projects (Kickstarter, Indegogo, etc.)
raise well over their asking amounts by relatively few people in an
equally relatively short amount of time. The obvious one is Amanda
Palmer's $1 million+ Kickstarter for her latest album from around
25,000 backers. Another big one was The Oatmeal's "Let's Build a
Goddamn Tesla Museum" which raised over $1.3 million to buy the
Wardenclyffe property for the Tesla Science Center in NY from about
34,000 backers. Another project asked $17,000 for an art book for a
beloved online game that was closing and he raised it within a matter
of hours. Total funding for that project was over $114,000 from 1314
backers just to create an art book for an online game. Now these
kickstarters all gave out perks from a mention on the website to a
private concert and kickstarter/indegogo and other crowdfunding sites
do take a percentage of the money for processing fees so the total
amounts for the projects weren't as much as the amount raised. Still,
when's the last time you had a fund-raiser that got over $100K?

Are museums starting to look to new economic models for fund-raising
and support? If so, how successful are you at it? Do you see it as a
sustainable way to keep your museum going? Are there any studies about
this?

Just curious. I'm also a little sad to see museums closing or
threatening to close. Since we're supposed to be some of the most
creative people on the planet, I'd think that we could come up with
creative ways to keep our museums open in some fashion or another.

Deb Fuller

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