The American Association for State and Local History's Performance Management program now offers its services to historic houses (in addition to museums). After three years of piloting Performance Management with ten historic houses in the Philadelphia area, the program is ready for use by the field at large. 

 

The AASLH Performance Management program is based on measurement of visitor satisfaction and opinions via a visitor survey, digging deeper to determine root causes of issues and weaknesses identified by visitors, fixing the problems, and then planning to re-measure three to five years later to make sure problems have been corrected. 

 

Developed in partnership with the Center for Nonprofit Management of Nashville, the Performance Management program provides client institutions with a final report that identifies strengths and weaknesses and helps staff plan for positive institutional change in areas such as educational programming, tours and visitor services, marketing, and strategic planning. The report also offers valuable support material for marketing efforts and grant applications and other funding requests.  

 

An important benefit of the AASLH Performance Management program is that it provides participating institutions with benchmarks so they can compare their visitor survey results with institutions of similar size and scope.


Performance Management is offered twice a year to a limited number of institutions (Group A begins in January; Group B begins each June). A Performance Management group for history museums will begin in June as well. Institutions interested in signing up for either the June historic house group or the June museum group are encouraged to contact AASLH now. The program is almost a year in length.

 

AASLH member institutions receive the complete Performance Management package for $3,500 - well below the cost of hiring an outside firm to conduct a scientific and tested visitor survey. For some museums, the fee can be paid over the course of two fiscal years since the program is almost a year in length. Institutions in need of grant support in order to participate are encouraged to discuss the Performance Management program and its benefits with local/statewide foundations or a statewide museum grants program. AASLH believes Performance Management would be an excellent project to submit for a funding request. 



To read more about Performance Management, visit http://www.aaslh.org/perfmanagement.htm



Please contact me if you have questions.



Cherie Cook, Project Director

Performance Management Program

AASLH

cook @ aaslh.org (remove spaces)

=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:

The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).

If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).