Dear Museum-L

Do any of you think of your museum as a business? Do you assess risk about whether or not you do a program or exhibit? Does finance inform your decisions at all? Do you use a dashboard to track key metrics?

I bet your board members get this lingo… and encourage you to track stats. But if you did art history or some other humanities before entering the exciting world of public service through museums… you may not have had any sort of training for operating your museum or programming as a business.

Do you know your competition?

Do you know how many visitors you need to reach your budget targets for revenue?

Do you realize how much your decisions impact whether or not you can keep the lights on?

WHY do people give you money for the services  you provide?

What is your 60 second elevator speech of why people should come to YOUR museum?

How do you advertise to reach your target market… what is your target market?

Do you have a growth plan? Do you know how you are going to achieve the goals you set out for  your institution?

SUCCESS is measured in many ways, and museums need to be mindful that all of our successes cannot be measured by money or by statistics, but after taking the Goldman Sachs’ 10000 Small Businesses course, I am more mindful of steps to achieve the goals our institution has for itself and they are driven by business models and principles.

If any of you have thoughts about modeling your museum operations on business principles, I would love to hear about them. So much of it seems to be driven by knowing what you can do that no one else can, learning your strengths and weaknesses, knowing your audiences and your competition… and what steps you need to conquer to achieve goals.

Ware Petznick

Shaker Historical Society

wpetznick at shakerhistory [dot] org