Keeping Staff Afloat

By James G. Leventhal

Rosalind Bedell

On Tuesday, I was lucky enough to be invited to be a part of a session entitled Sustainable Work Practices: Keeping the Staff Afloat at #wma09 organized by Rosalind Bedell, Human Resources and Volunteer Director, Nevada Museum of Art and Program Committee Co-chair for WMA, San Diego.

In difficult economic times how do you keep the staff sustained and on board? This session looks at alternative staffing models including part-time work, job sharing, working from home, as well as the problem of burn out. In addition, staff spends time texting, on the internet and cell phones. Should this multitasking be incorporated into the work day? When and how much is acceptable? Are these ways of working models for the future?

I started the session off talking about the new work model — weisure — 24/7, total interconnectedness and the impact of the use of social media as part of a plan for institutional enhancement and the impact of organizational horizontilization.

Increasingly, it’s not clear what constitutes work and what constitutes fun [be it]…in an office or at home or out in the street…all of these worlds that were once very distinct are now blurring together.

- Sociologist Dalton Conley, New York University

In the non-profit sphere we have all been doing the work of three people for a long time, and now with new technology we can do the work of five or more.  But this might not be good.

Regina A. Petty, Esq of Fisher & Phillips

I purposefully made an effort to “fill the room with joy,” to quote one of the other panelists and to help, in that way, to prepare for the presentations to follow by Valerie Nelson, Director, Human Resources, Autry National Center; and Regina A. Petty, Attorney, Fisher & Phillips LLP.

Valerie Nelson talked about how the Autry has navigated these difficult times and Regina Petty spoke about in a focused and detailed manner about the issues every organization is presently dealing with:

• Hiring freeze and pay freeze
• Compensation reductions and furloughs
• Voluntary programs
• Reductions in force

Petty’s presentation was incredibly helpful and really well received.  Her presentation can be viewed on SlideShare here.  She presented daunting facts like, “People furloughed or working part-time rose from 3.7 million in June 2008 to 6.5 million in June 2009.”

Valerie Nelson and Rosalind Bedell during Regina Petty's presentation

Petty also drew particular attention to the legal issues around furloughs, noting that employees are strictly prohibited from performing any work during the furlough period.  This includes checking work-related email and voice mail.  Regarding social networks, and their impact now, Petty cautioned that an employer’s Social Networking Policy:

• Prohibit unlawful harassment/ discrimination
• Prohibit use of Company’s Proprietary, Confidential Information without express authorization
• Confirm no expectation of privacy where Company-provided system or e-mail
• Prohibit use of employee work e-mail address for social networking account

Thanks, Rosalind.  It was a great session.

Were you there?  What was your take-away?  How do we continue that sense of dialogue — finding encouragement and constructive advice during the challenging financial time in the industry, indeed most every industry in the United States?  Share your thoughts, please.

Joining Forces for Sustainability: Balboa Park Cultural Partnership (#WMA09, Monday at 1:35 pm)

How do we make it through these challenging times with museums and historical societies closing their doors or implementing hiring freezes after a sustained period of expansion?  One approach is to join forces.

To quote from one of the underlying themes of the work occurring in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of the National Arts Marketing Program:

As more and more advertisements try to capture your prospective patron’s attention, it‘s becoming clear that it is no longer enough to just do more. We have to start marketing smarter because, honestly, there’s only so much that an arts organization can do by itself to gain a foothold. We have to collaborate.

On Monday, October 26, 2009 the afternoon session of the first full day on the Western Museums Association meeting in San Diego will include a session to discuss the formation and strategic planning of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership (BPCP) and describe its activities including the Balboa Park Learning Institute, business services, advocacy, sustainability, marketing, public relations, governance, parking and on-line collaborative.

Gail Anderson

Presenters: David A. Lang, Executive Director, Balboa Park Cultural Partnership; Paige Simpson, Director, Balboa Park Learning Institute; and Rory Ruppert, Collective Business Operations Manager and Director of the Balboa Park Sustainability Program will be joined by Gail Anderson, President, Gail Anderson and Associates as moderator.

Foundational work in the creation of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership has occurred with two studies:

• The Soul of San Diego (2006)
• Keeping Balboa Park Magnificent in its Second Century (2008)

David A. Lang, Executive Director, Balboa Park Cultural Partnership

As an overview Executive Director David A. Lang summarizes BPCP’s history:

Established as a nonprofit organization in 2003, the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership is the collaborative body and collective voice for 24 diverse arts, science and cultural institutions in Balboa Park whose 500 trustees, 7,000 volunteers, and 3,500 staff serve more than 6.5 million members and visitors annually. Our mission is to enrich the cultural life in and beyond San Diego by facilitating collaboration among Balboa Park’s cultural institutions and with the community; to enable the cultural institutions to achieve their full individual and collective potential; and, to preserve, enhance, and make accessible the arts, science, and cultural assets of Balboa Park for present and future generations. The Partnership facilitates collaboration in areas such as education, operations, governance and advocacy, marketing and PR, and sharing and communication.

While neither part of the session, nor really a part of the Western Museums Association, per se, another amazing aspect of the collaborative work at play in San Diego, Rich Cherry heads up the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC).

Cherry is more focused on the Museum Computer Network (MCN), amongst other professional organizations.  In fact the upcoming 37th Annnual MCN conference later this year has the working theme of “Museum Information, Museum Efficiency: Doing More with Less!”  And Rich Cherry and the Balboa Park Online Collaborative helped bring together the #sfmetrix session WMA co presented last August at the SFMOMA.

Legler Benbough, Philanthropist (1909-1998)

The Balboa Park Online Collaborative is made possible in large part by the The Legler Benbough Foundation.  For many decades, the Benbough family helped shape the City of San Diego. Legler Benbough’s father, Percy Benbough, founded the Benbough Mortuary and was mayor of San Diego from 1935 until his death in 1942.  Legler Benbough, as a businessman, civic leader, philanthropist and rancher was an important contributor to the civic and cultural life of the City throughout his lifetime. He expanded the mortuary business after his father’s death to become owner of the largest group of mortuaries in the United States.  With no direct heirs, Mr. Benbough made a decision in 1985 to establish a charitable Foundation that would promote his interest in helping improve the quality of life for San Diegans.

The Foundation was initially funded with proceeds of business operations. In 1987, the Benbough ranch in Rancho Santa Fe was transferred to the Foundation and sold. In 1999, the principal funding of the Foundation occurred on the settlement of Mr. Benbough’s estate.  As of December 31, 2008, the grants from the Foundation to date totalled Twenty Million Eight Hundred one Thousand three Hundred thirteen Dollars ($20,801,313) and the assets on hand net of liabilities were Twenty Nine Million Eight Hundred Fifty Four Thousand Three Hundred and Forty Eight Dollars ($29,854,348). (source: The Legler Benbough Foundation)

San Diego is lucky.  And as many of us know, the best way to cultivate, engage and encourage extraordinary support is to keep friends and donors informed.  But what do you do if there are limited resources?  An extremely important part of the ongoing collaborative experiment is underway in San Francisco — the Bay Area Big List.

According to those who are running the Big List:

In many cities across the country, arts groups have started new experiments in collaborative marketing designed to harness the collective energy of the community. These have helped increase both first-time and return attendance levels for the community at large — essentially raising the tide by working together instead of working against each other.

Later this week in the San Francisco Bay Area there will be free workshops that will focus on how 112 arts organizations of all types have collaborated to form one of the largest “Big List” list cooperatives in the country. The Bay Area Big List, which currently holds information for over 430,000 unique arts-going households, is fast becoming one of the largest list co-op programs in the country.

This collaborative model, in which companies gather their mailing lists together in a centralized pool to be cross-referenced, checked for accuracy and tagged with demographic information, allows arts organizations to market smarter, reach new arts-hungry patrons and get a higher return on investment.

Each convening will feature a panel of local arts organizations and Big List administrative staff discussing the impetus of the Big List, the other collaborative efforts that have emerged in conjunction with that program, and the future of collaborative marketing in the Bay Area.  Panelists will include representatives from SFMOMA, ACT, Berkeley Rep, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Oakland East Bay Symphony, and more.  A full description and the RSVP form (required) can be found at www.theatrebayarea.org/tide.

The free sessions will be

• Thursday, October 22 (San Francisco), 10AM-12PM (SFMOMA, Wattis Theatre)
• Thursday, October 22 (South Bay), 3PM-5PM (San Jose Repertory Theatre)
• Friday, October 23 (East Bay), 10AM-12PM (Aurora Theatre, Berkeley)
• Friday, October 23 (North Bay), 2PM-4PM (Cinnabar Theatre, Petaluma)

It is programs such as these above that help the big arts organizatiosn equal as much as they do the small ones.  Everybody benefits.  And what’s this year’s theme for #WMA09?  “A Rising Tide,” right.  All boats, people.  All boats.

And these sessions in the San Francisco Bay Area about the Bay Area Big List?  Their theme/title?  Raising the Tide.  All boats, people.  All boats.

See you in San Diego!

(Raising the Tide is part of the NAMP/Wallace Marketing Workshops series. The National Arts Marketing Project (NAMP) is a program of Americans for the Arts and is sponsored nationally by American Express. In the Bay Area, these free workshops are further supported and developed with a grant from The Wallace Foundation in partnership with The San Francisco Foundation, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund and Theatre Bay Area.)

The Mythological Museum Visitor – The Young Cosmopolitan

By Adam Rozan

The author at the Oakland Museum of California, showcasing and Creative Time presents Mark Tribe's Port Huron Project 5: The Liberation of our People.

The Targeting Young Cosmopolitans in Museums study was born out of a 2009 session of the Association of Midwest Museums conference entitled, The Next Generation: Targeting Young Audiences in an Uncertain Economic Climate.

The report was designed to measure the energies involved in young cosmopolitan programming by examining 170  museums, varying in size, affluence and scope.

The term “young cosmopolitan” describes a hybrid generation born out of Generation X (those born between 1967 and 1977) and Generation Y (those born between 1978 and 1993). They “are exceptionally social, ethnically diverse, college educated, technologically savvy, and have a creative and open mindset.” Alexandra Gregg, co-author of the Targeting Young Cosmopolitans in Museums survey, wrote earlier in a post on WestMuse:

YoCo – young cosmopolitan – because it focuses more on a psychographic than on specifically drawn lines of age, gender, etc. YoCos are the people who are highly social, are all over Facebook and iPhones, and are curious, creative, and cosmopolitan. It’s the people who go to the Hirshhorn’s famous after-hours event in DC, or the Hammer’s Bike Night in LA… But YoCos can still be understood in terms of geography and economics – they tend to gravitate around cities and have a general US buying power of $924 billion.

A recent cover from Time Out New York reads, “You’re smart. Cultured. And you’ve never been to the Rubin?… Museums: The Actually Cool Guide.” Inside the article reads as a tasting menu of New York city’s many museums, highlighting various activities, events and parties held each month targeting this cosmopolitan audience.

Despite such articles, this scene is not the norm across the country, rather the opposite–only 37% of museums that participated in the Targeting Young Cosmopolitans in Museums study offer such programs.

With the key attributes of the YoCos in mind (e.g. highly social, college educated, creative, etc.), why are the other 63% of museums studied in this survey not engaging these audiences? Funding, limited staff time, lack of board support, and “not enough time to organize an effective program to YoCos,” prevailed as the primary reasons provided. Furthermore, 8% of those surveyed felt “this demographic cannot be reached” and accordingly another seven museums provided that this target group was not relevant to their institution. While seven museums are far from a majority, can any institution truly afford to ignore this diverse and knowledgeable audience?

YoCo programming remained the primary responsibility of the education and programming departments for 51% of the study, and sadly, only 7 museums reported “cross-departmental collaboration (primarily between education and marketing),” and only one institution had a “YoCo team with representatives from marketing, events, development, etc.”

The 77% of museums that host YoCo programs reported having clear goals and objectives, and used terms like “attract,” “welcome,” “target,” “reach,” or “increase attendance” to describe some of their goals; another group used “engage” or “educate” to best describe their objectives. Because only 23% of respondents “have or consult a young adult advisory board or related committee,” it is not surprising that some of the museums felt they were not adequately targeting the YoCo audience.

What is to be done with YoCos?

Time Out New York’s article on museums highlights activities such as “behind the scenes tours, lectures, films, and even the quirky B-movie nights,” which are similar to those mentioned by the museums surveyed. These events usually occur at night and are aimed at attracting YoCos to museums. The evenings differ between alcohol and no alcohol, tours to lectures, and so as I have written earlier here at WestMuse:

At first, with young adults the need was to create the parties, and provide the invitation. Now, that they are arriving, and are interested–isn’t this the time to change our programs, exhibitions, and other existing models of activity? Let’s begin to re-think how visitors act and interact inside galleries, and with our collections. Asking what is the role and purpose of exhibitions, and programs, and how our visitors are to use them and participate. Maybe the best place for the deejay is inside the gallery, on a Saturday afternoon, next to the collections?

Rethinking our visitors and the visitor experience is paramount to the successful museum, not just in outreach exercises, but in the delivery of the modern museum visit. What that means is unique to each museum: however, we can no longer avoid the new rules assumed by today’s modern audiences. The lives of YoCos are defined by their digital identities and social and cultural connections with their psychographic interests. The balance between one’s iPhone and one’s personal life has merged, and yet at the same time the need to socialize, learn, and interact has never been more present.

Museum of Modern Art Twitter Sign in to Recommend STRETCH A yoga class at MoMA surrounded by a video installation by the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist.

In many ways we are entering an era focused on experiences. In the 2009 Museum Section of the New York Times, Carol Vogel writes:

Yoga classes and bicycle get-togethers may not be your typical museum fare, but in these rough economic times, anything goes…But lean times are bringing out a pioneering spirit as museum officials strive to develop creative strategies for what is undeniably a new world… Most, if not all are expanding their public program. More than before, institutions big and small have adopted the same mission: to transform once-hushed museums into vibrant cultural centers where the activities go far beyond what’s hanging on the walls.

Today’s economy has given permission to experiment, and has required us to evolve.  Audience development for museums is not by any means a new pursuit, nor is recognizing underserved audiences within our institutions. Moving away from demographic pursuits to psychographics and augmenting our institutions to today’s audiences is necessary to captivate today’s audience and tomorrow’s patrons.

(Note: Special thanks to Kathleen McNally for her assistance with this article!)

Oregon Heritage Commission: Facing Adversity

By David Porter

To follow up on my earlier post, I wanted to note that the Oregon Heritage Commission,  a state chartered entity which oversees grant programs and other similar activities, heard testimony about the challenging state of affairs among heritage groups across the state at a meeting early this summer.

Under the leadership of Chairman George Kramer,  the Commission pledged to charter an investigation of the situation and to use its standing to make recommendations to the Legislature early in 2010.

The starvation budget which Oregon’s government is operating under, combined with the continuing economic gloom, will make their work more challenging.  Importantly,  the idea of engaging in global scrutiny of the situation and looking for broad solutions is a first.

It may well set the stage for a stronger fabric to support heritage museums and related institutions in the future.

The End of the Oregon Trail: A Case Study for the Start of the 21st Century

By David Porter

The economic downturn of the past eighteen months led to declining revenue from ticket sales and contributions to Clackamas Heritage Partners (CHP) which operates the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center and two other sites in Oregon City.   In March and April we were forced to suspend our operations while we attempted to raise funds to continue.

A very strong positive community response allowed us to reopen our doors at the beginning of May.   However, we were still dependent on healthy ticket and retail numbers through the summer tourism season.  We scheduled several large public events, had County support in marketing the fact that we were open, and mounted volunteer outreach in the community.   Despite those efforts, our ticket sales and related revenues have continued to decline this summer, leaving us few choices.

Faced with the numbers, the CHP board notified Oregon City that we are not able to continue to manage the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center facility after Labor Day.

Staff layoffs will take place in most departments.  The Visitor Information Center at the End of the Oregon Trail site will continue to be open as long as funding continues.  Additionally, CHP will continue its custody of the collections and research library at the Museum of the Oregon Territory and volunteers will continue to work at the Stevens Crawford House at least through year-end.

The City of Oregon City commissioned a study of CHP’s operations in March to evaluate actions that would make CHP more successful. That report, made by the economic analysis firm, AKT, was released two weeks ago — http://www.orcity.org/citymanager/clackamas-heritage-partners-report

The heart of the report states that CHP does not have adequate resources or facilities to succeed on its own. The report states that CHP can only be successful if Oregon City commits to being a heritage destination.

The End of the Oregon Trail site has drawn from 30,000 to 60,000 visitors annually and employed more than a dozen staff.  The facility was originally intended as an interim interpretive experience to serve visitors until a larger, multimillion-dollar facility master planned by regional partners was constructed. The larger project never gained traction, and the existing facility faced increasing challenges of aging infrastructure and limited attendance.

The report further states that CHP would need nearly $ 2 million annually and further millions in upgrade and repair to its facilities in order to operate at full capacity.   Clackamas Heritage Partners Board praised the City for undertaking the AKT study and endorsed its recommendations.   However funding at the recommended levels appears unlikely.

The End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center is one of five heritage facilities built in the 1990s in Oregon on the occasion of the Sesquicentennial of the Oregon Trail.   A second facility, The Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in The Dalles in central Oregon has attempted to work through struggles related to sustainability with the help of an Oregon Solutions Team.

Oregon Solutions is a program created by the Governor’s office to help communities with struggling institutions.    Team efforts are recounted in the website at – http://orsolutions.org/central/gorgediscover.htm

As summer ended, the Board of Trustees of the Southern Oregon Historical Society announced that it will suspend most public operations for a period of six months in order to restructure the organization. This is in response to a financial crisis that has been in the making since the Society lost all of its county funding in 2007.

The actions were summarized in a message from Executive Director Allison Weiss.  “The Society is not closing; it is reorganizing in order to develop a plan that will ensure the Society is financially sustainable and relevant to the community. All museum properties located in Jacksonville will close to the public on Sept. 7, as will the Research Library in Medford.  The Children’s Museum in Jacksonville will be open to scheduled school groups.  Hanley Farm will continue to operate in order to complete the fall farmers market season and host the annual Harvest Festival and Pumpkin Patch, all activities that bring in people and revenue.”

“It surprises me how few people know that the Society receives no funding from the county,” said Weiss, who was brought in to run SOHS in July.  “We have tried to maintain an operation that was once operating on a $2 million budget with 40 full time staff people. We are now down to six full time staff members and a fraction of the prior budget yet for the past year, we have tried to keep open all of the facilities. We have nearly depleted the line of credit and have exhausted the staff; many of whom were working 60 hours a week to keep the properties open to the public.  Two years ago the Society took a $600,000 line of credit against the History Center in Medford.”

During the time that the Society will be closed, the organization will be restructured. Key to this is negotiating with Jackson County to amend the lease on the Jacksonville properties. The Society is seven years into a 50-year lease through which the county leased six historic properties to the Society for $1 a year.   The Society in turn was to provide maintenance and upkeep on the facilities.  The historical society itself is not dissolving and intends to work toward development of programs that can be sustained.   More information can be found at — www.sohs.org

Museum of Contemporary Craft

Word comes more anecdotally from other institutions across the state which have cut hours and positions, or made even more dramatic changes.   The first large museum to face a fiscal crisis was the brand new Museum of Contemporary Craft which had opened just months earlier to great fanfare but then found its financial circumstances in a death spiral.   Integration with another institution, PNCA, provided a solution, but the size of the problem gave Portland’s cultural community pause.  It was clear that large institutions were also at risk.

During Oregon’s legislative session, the statewide budget crisis led to a skimming of revenues from Oregon’s visionary Cultural Trust, although no money was taken from the Trust’s corpus.   And the Oregon Historical Society and Portland Art Museum, two of the largest and most venerable cultural organizations in Oregon, both saw the state funds they had counted on in recent years cut.   Both had some funding restored in the final hours of the session through the “Christmas Tree” bill.   But the bottom line was still cuts.   Oregon did authorize a new  “Pacific Wonderland” retro license plate, which could provide a funding stream down the road.  However, the situation remains problematic.

The demise of my organization’s operations in Oregon City did not come as a surprise to our Board of Directors or myself.   In 2004, an organizational assessment by a heritage tourism consultant led us to integrate three separate entities into Clackamas Heritage Partners.  That allowed us to achieve economies of scale, pay of the indebtedness of the small partners, invest in much-needed capital repairs and market our organization’s exhibits and interpretive presentations as an integrated product.

Despite these achievements, by 2006 we could see that we were still too dependent on earned revenues and continuing to face ever-mounting maintenance and repair costs in aging facilities.    We began working on a plan that would have created a new level of heritage attraction in Oregon City, but through two years of exploration, design work, and economic evaluation were still too far from bringing product online when the economy nudged us toward the brink.  The plans we had developed for reclaiming access to Willamette Falls, the second largest waterfall in the United States, still have substance, and we hope that some future heritage leaders will carry them to fruition.

In the meantime,  to help avoid similar problems, I hope that colleagues can benefit from the work that was done to analyze our travails.   The AKT study contains analyses that apply to other organizations than ours.