Museum Month, a New Orleans & Co. promotion that runs August 1 through 31, offers members of participating institutions two free admissions at all of the nearly 30 other museums and attractions, which range from the Backstreet Cultural Museum in Treme to the New Orleans Museum of Art in City Park to the Warehouse District’s National WWII Museum to the members of the French Quarter Museum Association.
My print, radio, and TV exhibit recommendations for this August are here, here, and here.
Dedicated museumgoers can realize a value in the hundreds of dollars while also supporting their favorite museum or attraction. This year, New Orleans & Co. has added a passport promotion that allows participants to track their progress from museum to museum and potentially collect a prize, which could include a free one-year membership at the museum of their choice.
But benefits of museum membership are just beginning when August turns to September and beyond – for both members and museums. First-look exhibit opening receptions, museum store and public-programming discounts, and informative print and digital publications and communications are just a few of the benefits museum members can access.
For museums, building an engaged core audience is key to evaluating and refining their mission. Here’s how:
Programming measurement
At the Historic BK House and Gardens in the French Quarter, membership interest is a tangible way to weigh the success of public programs, said Annie Irvin, executive director.
“The biggest benefit for our members is access to all of the programming because you get advanced notice and discounted tickets,” she said. “We can always tell which programs have really landed when we get a big boost in membership afterwards.”
Mission management
The membership benefit of year-round free admission at the Louisiana Children’s Museum is more than just a godsend for parents of young children looking for an enriching activity in a climate-controlled setting. It also gives the museum an engagement pipeline to hone its mission goals.
“For us, it’s about learning and development,” said Tifferney White, LCM’s chief executive officer. “If we have them coming over and over again, that allows them to come in and learn a little more each time, right? We have these kind of uber goals for our four-and-unders. We want to make sure that they’re ready for kindergarten.
“If they’re members, they’re coming in over and over again and they get a little bit of that each time.
“If they’re a one-time visitor, then we don’t have as many touch points with our members.”
Silent support
In his new book Preserving the Legacy: Creating the National WWII Museum, co-founder Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller recalled the days after Hurricane Katrina when the museum was formulating an ambitious expansion plan while facing the prospect of zero visitation and thus zero income for the unknowable future.
“The financial outlook for the coming months was grim,” Mueller wrote. But a national membership campaign spearheaded by Stephen Watson, who decades hence would succeed Mueller as the museum’s president and CEO, had assembled a reserve cadre of 120,000 supporters who ensured that the museum’s existence and eventual growth could continue. “Citizens across the nation became one of our main lifelines,” Mueller wrote.
Today, the huge museum fundraises in countless ways, but its membership, which now measures more than 140,000, provides about $15 million in support each year. Most never visit the New Orleans campus.
“And it all starts with their passion for what we’re doing,” said Terry Dale Cruse, associate vice president for annual giving and membership.
Beyond New Orleans
Admission is always free at the Historic New Orleans Collection but the museum, research center and publisher is offering special pop-up lectures in its galleries to super-serve Museum Month visitors. Mandi Cambre, development director there, also notes that a second-level membership at HNOC includes the free admission benefit offered by the North American Reciprocal Museum Association, which counts more than 1,400 institutions.
That benefit “allows you into hundreds of museums across not just the US but Canada and Mexico as well,” she said. “And so it’s kind of like having Museum Month all year round if you join at that level.”
A $100 Merieult Society membership at HNOC allows the holder to “experience New Orleans now and then when you travel you get use your membership to get in other places, too,” Cambre said.
Here is a Museumgoer Podcast interview where the above local museum leaders discuss their institution’s membership benefits as well as the importance of cultivating an engaged supporter base.
Below are a few images that accompany the recommendations way back at the first set of links.
Thanks to Annie, Tifferney, Terry, and Mandi, and thanks to you for reading and maybe listening.
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