With the growing uncertainty around Coronavirus and its duration, museums and cultural organizations are wondering the best ways to navigate these uncharted waters. In the face of closures, requests for membership extensions, and member turnover, many cultural organizations are all experiencing the unprecedented challenge of maintaining their membership bases. During this unusual time, communication with those members is critical - but where do we start, and how do we stay relevant in members’ eyes when nobody can actually see us?
This past Monday, over 500 membership, development, and cultural space professionals came together with Dan Sullivan (Head of Partnerships @ Cuseum), along with Ingrid Van Haastrecht (Director of Advancement Services, Analysis and Membership @ Dallas Museum of Art) and Jennifer Thomas (Director of Annual Programs @ St. Louis Art Museum) to discuss actionable strategies for keeping members informed during closures.
Watch the full webinar recording online.
Read the full transcript below!
Dan Sullivan:
First of all, thank you for being here. My name is Dan Sullivan, I'm the Head of Growth and Partnerships at Cuseum. And first of all, I just want to say thanks to everybody who's joining us, and a special thank you also to our awesome panelists today, Ingrid and Jennifer. And I'll let them introduce themselves in a minute.
Before we get started, hopefully everybody in the audience is staying safe and healthy during what is likely to be maybe the most unusual time of all of our lives. And for those who have been a part of Cuseum's webinars in the past, thank you for joining us again. For all the newcomers who are here, welcome. The last three or so weeks have been a blur of insanity for a lot of us, as we're wrestling with uncertainties of our jobs, our health, the safety of our loved ones, our families. And we're all trying to adapt to this temporary, but new normal of working remotely. For our team, today marks the third week that we've been working entirely remote and full disclosure, like probably most of the people that are watching right now, there's a fair high likelihood that a screaming 15-month-old is going to burst through this wall behind me. So if that does happen, I apologize.
A lot of technologists use the saying of building the bus while you drive. And so that describes an organizational approach, in embracing imperfection and rolling with the punches, and really rapidly addressing changing needs as they arise. And the cultural space has been thrust into this position of figuring things out on the fly. And now more than ever, inspiration and idea exchanges are necessary. They're extremely important. So this is the first installment of our weekly webinars series, focused on membership hot topics. And communication with members has never really been as important as it is now.
So that's why I'm super excited to have two of the best minds in the cultural space here joining us, Ingrid and Jennifer, thank you for being here. Let's take a moment for you to introduce yourselves.
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
I'll go first. Hi everyone. My name is Ingrid Van Haastrecht, I'm with the Dallas Museum of Art. I've been a membership professional for about nine years. The Dallas Museum of Art, it's an encyclopedic museum. We have been a free museum since January 2013. I'd say we'd probably classify more as a mid-sized museum. We have a total membership household count of about 18,000 membership households. In terms of visitor attendance, we see about 800 to 900,000 visitors each year. And I'd say of the 18,000 total membership households, 94% of them are really made up of members in our paid membership category below $1,000. And of that number, I'd say 85% of that is at our lowest giving level, which is $100. So most of our members are at the 100-dollar level. The most popular membership benefits for us are free parking, because we own our parking garage. And the free special exhibition tickets. So that's me in a nutshell.
Jennifer Thomas:
Hi. I'm Jennifer Thomas, Director of Annual Programs at the Saint Louis Art Museum. I'm also a comprehensive art museum in Saint Louis obviously. We also have about 18,000 member households. We've always been free unlike Ingrid. So almost 40 years into free at this point. And our museum was actually opened during the Spanish Flu, which we found out from our archivist recently. So the museum itself has history, although none of us remember that time. So we're figuring it out as we go along. We too have about 45% of our members at our lowest category at $65, and then we go up from there, which is the area I oversee, as well as our fulfillment center, and our visitor services areas also encompasses my membership team. And I would say our most popular benefit is also the special exhibitions, which is where we get most of our new members each year. So we'll talk a little bit about how this special time is impacting that. And alsom second most popular is free parking in our parking garage as well. So we have a lot in common. Also probably a mid-size, but we have approached a few of these things separately. So hopefully we can give you guys some good advice today.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Thank you both for the introduction. To start things off, let’s start with Ingrid. What are some steps that you've taken to keep your membership base engaged throughout these types of closures that we're seeing right now?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
Good question. So we officially closed March 13th at 5pm, it was a Friday and I think everyone probably remembers exactly where they were on that day, or on your day whenever your museum closed, because it was just a moment of reality. I think for us our main communication channel has really been engaging everyone through our digital channels. So everything from email, social media, that's really been our primary way of getting information out to our members, to our visitors, anyone who's following us. Now, in terms of our upper level donors, it's definitely been more one-to-one.
It's definitely more high touch. But for our general members, we're really relying on digital to get information to them. We don't even have outbound calling capability set up. So really if members or guests have questions, we're really trying to push them to our member and guest service emails.
Jennifer Thomas:
We've been doing much of the same in collaboration with our marketing department. We closed on Monday the 16th at 5pm, so we had about four hours to figure out what we were doing. But we have launched an object of the day email. So that has really been a great collaboration for us over the last two weeks, with our digital and marketing departments. So taking works of art from our last published handbook in 2004, kind of the greatest hits in the collection and focusing on one of those each day. Initially that email was supposed to go to all of our public lists. It was decided unbeknownst to me, that it was only going to go to members and board members.
So I was actually happy for once we did have a member perk, right out of the box, and that was great. We've heard a little bit from members about how much they're enjoying it. So that's kind of been our first foray. And then we have started a weekly Monday membership message that comes from me, just kind of highlighting something. Mostly content from our magazine that was due to be mailed this week actually for our spring issue. So that content that is more collection based and evergreen, we are splicing that up and kind of dishing that out every Monday. So today's message was about a recent acquisition by female artists', celebrating the last two days of women's history month. And I don't know what next week's will be, but we've got a few days to figure it out.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome, yeah.
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
If I can just add on, I think we’re really similar to what Jennifer's doing. So over at the DMA, we're kind of piggybacking on the idea of these “Museum Monday” type communications. There's a nice ring to it. So we've pretty much followed suit. Our marketing team has literally been working over time, working collaboratively with our curatorial and education teams to just build really cool content. So having now an opportunity to push out content through social blogs, emails. So they've kind of come up, I wouldn't say a tagline, but it's like, Stay In, Stay With Us, Stay DMA, join us at home.
And so everything that Jennifer's talking about, coming up with new virtual tours. Suddenly we have virtual tours of our galleries. We've never had this before, but now we have it. You know, sharing behind the scenes stories, creating, pushing out guides and activities, what folks can do at home with their families. So same thing, trying to just find ways, find content, just pushing information out.
Dan Sullivan:
That’s awesome.
We have another question. Cindy Rogers from the New Mexico BioPark Society sent a question. She asks, what is too much communication during something like this? With regards people unsubscribing from your newsletter or your email list. Where do we draw the line there?
Jennifer Thomas:
Well, I'll start on this one. I thought the daily email was too much. So when that was pitched to me, I was like, "That seems too much. People aren't going to want that." I mean, I love Target and I'm sick of hearing from Target every day. So you know, I thought, "Oh, this is going to be too much. People are going to hate it." And that has not been the case thus far. So I'm happy to say that. So I'm hopeful that we're sticking out you know, we're not selling anything, we're just bringing in an object into your home, into your life every day. We're not bad news. So hopefully we're getting the opposite effect, and being something that they look forward to. So I will admit I was kind of wrong on this one, but it's only been two weeks, so maybe they'll get sick of us still. I don't know.
Dan Sullivan:
I think that people do view, and I've said this before, people do really view cultural institutions and museums as this reprieve from the insanity that is our day to day life, especially right now. So I think getting something nice...everything that's in my inbox right now, my personal inbox, is just a coronavirus update on this, update on that. But, here's a beautiful painting or here is something to bring a little bit of joy, a little bit of light to your day. I think that goes a long way. And I really believe that members appreciate that.
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
I agree. I think that's why we just went with weekly emails as a start. And we almost had to recreate our communication calendar again for the entire institution thinking, being concerned about how much is too much and making sure that we weren't just slamming everyone with tons of emails. And so we're in the process of rebuilding what that communication calendar looks like for the entire museum.
Jennifer Thomas:
Yeah, I would totally agree with that Ingrid, and I kind of think, as I was kind of reflecting on these questions this morning, one of the things I was thinking is, what it's done, I think in a way, it's kind of brought us back to basics. You know, we're about art. That's what we're about. And now our social media and just this daily message is focusing only on art. If we were actually living our normal lives, we would be competing with ourselves, our marketing department, our education department, to get the word out about events, about programs, about lectures, about the special exhibition. But right now we kind of brought it all the way, stripped it all the way down to the permanent collection, which is the strength of our museum and what we are. So I think in a way it's kind of, kind of refocused us a little bit. Maybe not in the best circumstance, but I do like that simplicity of the communication right now.
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
I agree.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And so let's shift gears slightly.
Let's talk a little bit about renewals. So what does the tone of renewals look like? What are options that organizations have when it comes to kind of approaching renewals? Obviously it's kind of an unusual time. What are your thoughts there?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
I'll start this one. I've heard out there that some organizations were like, "No, I'm not sending out any messaging right now." We decided at the DMA that we would continue to send out renewal messaging, but we had to rethink how, what language we were using. Words that come to mind that when we were rethinking about how we would rewrite the renewal message, it was about being transparent, honest, relevant and authentic.
So we stripped back all of the different versions in our cycles. We went with one version, one letter version saying the same thing.Thinking ahead, I think as revenue centers, there are questions of how to stimulate revenue. And I know there's lots of school of thought around do we extend, how much do you extend? What do we do? What's the offer? Is there an offer? So we decided to go out with…actually let me take a step back.
When this was all happening, my renewal letters were in flight. They were in being printed, they were in production. I couldn't stop it. So all my messages going out, hitting homes now are going to talk about all of the lovely special exhibitions that we have that are not open right now. And I chose to just let them go. And what we're doing is we're following up with an email with a totally different message, and we're offering just in the month of April, anyone who renews, we're just going to blanket offer a three month extension.
But that's just, in April we have an expiry date. And for us it was about stimulating renewal activity, to either help stimulate people to think, "You know what? This is okay, this is what I would've done. I'm going to still give my money." But also I think as nonprofits we need the money. So that was the approach that we took and I know Jennifer did something different.
Jennifer Thomas:
Our renewals are going out this week actually. So we did much the same as Ingrid, we stripped back all of the versions and are going to go straight into a new letter that we wrote kind of talking about this unprecedented time. I would say changed our approach a little bit too, from the offer to sounding a little bit more like an annual fund appeal moving out forward. Which is something that's not uncommon for us as a free museum. We've often talked about being a community treasure, so this isn't new language for us, but we have taken that up a notch, I would say, and really wrote about art still as truth.
That is actually on the outside of our building, and so we talk about that a lot in our letter. And just said, you know, "Please stay with us. We know that many in our community won't be able to afford to stay with us, if you're in a position to do so, we hope you will." The same with Ingrid and all of you that I see on the chat. It was a tough one for me to noodle out, but right now I didn't really put in an offer. I just asked for people to stay with us.
Now, I guess I'll see how it goes and I'll let you all know how that all works out for me. But I also took the director's name off the letter and I put my name on the letter, thinking I would need the big name later maybe. So maybe when this is over, I can try to recapture through the director's voice or someone else's that you know. It's a tough one. We're all used to, what's the best pitch? What's the best offer? Do we extend out the exploration? I don't know. I think we all have to look at our own community, and our own organization, and that's how we chose to deal with it. So, I don't know if there's a right way or a wrong way. I think you just have to probably follow your own gut, because you know your museum, or your organization and you know your community. But you’ve got to try. I just would want to stress to everybody, you've got to, you go to get it out there. You go to try.
Dan Sullivan:
One of the other questions was from Lisa at the San Jose ICA. And she asked: it seems kind of like an inopportune time to be approaching people that are probably stressed as it is with health security, job security, their own health, the health of their families and their everyday needs. How do you balance this sensitivity around asking for someone to support you right now, while still being respectful of their personal situation?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
So I'll lead with this one. So just following what you just said about how do you ask, I was on a webinar recently, it was through AMDA and there were a couple of interesting stats that came from there, and actually thinking about the stats made me change my mind about whether you ask or don't. And my perspective is you shouldn't be afraid to ask. It's really about how we ask and being really thoughtful about language, channel, and messaging in general.
So the two stats that came out were total giving after 9/11 and the 2008 recession. And the field saw total giving decrease by 15% however, arts and culture fell by 26%, so clearly there was a shift in giving based on causes, right? So arts and culture wasn't at the top anymore. It was likely other things. But when you dug further, what they found out was that after the recession in 2008, for two thirds of those that stopped giving it was because they weren't asked. And so that was really shocking for me and I think it really kind of turned my mind around, we have to at least ask. So that's where I kind of flipped the switch.
Jennifer Thomas:
I totally agree with Ingrid and I also, I will say that I did not send a direct mail acquisition piece, which was due to go out on March 17th so the day after we closed. It was very exhibition heavy, paid exhibition heavy for our current exhibition that we had just opened about Francois Muller. And then for the next year and a half of all these really great exhibitions that are all coming from China or Europe, places that we don't even know if we'll have these exhibitions anymore. And I'm sure many of you are in the same situation.
I did not drop that. I'm kind of against the advice of our consultant who worked on the package with us. But to me going out into the community for a new member, that didn't feel right to me. Especially when everything that we were talking about doing probably won't happen or at least won't happen in the timeframe that that mailer outlined. So to me that seemed like we would have a lot more backtracking, especially for people who aren't close to us.
But our members are close to us and they are our members, and I think they embrace that. And I think they do expect to be asked to continue, because I think the greatest part of our jobs as membership professionals is, we get to create these relationships with people and I think in a different way than annual fund donors. I think because we have a special relationship, we have to honor that relationship and, and also keep it going.
Dan Sullivan:
That’s a great point. And I think dovetailing nicely with that is a lot of organizations are hearing crickets from their members right now. They're not hearing anything. So what are some steps that can be taken that reactivate those conversations and keep the organization top of mind?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
That was actually a little bit, I wouldn't say scary for us, but we had anticipated far more reaction or questions, comments than we actually did. So since March 13th, when we closed in the evening, until now, we've only had 74 member/public communications with us. That's so little. And so it's definitely largely been silent. So I think for us, we're trying to come up with ways to stimulate those interactions with our general members.
In addition to sending the emails and appeals that we're doing, we're also working closely with our marketing and special events team to think about how we could recreate the benefits that we offer our members. So thinking about virtual events, virtual programs, you know, could we do something like a members only museum hosted talk with a curator like through Zoom? Or a book club style conversation in a virtual format or art making session. So trying to just reshape and reformat the things that we were doing in person to extend that more into a digital/ virtual space.
Jennifer Thomas:
Same with Ingrid, which kind of was driving my decision with the renewal offer - we haven't heard from anyone. We had our largest attended festival of the year on March 6th and 7th and 8th, Art in Bloom for those of you who have Art in Bloom in the world. And had 30,000 people in the building for over those three days. And thank God, knock on wood, we all made it through that quarantine period of two weeks after that event. But you know, we had 1200 memberships to process after that weekend on site. It's been a little daunting, but I will say that about 45% of our general membership pool does not have an email address on file with us, or one that doesn't work, or it gets bounced back to us often.
So right now, I'm in development with our design department to do a postcard, kind of announcing, at least to that group, and anybody else honestly, that their magazines are suspended until further notice because don't know when we're reopening and we don't know when we'll have programming again and our magazines heavily programmed. So I'm going to use that tool to encourage people to follow us on social media if they don't already follow, give us their email address so that we can communicate with them. I think maybe one of the silver linings of all this is that we're all learning about technology.
Even maybe some of those older members who we think don't have smartphones or computers at home. I think they do, and you know maybe they have learned Instacart or at least FaceTime to keep in contact with their grandchildren. So I think there could be an opportunity through this in the long-term of our digital prospects moving forward. So I'm going back to good old print to see if we can engage that group.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. I think the other big question is obviously the both of you are very involved in the museum community in general. So you know a lot of other professionals at various organizations. Have you seen any strategies that other organizations, or even your own have deployed that seem like they are particularly impactful?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
I'm just going to give a shout out cause I think their Art Gallery of Ontario. They've had some great successes with their outbound telemarketing calling at this time. Outbound telemarketing for me was something where when I was having to go through my budget, it was actually the first thing that got cut. So you know, we chose not to continue to spend in that channel, but I've heard that it has some success though. Hopefully, you'll bring them back and they can share all the wonderful success with the community.
Jennifer Thomas:
I was going to say, I am so jealous of everybody who has a much more robust digital department than what we have currently, although we're trying real hard. But going into the virtual events too, as Ingrid pointed out, we're going to try to do a curatorial lecture that was planned for April next month, and we're going to try to do it via Zoom. So I can let you all know how that goes when it happens. I think it's pushing us into areas that we've always kind of wanted to be in or get back to. Kind of like telemarketing, maybe mail for some of us out there in the world.
I think it's an opportunity, even though probably all of our budgets will get slashed to think of the way we do our business a little bit differently. It's a really interesting time, and I think the beauty of us membership professionals is, I think we're used to being really nimble, because we are used to getting the kitchen sink thrown at us daily for any number of things. At least that's what I know from colleagues around the country is, we're the frontline of a lot of this, of everything daily, whatever it is. So I think if anybody can handle it, it's a membership manager.
Dan Sullivan:
I think one of the big things that you were just talking about there is in so many ways this situation, whatever you want to call it, is very much a forcing function to get out of the ways that we have been doing things for a long time, and really face the reality of the things that we've been talking about for a while, but never really acting on. I think that in so many ways this is acting as that forcing function.
Jacques Haba at the Nasher Sculpture Center had a great question. He said, is it too soon to be putting out exclusive content for members only? And if it's not too soon, what will that look like?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
I would say no, not soon. Jennifer and I, we joked, that's all we have, content and benefits. So at the DMA we think about it as anything we can give our members, whether it's priority access. So we're staggering out emails. Members get them first by a couple of days. Also giving them exclusive access. So content that is specifically reserved just for members and we're scaling that exclusivity. So our very nearest and dearest and our upper level donors are going to get far more content than those perhaps giving at a lower level. An example I always like to use is if we could have a great video, we might roll it out to the public, they might see a 30 second snippet of it, and then the members might get two minutes. And then our upper level donors could get a whole five minute video plus an accompanying lecture with the curator. So just scaling the different types of content.
Jennifer Thomas:
I would say it's not too soon. If you've got it, use it. Get whatever you can get your hands on. I don't know that we have the robust digital archive that Ingrid might have in terms of even being able to parse what we have into smaller bites, but we have been parsing it based on timing, so the upper level can get to it first and then we'll do the members, and then public gets it two weeks later.
That's kind of what this idea of using this magazine content came from. Because all of that content for us gets republished or repurposed for the public anyway. But members always get it first. So that was a very easy thing for us to implement very quickly because the magazine was done and at the printer it just didn't get printed. So we were able to take those files and now we're parsing them out over time. I think it's probably going to look different, depending on what kind of organization you are or what kind of archive you've have or what kind of staff you have available to help you pull all this together. Because I think it seems so glamorous to work from home, but I think we're busier than ever, and we're all using brand new tools that we didn't use in the office. So sometimes it's taking a little bit longer to get some of these things accomplished, which is a little frustrating.
Dan Sullivan:
Along the same lines, one of the questions that was asked from Jackie Cochran was, what are you doing to provide access to member only virtual content? Do you have members doing that on social media? What channels or mediums are you using? Is it a members only section on your website? Is it Facebook live? Where are you doing that?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
For us right now we're just managing it through email. So if a member chooses to forward it to a nonmember, it's okay. But for now that's been our primary way. There's been some talk about, you know, housing a lot of the content on micro-sites for members, but we haven't quite got through the logistics of how that would work. But, so I'd say right now it's really grassroots, just sending different emails.
Jennifer Thomas:
Yeah, we're very much the same, sending it mostly via email. We'll have our little test here with our curator talk. I think what we're going to do is do it through Zoom, but video the presentation and then edit it so that we can clean it up a little. But... And you know, curators never stop talking when they're supposed to, so it'll probably be too long. So that's what we're going to try. Like I said, I'll be happy to send it out to everybody. So you'll have to just pretend you're a member.
Dan Sullivan:
So I guess to shift gears slightly, are there opportunities here to use video in communication with members or visitors even?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
I think so. I think as we're all working from home, just seeing faces makes such a difference. We're going to record a message, or we're going to have our museum director record a message on his iPhone. See how that goes. I think faces, just being able to see a person talk is actually very powerful, especially in this time. So yes.
Jennifer Thomas:
Yeah, if you've got it, I would try it out there because yes, it is more impactful. I mean, if you can see the objects, see the person talking about, it's just much more engaging than that still picture, or just that kind of that same old email format. It's nice. It's a different way and seems more personal.
Dan Sullivan:
Very cool. And Emily points out that they actually did a Zoom meeting at her organization with the CEO, and it was just nice to see everybody's faces. So there's a little more validation on that. So now let's talk about something else where many of the folks that are watching, including both of you, have staff members that you work with, including a team below you. So internally when it comes to your staff, everyone is working from home. So there's no longer that transparency of being able to see each other talk in the morning or anything like that. So how do we keep them engaged and on task during these both ultra high and ultra low volume times?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
Well, on my end, I have four managers below me. We have a lot of frequent and daily communications, but then, I'm trusting them to maintain that same level of frequency with their teams. We're really trying to take this opportunity to do a couple things. So we all have our wishlist projects. So, we really tried to take this time to figure out what those projects are, how to divvy them up. It might not be the most stimulating work, but at least we're getting things done, right? Database cleanup, we're doing importing new data into the database. Uploading member and donor research profiles, just things that we've been wanting to do but haven't had a chance to do. We've also been all staff to really develop their own online learning programs. So whether it's weekly webinars, or like any type of online courses to try to fill this time, at least they can spend some time in terms of their own personal development or professional development.
And the other thing I thought was interesting was we're starting to learn about hidden talents in our staff, and trying to utilize them in other departments, like volunteering individuals to help. So for instance, maybe we have a side gig, you're a digital graphic designer, I think our marketing department is so overtaxed right now, so offering these individuals to help with the workload.
Jennifer Thomas:
I echo everything Ingrid said, and, and I think that's been another surprise is those hidden talents of things that people are really passionate about. But it didn't ever come up in their daily work in the office. But it's coming through now. And yeah, I've offered out some staff as well. One of the things, a project that we had been thinking about for a long time was writing personal notes on membership anniversaries or milestones or for our upgrades. And we had planned to use volunteers to do that. Well, in our furious four hours to get out of the office, we raided the mail room, and I sent everybody home on the membership team with the stacks of Saint Louis Art Museum note cards and stamps, and they've been working on the list from home, and kind of divvying those out to the staff. So everybody has time to write, they can write all their notes in one day or however many they want. It was a way to kind of keep them busy in a way, but also engaged in their jobs.
Because these are people who are in contact with our members via the phone lines every day, or through the hotline, or through processing or gifts. So it's just a different way that they're connecting with the members. And it's again, a different channel for us to reach people, especially those who may not be plugged into us via social media or digitally. So I just think some of these old school tactics might come back and I think it's a little bit more meaningful kind of seeing a face, getting a handwritten note who gets those anymore. So hopefully that will help us with our renewal rate.
Dan Sullivan:
I think there is something worth noting there. I think the cultural space can take some lessons from what the technology world has been doing for quite a long time. For our team here at Cuseum, we have a number of different things in place to support remote work. So we do a daily stand up. So every morning our whole team jumps on a Zoom meeting, where we say what we did yesterday, what we're doing today, and anything that's blocking or standing in the way of us being productive. So that's a daily standup. A) it keeps everyone accountable, but B) it allows you to see each other. We're just so quarantined that it's a great opportunity to be able to have a little bit more face time, no pun intended. So Zoom is a great tool for doing things like that. We also do weekly kickoffs where we do retrospectively look at what last week looked like, any of the challenges that we faced, the things that we overcame, then in the upcoming week, anything that we're looking forward to or feeling optimistic about.
But then on a day-to-day basis from a perspective of kind of managing the team, we use a tool called Slack. Microsoft Teams has another similar type of tool that allows for real time messaging between individuals to an entire group, to a couple of different people at one time. So that is a huge contributor of productivity for our team, and it smooths communication out in a major way. And I think the other component of it is just having Google Hangouts or Zoom meetings throughout the day with different people.
Sometimes just jumping on a video call for two, three, four, five minutes is way easier than trying to send a million emails or messages back and forth. Just jump on the phone. You can talk through things, and it's as if you are popping over to their desk or cubicle or whatever it may be and you still get that. It feels a little bit more like you're together.
Another question for organizations that have smaller membership bases, what are your thoughts on giving a call out to the specific numbers? I saw some folks in the chat mentioned that they're doing something similar to this. What are your thoughts on something like that?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
I think it's great. I think for organizations with a smaller base, I mean in a way you have an advantage. Because you'd probably have an opportunity now to get to know the members you otherwise would not have been able to speak with. And I think with all the other webinars that are out in the world, I think we're hearing more and more that it's important to reach out and speak with them and that they want to hear from us. And some will even ask how they can help. And there's probably going to be some that are going to have some very difficult conversations, but at least we're reaching out and you're giving them an opportunity to chat. So I'm actually kind of jealous of the smaller membership bases.
Jennifer Thomas:
Yeah, I think it's great because everyone's home, we know that now. So you'll actually get them. And again, I think we've got an opportunity of, we're not selling anything. You know, we can just call and say thank you, and you can leave it at that. Now you could also call and ask them to renew. I think it depends on you and what your need is. But getting a thank you call out of the blue, getting a thank you note out of the blue I think is really great.
I mean it can be invasive I think for some. So I think again, it's kind of like balancing your messaging. I think you kind of know your community and you know your members. So if it's something that you used to doing, or your members are used to hearing from you, I think don't give up now, keep going and good luck. But yeah, I think I would love to do it. I just don't think I have the bandwidth to get that done.
Dan Sullivan:
It's interesting, Colleen Dilenschneider, who was one of the well-known names in research in the museum space, she actually spoke at the American Museum Membership Conference this past year. And one of the things that she talks a lot about that is a huge contributor of satisfaction is that personal touch. Whether it's a phone call, whether it's a handwritten note, it just makes you feel such a stronger connection to the organization.
And especially for those smaller organizations who actually have the ability to, since they don't have to call 15,000 people. It's an opportunity for them to really build an even stronger line of connection. Because you know, checking in with someone saying, "Hey, how are you holding up?" We're all in the same boat. So it's just those nice personal touches, I think that goes a long way.
What advice would you give to membership managers who are struggling with some of the uncertainties around reopening?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
Oh gosh. So I had to think about this, because I don't profess to be an expert at this cause we're all kind of rolling in it ourselves. But three things came to mind. So one I'd say, remember you're not alone. You know, no one really knows what we're doing here. We're really just touch and go and a lot of things. But I do want to stress, utilize your networks, ask for help, pull the hive. That's really where I think a lot of the ideas are coming from.
Second thing I'd say is don't be afraid to try something different. We are in uncharted waters, so if you are testing something and trying something, please share. That's how we're all going to benefit. And I think the third thing I know, I have to say to myself all the time, this too shall pass.
And I think Colleen sent out a research paper, or her blog today, and hopefully everyone's had a chance to scan through it, but essentially that people expect to largely return to their more usual attendance patterns, in six months. So we're looking at about three to six months where hopefully things are going to go back to normal. So I think it's our job in the field to just engage our members the best we can, whether it's old ways and new ways, and just create opportunities for them to engage with us to help them resume to normalcy as seamlessly as possible.
Jennifer Thomas:
I would totally agree. And someone just asked Colleen's full name. It's Dilenschneider, so her blog is Know Your Own Bone. So if you Google “Know Your Own Bone,” you’ll find her. And she does have great insight, and I was looking at hers this morning as well. And that did give me hope that people are like, "Okay, this is temporary and I'm going to go back to my life." Right? I mean, that's what I think every day when things are crazy and trying to homeschool two kids and do all these crazy video chats and every person wants to do it in a different format, it can be daunting for sure. Just keep your head up. And as Ingrid said, I think this is a really inclusive community, and I've never not gotten an answer from someone that I've polled randomly. I think I even gave Ingrid a heart attack a month or so ago and I asked about her Kusama box, but she still gave me a great answer when I asked about it. But don't be afraid. Reach out. You can reach out to Ingrid and I, we're happy to chime in. But it's hard to sit in the seat a little bit. And I was a little nervous this morning like I always am before I do any of these talks cause I don't know all the answers.
I think you just have to be a little fearless and really believe in yourself and believe in what you're doing. And if it doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel right for a reason. And, and that's really served me well in my 16 years in membership is just kind of going, figuring it out and being honest with your boss. None of us know if we're going to hit our goals. Right? We have no idea. We have no idea when we're opening. We have no idea what our programs are going to look like. We don't know if people are going to come back. I mean we just don't know a lot of things. But you know, we can still go with what has worked. Take somebody's great idea and make it our own and just try because that's kind of what we do. And our organizations are going to be forgiving for a little while to try new things. So I hope that you will. And I hope to try some new things or things that I've thought about for a long time, but have been back-burnered but maybe now's the time.
Dan Sullivan:
So in a lot of ways you could almost look at this as an opportunity to experiment to move some of those hands that are on the back-burner to experiment a little bit with some of those ideas. So we've got a number of questions from the audience that I'd love to address. These are going to be kind of all over the place.
Debbie at the Morven Museum and Garden, and she asks, what if the bulk of your membership and visitors are older, not quite as engaged on social media. What are some ways that we can keep them connected?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
Well, I'll go with this one. For me, this one's hard because of when this all was happening, three things kind of came to the forefront in my mind I was dealing with. I also manage all of our donor operations, all the gift processing, the database, staff in addition to our members and guest services. So the first thing that came to mind was how to keep the money moving. I had to make sure for the institution that we could still process money across the different channels.
The second thing was how do we continue to thank the donors, so it wasn't enough to just process money, but we have to be able to go out and say thank you. And then third is obviously assessing the financial impact, which is clearly a forefront as we're all still figuring it out. But the reason I bring that up is because the first thing that happened was our budgets, essentially, we had to go through and just essentially stop spending.
For me, that's partly what led me to cut the outbound telemarketing. That and direct mail were two things I had to cut and we kept small budgets for just basic renewals and card fulfillment. And that's hard, right? Because here we're talking about an older demographic, they're not engaging in digital. So those were the two channels that I had to make a decision and remove. I've tried to explore some other ways that we can maybe do some outbound telemarketing.
We haven't quite figured out how to do it, and that becomes complicated because for us it's like, we want to... For my team who are generally dealing with calls for the general public, we want to protect them. I don't want them using their cell phones. That seems very personal and I don't want to do that. The flip side is there's an increase in things like crime and scams happening. We also don't want to put ourselves in a position where somebody could ever accuse the museum as being used in some things. So there was a reputation risk too, so we haven't quite figured it out on our side. But for me, this is definitely very challenging right now.
Jennifer Thomas:
Yeah, me too. This is the group that kind of worries me the most. Honestly, I mean, first of all, they're older, so you're kind of just a little worried about maybe some of your friends being with you when this is over. So there's the personal side, and then as Ingrid said, you know your staff. I do have staff going in once a week, two shifts of three people. I have three people in the office actually right now, doing the processing of the membership cards and the mailing.
So they also go through the voicemail. So if we get any voicemails, they're actually calling people back from the office. Just as Ingrid said, I'm hesitant to really put my hourly staff in a position of doing that from home for all the reasons that she outlined. So it does give us that little bit of opportunity. And I know we're kind of an anomaly in that way, that we're able to do that. But it has been nice. But that group is who I'm trying to engage through this postcard.
When we were told we weren't sending the magazine and our purchasing was over as well, I said, "Look, I really go to get something out to people about the magazine because the magazine is kind of our lifeline to that group all the time anyway. We don't know, we doubt that they're the ones visiting constantly. So that's been the lifeline and how they stay connected with us anyway, so we have to connect back with them." So that's the best idea I have at the moment. That's the one that really I have not cracked yet sufficiently. So any of you chatters out there, have anything send it our way? Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Greg had a great question. He asked, we're curious about ideas around implementing membership extensions of expiration dates. We've got a large membership base, so it's kind of daunting, expensive and time consuming to print new cards or stickers. I'm thinking of exempting expired cards for a time, then we decide to extend. Any thoughts on that?
Jennifer Thomas:
I haven't figured it out for myself yet. I'll be honest. But I was talking to Tiffany Tessada at the Seattle Art Museum. I don't know if she's on the call today, but Seattle's been on the front lines of this for longer than I have. She had told me they stopped sending their membership cards for that reason, because they don't know when they're reopening. And they thought it would be cheaper in the long run to not print them and mail them and then have to either print a new stack and send them back out or try to kind of figure that out on the front end later. So they've put, I believe messaging out on their website and in their member communications when people renew, basically saying, "We'll send you your fulfillment materials once we reopen with the appropriate expiration date." So that's just the way that Tiffany suggested doing it last week. I will say, I haven't thought about that yet either. I pushed forward my expiration date for our March gifts that we've been processing to the end of April, 2021 so we gave them that extra month. I didn't really tell them that. I did it for that reason, so I just pushed it out with little fanfare. I don't know what I'll do now. To be quite honest, for the gifts that we process in April. I'm kind of notionally leaning on just going to May, giving everybody that extra month. But you know, as this goes on longer, March and April are months I'll have to kind of think about how we're going to handle them moving forward.
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
Yeah, and I think for us, because we're not doing like a blanket offer. So as memberships... As renewals are coming in, we're adding them on then. So for us, we're still following our regular frequency of sending out our renewal packets to get. We use a vendor, the vendor packs them and then mails them. So again, because we're not doing a blanket, we're just adding it as we receive them. I think our institution was very reluctant to want to move to a blanket offer, I get that.I mean I think there's obviously revenue implications for doing something like that, but for now the offer is for renewals. Anyone coming in with a renewal transaction will get extended three months. I think the offer expires April 30th, and we'll reevaluate for may. Maybe we'll do another offer depending on when we think we might be going back. Or just, similar to Jennifer we're just going to have to monitor how this goes.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. So another question is what do you do if your board is split as to whether or not you should be sending out renewals?
Jennifer Thomas:
First of all, I'm sorry that your board is split. I would say you've got to try. Ingrid had the best stat, it was you're not going to get anything if you don't ask. And that's why giving decreased. Was it after 9/11, I think you said Ingrid?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
2008.
Jennifer Thomas:
2008 crash. Yeah. It's hard to rebound from not doing renewals. I think I've talked to a lot of people at the AMMC conference whose renewals go out sporadically or not on time, or it's really hard to rebound from that. And so skipping renewals that's going to set you back for a while. It's just harder to recapture. Messaging is important and it can be a softer sell or it can be a different type of ask, but I think in the long run it's going to be really hard to come back if you're not consistent.
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
Yeah, I totally agree. I think from a financial perspective, just the cost to acquire versus how much it's going to cost you to renew somebody, I agree with Jennifer. I still think if you can find a way to ask if it's a nice subtle ask, bury it in an email communication, I still think we need to ask.
Jennifer Thomas:
And again, they are your members. This isn't cold calling.
Dan Sullivan:
So we've got, we've got about four and a half minutes left, so we'll take one more question from the audience. Do you have any creative solutions to processing checks while your staff is working remotely?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
You know, it's really funny. I'll just jump in. I'm so jealous of Jennifer's situation. You have people going into their office. I was under the impression we weren't even going to be able to process mail, process checks. And the whole museum was freaking out about this because that's just unheard of. You know, that's where our money comes in. But within sort of the 11th hour, our head of security kind of had a second thought about it. And so we took our gift processing process, and had to literally break it apart and bandaid a process together. Still has somewhat of all the controls we need as usual. But right now I have one person that goes into the museum, goes to the dock, not even into the office cause we're not allowed to go to our offices. Once on the Monday, he opens up the mail, he pulls out anything that looks like a gift or a check, makes copies, scans are sent to our accounting departments, takes apart all the checks and the paperwork, takes the checks, bundles them, and leaves them in their security drop. The next day somebody from finance comes in and takes the checks and actually does a deposit the next day. And during this time we're working off photocopies of checks. And getting them into our system. It's not great, but it's better than nothing, but it just kind of shows you what a little creativity can do.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. So I have one last question and this is, what is one big takeaway that you have for membership professionals during this time that they can bring back to their organization?
Ingrid Van Haastrecht:
I think it kind of goes back to what Jennifer had talked about. I think this experience, while horrible in a lot of ways, has really forced us to rework all of our processes in just how we do things, and really rethink what it could look like. And so if ever we to go back to normal, I think there's some things that we've been able to try that I've been meaning to get to. Like for example, digital acknowledgement letters. I've meaning to move our acknowledgement letter process to digital. Now well, you know what? I have to do it now.
So I think some of that will continue on. I think just rethinking processes and hopefully it's going to allow us to test some new initiatives that we've been wanting to try. I think as an institution we've always talked about wanting to be more active in the digital space. And I think this current environment has now allowed us to do that. So it might mean that we can explore some digital memberships in some way. Maybe it's going to allow us to change the way we offer our member benefits, things like that. So it's not all bad.
Jennifer Thomas:
I totally agree with all of those things and as I was thinking about this question, I think it is just do what you do best. You know, whether you're an art museum or a garden or kind of stripping it back down to bare bones about what you are, what your mission is. And that's what should be connecting you with your members always. And that's kind of all we've got right now, right? Is those good feelings and that love of our institutions that. You don't have to do what everybody else is doing. You don't have to do what The Met is doing or anybody else who has more staff and resources. You can just do what you do best. And if that is just an email a day, or if it's just keeping renewals going out, you know, that's the best that you can do right now. And we've got a lot of things to stress us out. We shouldn't be stressed out that we're not doing enough. We're trying to hold together with bandaids here, so just strip it down to the core essentials. And that means some things won't happen. Maybe they wouldn't have happened anyway. But sometimes just the small wins of keeping something going or trying one new thing that had a good result that you can keep going when this is over. That's the biggest win of all. So I would just say, do what you can do the best that you can do it.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing. So just quickly, a recording of this webinar will be available later today on the Cuseum website, and we're also going to have a link to our shared Google Doc with the coronavirus resources for distribution as well. Thank you, Ingrid. Thank you, Jennifer. Always great insights and everybody else stay safe, stay healthy, and we'll talk soon.
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