Over the past several months, museums have been occupied with adapting to widespread coronavirus closures. Membership professionals have worked hard to adjust their communication, messaging, and membership fulfillment strategies, while continuing to reinforce the value of membership while physical sites are closed. Now, approaching two months into closures, many cultural organizations are beginning to think about plans for reopening, and some have already begun. What strategies, workflows, and policies can help facilitate a safe and successful reopening?
On May 4, 2020, over 2,000 guests joined Dan Sullivan (Head of Growth and Partnerships @ Cuseum), Meghan McCauley (Director of Membership and Visitor Services @ Perez Art Museum Miami), Aidan Vega (Director of Membership @ Philadelphia Museum of Art), Laura Schmid (Membership Manager @ Cincinnati Nature Center), & Kristi Masterson (Director of Engagement and Operations @ Cincinnati Nature Center) as they discussed the steps and process of reopening. This conversation included voices from organizations that have already opened to members, as well as those planning to do so in the coming weeks and months!
View the video recording here.
Read the full transcript below
Dan Sullivan:
Hello, everyone. My name is Dan Sullivan. I'm the head of Growth and Partnerships and Cuseum. First of all, I just want to start by thanking everybody for being here today. Hopefully, you all find yourselves safe and healthy. To all of our first-time watchers, welcome. To our repeat visitors, I just want to thank you again for being here. We've been privileged to serve over 30,000 cultural professionals over the last five, six weeks through these types of webinars.
We're going to have some awesome insights that are coming out of our panelists today. One of the big things you can do is utilize this group. We're going to have over 2,000 people watching live today. Please introduce yourself in the chat, communicate with the other folks, and start to learn a little bit from each other as well.
Couple quick housekeeping items, for those who are watching, we have tons of questions that have been submitted via email. We're going to try to get to as many as we can. Also, use the Q&A functionality through the webinar here. You can upvote the ones that you're more interested in. Please feel free to do that. It'll help us prioritize the more pressing questions.
Once again, wishing you all a very safe, healthy, and happy week. As many of you know, Cuseum has really been committed to providing as many of these resources as possible to the cultural space during this entire coronavirus pandemic. All of our past webinars are available on the Cuseum website for you to watch at no cost. Continuing that trend, we're actually going to have a part two, of this same topic, of reopening. We've got a webinar this Wednesday at 2:00 Eastern Time. It's called "Preparing to Reopen: Strategy, Planning, and Process on the Road to Reopening Museums." A link is going to be shared in the chat. There it is. Feel free to join us then.
The reality is, we're all in this together, and we're all trying to navigate these very much uncharted waters, both in our professional lives, while also balancing the responsibilities that all of us have at home. To that note, many of you who have likely experienced over the last few weeks of working from home and doing numerous video calls, a cameo appearance from my 15-month-old is a very high possibility today. I'm going to warn everybody. Let's get into this.
We are starting to steer our organizations throughout the globe, really gingerly opening their doors again after months of closures. Things are certainly not looking the same as they did when we closed them. Here in the States, each state is on a different timeline. We're all thinking about what this reopening is going to look like and what each one of our organizations can individually do to prepare.
Today, we're going to be speaking both with organizations that have already opened their doors, as well as organizations that are in the planning process. We've got four awesome panelists today, and I'm going to have them introduce themselves in a second. We've got Meghan McCauley, the Director of Membership and Visitor Services at the Perez Museum in Miami. We've got Aidan Vega, the Director of Membership at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We've got Laura Schmid, the Membership Manager, and Kristi Masterson, the Director of Engagement and Operations at the Cincinnati Nature Center.
To all of our panelists, thank you again for being here. To kick us off, let's go around the room real quick. Why don't you introduce yourselves, tell us, and tell the audience a little bit about your organizations. Meghan, why don't you start us off?
Meghan McCauley:
Sure. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to see all of you here on the internet. As Dan said, I'm Meghan McCauley. I'm the Director of Membership and Visitor Services at Perez Art Museum Miami. We are a modern and contemporary art museum in Miami, Florida. We've been in our location for about six years. The museum actually has closer to a 30-year history here in Miami. We opened in 1984. We really focus on art reflective of the demographics of Miami-Dade. That means we have a major focus on Latin American, LatinX, African American, African diaspora, Caribbean artists here at the museum. We have about 5,000 member households.
Aidan Vega:
I'm the Director of Membership at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We are an encyclopedic collection. We currently have about 40,000 member households.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Laura or Kristi, whichever one wants to go first.
Laura Schmid:
I'm Laura, I'm the Membership Manager at the Cincinnati Nature Center. We are a pretty diverse organization. We're a conservation organization, first and foremost. We have a visitor's center for natural history exhibits and 2,000 acres with 20 miles of hiking trails. In many ways, a lot of people utilize our organization as an outdoor gym. We also have an onsite nature preschool. Lots of natural history programs and a great place to spend time outdoors. We've been around for 50 years, and we have about 14,000 households.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Kristi, last but not least, do you want to just give a quick overview?
Kristi Masterson:
I'm Director of Operations and Engagement at Cincinnati Nature Center. We do have about 250,000 visitors a year, so it is pretty intense. About 75% of them come from our membership.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. I'm going to get us started. When did you first close your doors, and what did that process look like?
Kristi Masterson:
We closed our doors about March 22nd, and it was based on the state health decree ordered by Governor Mike DeWine. He did leave a loophole, he said all those that have access to public parks, get outside and enjoy them. Everything else is closed. Well, we are not public. We're member-supported. We do not get tax revenue at all. The weekend before was a beautiful weekend. We probably had close to 3,000 visitors all over the place. It was not in any way that you could do any type of social distancing. We decided to close the doors at that point. But we never, ever thought it would be for long. We were just trying to close it to determine the best way to reopen. We reopened, about 16 days later.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Meghan, do you want to jump in on that one too?
Meghan McCauley:
Yeah. We closed to the public on Monday, March 16th, a few days after, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. Our closure date coincided with Miami-Dade County public schools. We were open that weekend. We had our free second Saturday that weekend, which is typically a really big attendance day for us. It was quieter than usual, but not empty by any means. We were really happy that we got to have that last moment with everyone before we closed. But we were very cautious about sanitizing on site, and we communicated with our entire audience at the same time about the closure. We sent out a mass email blast. We updated all of our onsite voicemail inboxes, made sure we were redirecting membership phone calls, things like that, and made sure we notified everyone at the same time. And then we immediately set up remote work.
Aidan Vega:
Ours happened rather quickly as well. We closed on Saturday, March 14th, was our first day closed. We had been open prior that week with doing all the safety protocols and procedures, and then very quickly, our governor Tom Wolf decided, schools would be closed and other things started shutting down and that was shortly followed by a stay at home order. We fell in line with all of that.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. This first question is going to be geared at Meghan and Aidan. When are you planning to reopen? Can you talk a little bit about some of the steps that you're talking to prepare? Aidan, do you want to start us off there?
Aidan Vega:
Yeah. We have not established an opening date yet. That is to come. But we are thinking about it a lot right now, about what that will look like. We have a journey map that we use for visitors that we think about the experience, both pre-visit, during visit, post-visit, and are basically reinventing that journey map. We're going through step by step, working with staff across the institution to think about the safest ways to have people come into the building in a socially distanced way, and how we can accommodate them and make it a good experience at the same time.
Meghan McCauley:
We also don't have an official opening date. We've set a hypothetical opening date in the early fall as something to work toward, but there are too many unknowns still for us to have an official opening date. We are seeing a fairly high presence of COVID-19 in our county. The foremost thing is we have to absolutely be in a position where we can make coming back to the museum a safe experience for visitors, for members, for staff, as well as an enjoyable one. We are right now developing an interdepartmental task force that's going to have stakeholders from all different departments taking guidance from our leadership, who's working really closely with the county, both being advised by but also helping to advise what museum experiences might look like in a socially distanced way.
We're doing a lot of research as an organization into what's happening across different sectors and being really transparent about that. We're working on Microsoft Teams, like a lot of other people. We have an open channel for all staff to share what they're reading about, what they're learning, and having a lot of conversation there. I think that transparency is helping us as an entire organization feel like we're moving towards a plan as well.
Dan Sullivan:
Great. This one's going to be more geared towards Kristi and Laura. When did you start reopening, and can you talk a little bit about how that plan started to come together, and what does that plan look like?
Kristi Masterson:
Initially, we closed, like I said, because we're not a public park. We went by the guidelines of the order. Then literally the next day after a consultation with the Department of Health for our county and our local officials they gave us the green light to plan a good opening. We did open on April 8th for staff and volunteers to try out our new opening, because we completely redid our protocol on how to come to the nature center. There was an online registration system so we could make sure everybody was staying safe. And then on April 9th, we opened up to the public. We're open from 8:00 to 8:30 at night right now. We sell out spaces, it's free to members only. We're open to members only. They register online. We have two locations, and they've been selling out. They've been doing really well. It's been really well-received. We really appreciate our members supporting it, and they have shown it through additional donations because of it.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great to hear. Laura, do you want to throw anything else in there?
Laura Schmid:
No, exactly what Kristi said. It's members only. It's a registration system. It's this time ticketing system. Getting that whole system up and running was totally new for us. Everybody was just having to reshift. It has been a true team effort for our organization. That's why Kristi's here. She oversees facilities, visitor services, membership, public programs, and really pulled everybody together. Everybody has worked so hard. It's been actually a really great experience for building our organization, teamwork, to make it happen. As Kristi said, members have been over the moon. They have been enthusiastic. The response has been so great. I'm hearing from members now that they are saying that they feel valued more than anything. Shaping this as a members' only access at this time has, I think, been a really great way for us to approach it.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great to hear. How are conversations about reopening happening in turn? Do you have a task force? Who are the stakeholders in that task force? How are you preparing different departments? Aidan, do you want to start us there?
Aidan Vega:
Yeah. We really have just started tackling this conversation. As of last week, we have established a task force that's headed up by the head of our visitor operations and our head of HR to figure out the best way. And then it'll be pulling staff from all across the organization, again, to put together this plan to safely reopen.
Meghan McCauley:
Yeah. We're also in the early stages. We're lucky that we already have an interdepartmental leadership meeting at PAMM that takes place every week. That's a department leadership meeting. It used to be biweekly. As soon as the museum closed, we ratcheted that up to a weekly basis. I think the task force is really going to emerge from that group. I think the key stakeholders are going to come from everywhere because it's really going to change what our museum looks like to reopen. We're thinking really closely about our work with facilities, with education, and membership development. In my role, I oversee membership and visitor services. I have a dual stakeholder role here thinking about how to give great benefits for members, but also how to really stay true to our mission and provide access for other audiences as well. I am thinking about all those things at the same time.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Kristi or Laura, you've already opened, but can you talk a little bit about what that conversation looked like, similar to what Meghan and Aidan were just alluding to?
Kristi Masterson:
Yeah. We have what's called a rapid response team, and it is a team of people that we meet daily, now since we've opened and after our governor's briefing, and we review what we're doing. It's inclusive of everything. We have 80 employees, and with the whole PPE load, it has things to do with that. It has everything to do with facilities, with site management, HR was a huge component of it. Since we reopened, we have people fulfilling roles that they never did before in visitor services. It was like Laura said, inclusive of everything we do, was part of this rapid response team. We still meet every single day.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Let's talk about communication for a second. How are you communicating your plans for reopening with your members? That's more for Meghan and Aidan. How did you approach that communication as you were leading up to it?
Laura Schmid:
Sure. well, everything has essentially been through email. Again, it's always a moving target because things are changing all the time, and we are juggling financial challenges. There were questions at some points, like do we do member renewals? Do we mail them? Is that safe? Are we doing online renewals only? Are we doing a postcard to the people who we don't have emails for and have absolutely no idea that we're open because we've been doing everything through the emails? Primarily it's emails. I did do April renewals and with paper, in addition to the digital email. I'm glad we did the paper. I'm glad we got that message out. I did make a point in those renewal efforts that if we didn't have your email address, please provide it, and please know that we are open. I will say that the email communications have been a little bit of a challenge because, we work with Constant Contact for our primary communications with email. My renewal efforts for renewal emails are all done through our database, Altru. If you've unsubscribed from Constant Contact, you might still get my emails, or you might have unsubscribed from my Altru emails and get the Constant Contact emails. We have seen a little bit of a disconnect where I've sent out some messages, and people have said, they have actually responded to me. I remember one day I got 30 emails saying, "What? You're open? I never saw that email." I think in every single case, we found that those people had subscribed from our Constant Contact. We have a new thing on our homepage about give us your email, give us your email, give us your email. It's very pointed that we're really trying to ramp up those communications with email right now.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. Meghan or Aidan, how are you approaching that communication with your members? Feel free to share a little bit about the tone that you're using and the type of language that you're using.
Aidan Vega:
We have not started communicating about when we're going to open yet. I think what we've been telling members is that we will open as soon as it's safe to do so. That's how we've been communicating that. I think once we have a date and we're ready to communicate it to members, we will go through email. We have been continuing to send mail renewals. We'll be communicating in that way as well. When I'm thinking about it now, we're really just making sure that people understand what the process is of how they come to visit, because it'll probably be different than it was before. Also thinking, making sure that we have followed all safety guidelines. We're also working with other cultural organizations across Philadelphia to create some standard protocol so that people can feel comfortable in all of these spaces and have some consistency and similarity. If you visit another museum in Philadelphia, you're having a similar experience that you have at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, so people feel safe coming out to all of the cultural organizations. Those are the kind of things we're thinking about in communication.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great. What about you Meghan?
Meghan McCauley:
We are not yet communicating about reopening either since we don't have a definite date for that yet. We have increased member communication in a bunch of great ways. This has really given us the opportunity to be even more conversational with our membership. We have developed, like a lot of folks did when museums first closed, or when organizations were first closing, a phone call system to check in on some of our members. We focused on multiyear members in particular, since they've been giving to us for so long, and since there is a greater chance that they are in an at-risk group and appreciate a check-in.
I think we'll be mirroring that same segmentation when it comes to calling to let people know about reopening. We are increasing member communication via email. We've got a members-only Facebook group that we've been really active in and members have been really active in, which has been great to see. I think it's important to remember that there's no one size fits all for this for any organization because all of our organizations have a different character, a different personality, a different membership type. They really all ultimately want us to reopen, but they want us to do it safely, and they want us to do it well. They trust that we will make that decision when the time is right and communicate that when the time is right, so it's going to be really important that we maintain that trust, that we're really transparent about what those plans are when it comes time to share them, and that we do involve them in some of the decision-making, I think, as much as we can, whether that be through a survey or through testing, whatever we decide.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. I think Kristi and Laura, you may be starting to field a little bit of this. How do you explain to your members why you're not open when some of your peer organizations might already be opening, or maybe some other organizations in town? How do you approach that?
Kristi Masterson:
That's a very good question. We receive that a lot because people mistook us for a public park. While we're just like one, why aren't you open? We actually thought long and hard about that and said, really, the reason why we weren't is that we had to prioritize what is first and what's important. And it is the safety of our staff and the safety of the visitors. We could not do it correctly without a plan in place. Cleaning supplies were huge to get. We did have to answer them immediately and say, we will be open. We're working on a plan. We're working actually with our local officials to make sure it's okay to open and to be in compliance. When we do, it's going to be a safer, better experience for all to begin with. Please have patience. Stay here with us. But we knew it was critical. Membership brings in about a third of our revenue. And with membership plummeting, we needed to make sure that we could communicate that their membership will be extended an extra month, as long as we're closed. They got an additional month of membership. We tried to say what's the bonus in it for them. Then when we did open, they thought it was such a treat. We surveyed everybody when they came, that when they exited, they received a survey, from us, or questions. What was their experience? How safe did they feel? Tell us one of the reasons why they liked us reopening, and anything we can do to improve. These open-ended questions, we acted upon immediately.
One of the things we had on our trails, for example, is you hike in a clockwise direction. Well, people couldn't figure that out. People were like, clockwise? Counter-clockwise? I'm not sure what that is. It was just too confusing. People were getting mad. So we all stopped that right away, and we did listen to what they said. We listened to them and took actions, and then we communicated back out to them. Once we reopened, membership went back up and revenue started coming back in again.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great. I think one of the most interesting things that I've heard in the last few weeks, specifically pertaining to membership, is everybody forgets about membership as this little small revenue driver for the museum or for the organization, until all of a sudden, it's the only revenue driver for the organization. All of a sudden, everyone realizes these membership departments are really getting it done. Meghan and Aidan, have you given any thought to that?
Meghan McCauley:
As to how to answer that question? Kristi's right on. The truth is that just like it was when we closed and things were happening really quickly, we now are all in the same process of figuring out how to open in the best and safest way. That means that just like we are here at PAMM, so are my neighbors over at the Bass, my neighbors over here, my neighbors over there. We're all working together to come up with the same plans. But we're all different sites as well. PAMM has a really beautiful outdoor space, but our galleries are indoor galleries, primarily. We're going have to think through the flow of the visitor experience. We're going to have to think through member access, access for all the different audiences. Whereas an outdoor park or garden may have a different experience based on the fact that you're outside. I think people understand that. I think with members, in particular, they want you to do well. They have quite literally invested in your success. Remembering that when you communicate with them. And of course, you will have complaints. I'm anticipating complaints, and I always do, but that's okay as well, because it's another form of investment, remembering as you communicate with people that I think in this scenario, telling people the truth is a pretty straightforward plan because we're all in the same situation together.
Kristi Masterson:
Nice. And I'd add a little bit. Meghan is so on point when she says, "You will get complaints." We just always don't want to hear the complaints. We just want to do everything perfectly. But you cannot please everybody in this environment. It's just impossible, stick by your priorities, what's important to you, and what's value. But then communicating that back out to them is so important. We've done so many personal ones on one phone call. Everybody that’s a new donor got a personal phone call. Everybody that has any complaints, email complaints, will get followed up with a phone call. That is so important. But you're not going to please them all.
Dan Sullivan:
It's actually a great question and something I was wondering. What are some of the more common complaints that you're getting now that you've already opened? I'd be interested to hear Meghan and Aidan's thoughts since they're closed.
Kristi Masterson:
The biggest one we're getting right now today is people aren't wearing their masks on the trails! Right now, that is the biggest complaint we're getting. Staff is mandatory to wear them when we're out in public or on the trails. We highly encourage it. But like our governor, we can't enforce it. We can't mandate. We don't ever make rules that we can't enforce. Therefore, that's probably the biggest complaint. But we'll get complaints that why did you open, why aren't you open? Both ways.
Laura Schmid:
For the mask thing, I think, this past weekend, we've been following with a phased-in system this past week, and we finally opened up bathrooms again. I think before that, the bathrooms were probably the other big complaint that we were hearing that they were closed. But we were also communicating that they were closed. But I think people were prepared. Again, you're going to get the complainers no matter what.
Dan Sullivan:
Of course. That makes sense. Meghan, Aidan, are you hearing the same thing?
Meghan McCauley:
We did have people ask us why we weren't closed yet. Now that we're in the eighth week of working remotely, it's almost easy to forget how chaotic those days were. They were unbelievable, how quickly information was changing and how quickly our own decisions were changing. Now that every day feels so similar, I think it's easy to forget how charged those days were. But we did get some complaints early on, and then we got a lot of thank yous afterwards that we did the right thing. Keeping that in mind, that'll be in the spirit with which we design our reopening as well, that we'll be thinking about our members' needs, our guests' needs, our staff needs, keeping them safe and healthy. Hopefully, people will, in a similar vein, thank us for that careful planning as well.
Dan Sullivan:
Fair. Aidan, do you want to throw anything in there?
Aidan Vega:
Yeah. I would just say the same, I think. Leading up to it, people had questions about protocols, and safety, and things like that. But I think once we closed, people were very appreciative, and people have been, like Meghan, we've been sending out a lot of member communications and then getting really positive feedback from people. We definitely anticipate as we open that we will hear lots of feedback around how that goes and how people feel about it. We do have a really strong complaint handling system in place and a database to track all of that, so I think we're really equipped to, when that starts coming in, to start implementing it quickly
Dan Sullivan:
I think that brings on another interesting question. Is reopening happening in a graduated way or with reduced capacity at your sites? How do you decide on those numbers or the capacity for reopening? Kristi or Laura, do you want to start us off with that since you've already been down that road? Then I'd be interested to hear Meghan and Aidan, how they're approaching this too.
Kristi Masterson:
Sure. We opened in a smaller capacity, that it was members only, first of all. We closed all buildings, including our large visitors center, including restrooms. And we also have a very large nature playscape, which is similar to a playground. Those were closed in the state of Ohio, so we kept our nature playscape closed. All pavilions, picnic tables, everything else, benches, were turned over. We didn't use them. The second phase was just May 2nd, Saturday. We reopened the restrooms with restrictions and with very strict cleaning protocols. We reopened our benches and tables and cleaned those all off on a regular basis, strict cleaning protocols.
The third phase would hopefully allow non-members to come. Then the fourth and final stage would be when we're allowed to open up the visitors center. Right now, we just can't do it with social distancing. We have a store there. We have a lot of different things in there that it just wouldn't work yet. We also have a lot of events and programs. We've just closed all programs for the month of, March, April, and May. Then we're hoping to see what we can do for camps and other things. But that's a whole different subject.
Dan Sullivan:
Meghan, how are you approaching that?
Meghan McCauley:
We'll be following the guidelines set forth by public health officials, of course. But I think any organization or business is going to have to do it in a staggered way with reduced capacity. For us, we're still looking at numbers, but we are looking at the gallery capacity, so square footage in the galleries, but also at how do we make that visiting experience still feel really enjoyable while also trying to maintain group size. You could have the right number of people in the building, but if everybody wants to take a picture in front of the same work of art, you have a different capacity problem. But there's the opportunity there to create some really interesting visitor pathways, I think, where we've talked before about how do you create this highly curated museum visit or museum experience? And you could create that in a way, I think, that encourages and enforces social distancing, while also feeling like a guide to how to explore the museum, is one option. It depends. We also have a wonderful restaurant at our museum, as many do. We have an incredible PAMM shop. It will depend. We may not all be able to open at the same time, which is also one of those new light bulbs that went off recently. I think that happens to all of us pretty frequently nowadays when we realize, oh, that thing that we took for granted is going to be different in the future. Maybe one opens before the other. Maybe they do it in different ways. That's something that we'll have to wait and see, and that'll all depend on the guidelines, again for the county and city of Miami.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Aidan, what about as far as approaching the reopening?
Aidan Vega:
Yeah, same as Meghan. We'll follow all the guidelines of the city and the state. I think we're looking at square footage, but also thinking about where those high trafficked areas are. We are a maze-like building with galleries that have lots of different entrances, galleries that are also pass-throughs and hallways and areas like that. Really needing to think through what the visitor flow will be, is there a way to plan a route, is that even a possibility? We have lots of elevators that have to have limited capacity. We're really thinking through that, what the reasonable capacity expectation is and how do we manage those high-trafficked areas.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. That brings on an interesting question, which is, are you planning to do any type of dedicated days or hours for members, families, seniors, or even other special groups that you might have at the museum, and how do you plan to reward those members that have stuck with you through all of this, even the high-level donors?
Aidan Vega:
Yeah. We're definitely, planning to have, or we're talking about having special times, obviously, for seniors or groups that are at high risk, and then also for members. We hope to be able to do that and have times to reward them, for sticking with us, which there are people renewing, which provides a lot of hope for the future. I think, thinking about members, as we're asking them to renew, we're offering special offers. We're offering additional months of membership and things like that to reward them at the time of renewal. I think as we get back in the building and as we understand how the capacities work and how the visitor experience works, we'll then be able to even think more about what we can actually provide for members..
Meghan McCauley:
This is where my visitor services hat comes on too, right? I think one of the biggest questions in our leadership meeting is going to be who are all of our constituents and how do we slice this pie for everybody. With my background in membership and my love of members, of course I want to say that we're going to totally give preference to members, but we know that that's not always realistic. We have an incredibly, robust school tour program, which hopefully will return once schools are able to gather as well. We do want to think about how important accessibility and inclusion are at PAMM also. Access is a big part of what we do.
The short answer is yes, I definitely want to create opportunities for members to visit. But it's also going to be about what goes with that that helps provide access for other parts of our community as well. I think members, again, are invested in that mission. Being transparent with them about why this is the way that they can best access tickets versus this other way, I think making them part of that decision-making process and bringing them along in that with you is going to be really helpful. If there are certain days or certain hours where we are giving a certain type of pay what you wish admission, for example, for people who are out the door that day, it limits the member access. I think communicating that will be really key, and then coming up with a plan for how we juggle all those different audiences.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Are any of you handling ticketing admissions in a different way than normal? Are you thinking about any timed ticketing or reserve ahead type of model? Kristi or Laura, do you want to start us off with that, since you've already opened? Meghan and Aidan can talk a little bit about their plans.
Laura Schmid:
It is members only. It's timed ticketing. We started with three times a day, and now it's four. We've phased it in a little bit. We are starting to have that discussion about how we are phasing in with the new visitors, because we typically have a very high conversion rate of visitors becoming members. Like, 25% of people coming on the property will become members. I'm very cognizant of if we don't have new people walking on our property, how do we get those new people? Because we always have attrition. However, I've been really surprised. I think word of mouth is really working for us right now. I have had a lot of phone calls from people who call, ask a lot of questions, and will buy memberships sight unseen. That's been great.
But we are starting to have those discussions. Do we have special days for healthcare workers or first responders? I'm not sure where we are in that quite yet because we're still trying to work out the kinks with our current system and thinking about how we reopen just to visitors. I think our mindset, and Kristi can probably allude to this is we really want to be equal access for everybody. I don't necessarily want to say, oh, you're a high-end donor. You get this, special hour or that kind of thing. I think Kristi and I are all about equality of access. It is something we're discussing.
Kristi Masterson:
We did look at the numbers, as far as people that register, because they register, but they don't pay admission because they already are members. They register, and because there's no money, we're finding that the no show rate is pretty high. We're so weather-dependent too. Today's beautiful. We probably have about a 90% rate of people coming. Yesterday it rained all day, and it was probably maybe 30% of people that registered ended up coming, because it was thunderstorms and raining. We do know that, and we do adjust our numbers accordingly. We have that flexibility in our ticketing system to do that, which has been nice.
Dan Sullivan:
Great. Meghan and Aidan, how are you planning to attack that?
Meghan McCauley:
Definitely. There's going to have to be advanced ticketing. We're going to have to get ticketing online. Until this point, PAMM has all been general admission at the door model. We haven't had advance ticketing, but we're working on developing it now. Weird situation to bring that to the museum, but I'm glad it's something that we're doing. I do think that's going to be a really important benefit of membership, that early access to ticketing, depending on how we actually manage the day of access itself, or if we do have member preview days, or how many member preview days, or whatever that may be. I think that early access to ticketing is always going to be really key for members, as it has been for previous events that we've had. It doesn't mean that 100% of tickets are available at that time, but they do get more of a selection. We'll be thinking about accessibility there too when it comes to how we do our advance ticketing.
One thing that we have been thinking about, which is an answer to your previous question, but I forgot it. I'm going to sneak it in now, is that members getting free admission is such a great benefit that increasing the number of guests that our members are going to be able to bring with them, or potentially giving them the opportunity to give a complimentary gift membership when we reopen as a thank you for sticking with us during the closure, I think is going to be key too. It'll be a little extra moment, of thank you for members to say you can reserve your tickets now, but you can also gift a membership to a loved one so that they can join you when you revisit PAMM.
Dan Sullivan:
That's awesome.
Aidan Vega:
With reduced capacities, we're thinking about timed ticketing. We are lucky to have a timed ticketing model. We've done a lot of special exhibitions with limited capacity. We have a pretty robust online ticketing platform. Normally about 10% of general admission is purchased in advance online. This fall, we were able to start scanning in entries. When people purchase a ticket online, they can come in with their phone or a printout and get it scanned. It's nice because we can offer and advertise a touchless experience, right? They just have to interact with the scanner at the door.
We're also thinking, we currently have two entrances. We're thinking about, do we have both of those open, right? Because if we need to limit capacity, if we want to control the flow of the building, does it really work to have two entrances open? That's another area that we're thinking about when you think about admission and how people access the building.
Laura Schmid:
One thing I will add, if I can, Meghan mentioned that, the idea of bringing friends and guests. I did send out a targeted email out to our members this past month about upgrading to another level to bring guests at this time. That was super successful. I had 100% more upgrades this past April than I did last April at this time.
Meghan McCauley:
Wow.
Laura Schmid:
People are so excited to be here and be out and bring their friends with them.
Meghan McCauley:
That's awesome.
Dan Sullivan:
So true. Colleen Dilenschneider talked about this, how when things start to get reopened, I feel like we talk about Colleen on this frequently and many of you are familiar with her. She talked about how when things do reopen, people are likely very eager to get back involved and get out of the house in a lot of ways.
I've got one more question, and we have a lot of audience questions. We're going to try to tackle speed round as fast as we can. Last question that I've got is how will events be impacted? Are you planning to hold large fundraisers or membership events at all, or are you going to stick with smaller micro-events? Aidan, do you want to start us off with that one?
Aidan Vega:
Sure. We had canceled events through June 30th. We have nothing planned through there. We had not had a lot of events scheduled from that point on. But I think at this point, we really want to make sure that we can have the visitation experience locked in and we feel really comfortable with that. I think then we'll take the next steps to think about programming. But at this time, we don't have anything planned.
Dan Sullivan:
Okay. Meghan?
Meghan McCauley:
Yeah, typically the fall and winter is a huge event in Miami. We have Art Basel and Miami Art Week take place during that time of year, and they're huge benefits. We all know that membership events are one of the cornerstones of any acquisition campaign. But we also know that that is going to have to be adjusted for a little while. It doesn't mean that we won't still have ways of entertaining people and bringing them together and creating that same celebratory environment, but we are going to have to do it in a new way that keeps everybody healthy and keeps everybody safe.
We haven't confirmed anything yet, and I'm definitely optimistic about how things can develop in the weeks and months. We'll have to see how that goes. I think, like Aidan said, making sure that the museum has reopened and that people can come and visit the collection and the exhibitions again is going to be really important, and then we'll see what we can do about some of those great member events that we look forward to.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. Kristi or Laura, since you're already open, how, are you hosting events now? Have you changed the way that you're approaching events for the foreseeable future?
Kristi Masterson:
Well, we had to postpone our fundraiser, which was in April. We are looking into doing it virtually. There's a lot of companies out there that do that kind of stuff. We're looking into that in October, depending on what happens, if we get another wave. But all events were canceled through May. We are looking at how we're going to, we do have camps, which are schoolchildren, starting in June. Chances are, they'll be canceled at least until July. But that's 1,500 spots.
In addition to that, we have a concert music series, things like that, that right now are being looked at, evaluated. We can't see how we can responsibly host them anymore. It's a shame for our programming folks and our education team that are so excited to do these things. But it's just the reality of this is a different time, and we just can't do it.
Dan Sullivan:
Makes sense.
Meghan McCauley:
I think we're seeing so many virtual programs and events taking place now, but I think even when organizations are in the process of reopening, those are things that we should be keeping because we're now reaching different types. We have a live virtual tour online every Thursday now that's modeled after a program we used to do in the building that usually attracted a good, a great group size, 20, 25 people per tour, that's now seeing 70, 80, 90 people online chiming in from all over the world, like we are here today. I think that we're going to find ways for those things to work together also. The physical experience may be limited for some time, but that doesn't mean that the virtual experience can't compliment it. It's not a binary choice here, I think, which is a really nice thing to look forward to.
Dan Sullivan:
That's so true. We've got a lot of questions from the audience. just under a hundred of them right now. We're going to try to get to as many as we can. We'll speed round. The way that we'll do this, any one of our panelists who wants to jump in with an answer, feel free to jump in. This is from Valentina, who's a staff writer at Hyperallergic. Any thoughts on the possibility that museums will be opening and then forced to close in a second wave, as we've seen in other places in the world? If so, how would we handle that?
Meghan McCauley:
It's definitely possible. We've seen it happen in other places, and it could certainly happen here. We hope it won't. I think now that we've closed once, we would know hopefully how to do it a second time. It's certainly not the goal, I would say, that I think everyone knows that it is a possibility.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. Anybody else want to throw in on that one?
Laura Schmid:
Yeah. I think that that's just how we're planning into the year, is thinking that we're going to make the best-laid plans for the next few months and then know that things could change at the drop of a dime, and that we have to be nimble. And like we've all said, it's about the safety of the visitor and the member and the staff, and that that's going to be the top priority.
Dan Sullivan:
That actually segues well into this question from Shannon Cohen, which is, Today my state is beginning a phase one reopening. Museums can reopen at 25% capacity; however, we are weary to do this, and we don't want to jeopardize the health and safety of our staff and visitors. The museum is planning to send out a survey this week asking our members and visitors when they feel safe coming back. Are any of you doing something like this, and if so, what questions are you asking?
Kristi Masterson:
We already asked camp parents that have already registered, and asked them under what conditions would they feel comfortable sending their children to camp, and gave a few suggestions. I think that is a very important question to ask, not only to people coming but your staff. They might be living with people that are high risk. And that is very concerning to them, too. Good questions to ask.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Another question we've got here, this is from Kris Mikkola. And her question is, For those organizations that are reopening, do you plan to lower the ticket and membership prices?
Laura Schmid:
No.
Kristi Masterson:
Not at all. In fact, it was in demand. We didn't want to gouge anybody, and we didn't, because we didn't raise anything. But we didn't charge anything above their membership levels. We found out though, that when they did register, we added a button that said, if you'd like to give while you register at this time, please do. We had over 300 first-time donors give in two weeks. That was very beneficial. But no, we did not change our pricing, except the fact that non-members couldn't come.
Laura Schmid:
We're getting a lot of donations with those visit registrations and also with membership. I'm seeing them round up. The membership is $86. They'll add $4. I'm also getting more calls, more than anything, we have a special discounted membership for people with SNAP or WIC cards. We offer a 50% discount for members with those cards. I've talked to more people right now with those wanting access, and that's been successful.
Dan Sullivan:
Okay. That's great to hear. Meghan or Aidan, are either of you planning to reduce your ticket or membership prices?
Meghan McCauley:
No.
Aidan Vega:
No. I think we've seen similar people being very generous, and people renewing their memberships already when they even don't know the state of when we're actually going to open. I think we've seen a lot of support in the community and don't see reasons to do that right now.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome.
The question is from Andrew Hare. His question is, What are you considering as essential for reopening? What are the probable phases or steps for moving forward? I guess a better question would be, Kristi, Laura, what did you prioritize as being essential for reopening Meghan, Aidan, how are you approaching that?
Kristi Masterson:
Well, our visitor service staff was first and foremost, and our facilities staff were essential staff to open. Everybody else pretty much worked from home. We had security, our nature rangers, visitor service staff and facility, and then we had one leadership team person onsite during our initial reopening. That was essential at that point. That's it.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome.
Meghan McCauley:
I would say absolutely essential for us is, and this may sound silly, but a plan. That plan is everything from how we open and how we handle guests that day, but also, what are the different ways in which people might not comply with the rules, and how are we ready to handle all of those circumstances? We're no longer in a situation where I can pull Dan aside and have a quiet conversation in a gallery. Any conversation I have has to be six feet apart. We have to think about how to have these conversations without escalating any potential tension with visitors. It's going to be absolutely essential that we have access to cleaning and safety equipment, and not just like, we snuck in one order of this thing from this place, but consistent availability of those things so that we're keeping staff and guests safe so that I don't find out one day that we ran out of Lysol or whatever it may be. I think the willingness and readiness of staff to come back to work, like Kristi mentioned. A lot of our staff live in intergenerational homes. A lot of us take public transit to get to and from work. Having the staff feel safe and ready to come back to work is absolutely going to be essential as well.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Aidan, do you want to throw anything in there?
Aidan Vega:
Yeah. I think I would say all the same things. Obviously, we're still on stay at home orders. Obviously, we'll be working with the city and the state to know when it would be safe to open, and then really making sure that we have a plan that we feel really good about around safety.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. This question is from Edward Escarsega. Has there been any PR pushback or public feedback about opening first to members only? Kristi or Laura could you share a little bit about any of the pushback that you got?
Kristi Masterson:
I would say a lot of it was just an opportunity, to tell people that we are member-supported, that we're not part of the parks. I think it was a misconception that still lingers sometimes. The nice thing is they can always sign up for a membership on the spot that's real-time. That was solved pretty easily with that. Laura, do you have anything to add about that?
Laura Schmid:
No. The email that I did send out about adding guests to your membership and upgrading to a new level, I did have unexpectedly a couple of members write back and say, "How dare you invite more people? I thought this was for members only, and what do you mean, people can bring guests?" I was actually surprised by that more than anything. Otherwise, more than anything, I think it's been positive, good, enthusiastic across the board for us.
Kristi Masterson:
I think that's an excellent question, though, because we did have a communication strategy and plan to answer that question because I thought that that would happen. I thought we'd get lots of social media bashing. But the opposite, we really didn't. We were ready to prepare them to say that we have opportunities, like Laura said, for, WIC and SNAP cardholders. We have members you can purchase. We will be open to the public again soon. But this is a special privilege. We have signs when people exit our property, like membership rocks, we love our members. It's fun when they leave to have that happy feeling leaving. But that was Laura's idea. I do think, I thought we'd get it, and we didn't. We really didn't get that.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great to hear. We've got time for maybe one more audience question. How are you going to approach things like backpacks and touch or physical tours? Should we be giving out gloves? That maybe begs the question, or other types of PPE for folks that don't have it? Then what about tours for people who are blind? And Meghan, this might be a better question for you with your visitor services cap.
Meghan McCauley:
We have at least two really iconic artworks on campus that are interactive, and we're talking through different options for how to keep the audience and the work safe. And it may have to be temporary closure, or there may be some other options there. We do typically utilize reusable admission buttons, maps, exhibition notes. We do have touch tours. We do have family packs. We haven't yet come up with a solution for a lot of those things. One of the biggest challenges in this conversation, or I would say maybe probably the biggest challenge is that with limited access, all of the work that we've done as organizations and as an entire field towards accessibility and inclusivity are being challenged.
Luckily, museums are full of really creative, smart people who can meet great challenges.I'm sure all of yours are, and mine is as well. That's definitely going to be challenging. We did typically handle luggage checks. We have lockers that we're using. I think we'll probably be limiting access to those things in a reopening environment, which will probably be made slightly easier by declined tourism rates. We will eventually have to think through again how to handle the people that come straight from the airport to the museum, which we don't want to discourage in a future where tourism is rebuilding. We also have to figure out how to do that safely. I think at the very beginning, phase one of reopening, we'll have to limit some of those things.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. I've got one last question.What is one big takeaway that each one of you would want each person watching to be able to consider and bring back to their organization?
Aidan Vega:
I think it's that we're all trying to make it work. I think everybody is doing, amazing work, and everybody that's taken time to be on this call and really think about our visitors and think about their institution is doing the exact right thing. I think the takeaway would be to keep asking questions, to keep trying to figure out and know what's the mission of your organization, what do you need to provide to the public, and really be thoughtful and think through those things, and that there is this huge community of support. Keep reaching out and checking in with people on what they're doing.
Meghan McCauley:
Members are your people. These are the people who believe in your organization, who want to be involved more than just their annual gifts. Remember that they are here to support you and all that you and your colleagues do. They want you to do well. They are your community. When the time is right, when you do have decisions that they can help you make, to the extent that which you can involve them, I think you should. I think that there's a real opportunity here. We've been seeing this around in the membership universe, that the organizations we closed are not the organizations that we will reopen. And there's a real opportunity here to deepen engagement with members if you make them part of how you reopen. They're your people.
Laura Schmid:
Meghan really enlightened on the engagement piece, and just really, I think more than anything, what I've learned from this whole process is that our members do value us the most right now. I'm feeling the love, and we're showing them the love more than anything right now. It has been really good professionally to be in that place where you're so proud to be a resource for the community. I think that has been the most rewarding part of being open and being available.
Kristi Masterson:
Well, the most important thing that you can bring to the table during this time is flexibility. This is a very dynamic time. It's a paradigm shift from whatever you've ever done before. As an organization and as an individual, you must be flexible and embrace this change.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. A couple quick things before everybody goes. First of all, a recording of this webinar will be posted later today on the Cuseum website. We are also posting a link to our shared community document with coronavirus resources. You can see that in the chat right now. As mentioned, we've got a part two of sorts to this webinar. That's happening this Wednesday. It's called "Preparing to Reopen: Strategy, Planning, and Process on the Road to Reopening Museums." Wednesday at 2:00 Eastern Time. Registration also in the chat. You can also find it on the Cuseum website. Check that one out.
I want to say a huge thank you to all four of our fantastic panelists. So many insights. Again, the community will really benefit from the path that you're paving. Thank you so much for being here. Stay safe, stay healthy, during these unusual times, and we'll see you all soon.
Looking for more information? Check out our coronavirus resources page.