The road to reopening museums and cultural organizations can be a challenging one. From changing regulations and protocols, shifting reopening dates, and stop-and-start plans, there can be many setbacks when planning to welcome visitors back. Perhaps you’ve had to push back your reopening date, or reopened your museum only to close again. Perhaps you are struggling to stay connected with your members and audience, and communicate these ever-changing plans. This webinar is for you!
Join Dan Sullivan (Head of Growth and Partnerships @ Cuseum), Alice Stryker (Director, Individual Giving @ Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum) & Julia Propp (Director of Membership @ Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) as they talk through ways to navigate these challenges and setbacks. This webinar will specifically address these issues in the context of membership, focusing on revising plans, communication with members, and more!
View the full transcript below.
Dan Sullivan:
Hi everybody. My name is Dan Sullivan. I am the Head of Partnerships here at Cuseum. I'm going to be your host today. Hopefully all of you find yourselves safe and healthy and for all of our first time watchers, welcome. We're glad to have you. And for all of our repeat visitors, thank you again for being here. We're going to have some really interesting insights coming from our panelists today, but as always, there's going to be about 1,000 of you here today. So introduce yourself, take a second. We've got this chat functionality, let us know where you're joining from. Feel free to communicate and respond to the questions that I ask the panelists, but can all benefit from the learnings that all of us are experiencing simultaneously.
Secondly, if you have a question, please use the Q&A functionality down at the bottom of your Zoom window. And then if you see a question that you like, give it a little thumbs up that will send it to the top and will allow me to talk through it with our panelists. And just a little quick housekeeping item, as well, Cuseum has been very committed since the beginning to trying to get as many timely resources in front of the membership professionals as possible. And so as the sands continue to shift and we move forward towards reopening, reclosure, reopening again, and just all of the uncertainty that we're experiencing, you can expect that we'll continue to do webinars just like this, probably every other week as we head towards the end of the summer and into the fall.
But as always, if you've got a subject that you want us to cover, please send us a message, we would be happy to explore it. All right, so let's get into this. I think the reality is the road to reopening museums and cultural organizations right now is challenging. And from changing regulations to protocols, to shifting of your reopening date, stop and start plans, balancing governance, state, and local government regulations, there can be a lot of setbacks when we're trying to welcome our visitors back. So perhaps you've had to push back a reopening day. You've reopened your museum only to have to close it again. Perhaps you're struggling to stay connected with your members and your audience. And maybe you're just challenged with communicating these ever-changing plans.
This webinar is going to be for you. Today, we have two amazing panelists and I'm going to have them introduce themselves in a moment, but we have Alice Stryker who is the Director of Individual Giving at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. And we also have Julia Propp, the Director of Membership at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. So thank you both for being here. To all of our attendees, thank you for being here. So let's kick things off with some quick introductions. Maybe you could give a quick state of the union of, and your role at the organization that you're at. So Alice, why don't you, get us started?
Alice Stryker:
Sure. Hey guys, I'm Alice. I am the Director of Individual Giving at the Intrepid. I use the pronouns, she, her, hers, and we're located just off Manhattan on the Hudson River, a floating museum. We have 3,200 membership households. We extended our memberships for the duration of our temporary closure, which began in mid-March. We had a reopening date that was not announced fortunately to our membership.
We were about a day away from announcing it. So, but it got moved. New York City entered phase four of its reopening plan about two and a half weeks ago, museums were excluded from phase four. So we are now trying to be as much as we can to lobby our state and local governments to permit us to reopen and until then, we're continuing our prep work and staying connected with our community.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Thank you for being here. And Julia.
Julia Propp:
Hi everyone. My name is Julia and I also go by the she, her, hers pronouns series. And I'm the Director of Membership at the MFA, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which sits on the land of the Massachusetts people. So together with the membership team, we welcome and steward between 60 to 70,000 members annually. We also steward the university member program, our nonprofit institutional path program for libraries and nonprofit organizations, as well as our first year free program to MFA citizens and community celebration attendees.
The MFA Boston has remained closed while Massachusetts is in phase three, and many of our peer institutions are open. We are taking our time to make sure that we get everything right. And while we haven't publicly announced an opening date, I can share with you. We are aiming toward early fall, but Massachusetts also just did an indefinite pause on part three phase two or phase two part three. So we'll see what happens, right?
Dan Sullivan:
A bit of a moving target. And I neglected to mention, I'm Dan Sullivan. I'll be the moderator for today's conversation. My pronouns are he and his, and I'm located on the land of the Massachusetts people as well. So let's kick things off here. Alice, Julia, have either of you had to move your opening date? Did you have something in mind and then you had to push it back? Julia, why don't you start us off?
Julia Propp:
So, yeah, so I think, as I mentioned, we intentionally did not share a reopening date with the public yet. We internally have been going back and forth and doing a lot of planning scenarios, but ultimately, where we landed was really focusing on first getting our reentry of the staff in order, we felt very strongly that if we didn't get that right, we knew we weren't going to get the visitor piece right. And so we've really focused on that before announcing the date to the public.
Dan Sullivan:
Great. Alice, how about on your side?
Alice Stryker:
Yeah. So we have, really all museums in fact, an interesting thing happened. New York City was set to enter phase four, which included indoor dining in museums in late July, early August and the day before all local museums and inner dining were excluded. So we were really all set. We had a press release vetted. We had an e-blast scheduled copy approved, ready to go to our members announcing special friends and family days that were going to exclude members.
We had an acquisition campaign ready to go, so we just hit pause on all of it. We were lucky in that we didn't actually have it announced and get out there to our members. And then we had to recourse, which some of our peer institutions around the city did have to do. But in general, we found the temperament of our members and our audience in York city in general, to be pretty understanding, folks know that it's a changing sea, a changing tide, and we're just all floating on it together.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. And on that same token, how do you communicate these fluctuating plans with your staff? And as you prepare to bring your staff back, these reopening dates might be unclear, how do you handle that, Alice? Why don't you start us off there?
Alice Stryker:
Sure. Well, we like many, I'm sure a lot of folks on this call had to make the difficult decision back in the spring to furlough a portion of our staff. And so all communications about whether you're working at the office aboard the ship or from your home, like I am, have in time been communicated in two pathways, one to staff who were still onsite and working for the museum. The other is to our furloughed staff. And so by then, because we started, we thought we were about to reopen, we had told furloughed staff members specific dates that they were going to be coming back to the institution in order to help with our membership acquisition, for example, or help the box office prep to make sure we were ready to welcome visitors.
When folks were told those dates, we shared that caveat that this may change if it's completely out of our hands, if we can open tomorrow and it was safe, we would. And so, because we are all jointly operating with that level of uncertainty, our staff has been aware that this too is a changing target.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure, that caveat. Julia, how about on your side?
Julia Propp:
We're in a similar position where we do have some of our staff furloughed. And so as we're focusing on staff reentry and call out, we're really focused right now on which staff we need to get into the building to prepare the building for more staff. And then for more staff to prepare for visitors, we've had a cross departmental reopening team that's been working together on all angles, I think like a lot of institutions.
And we try to take staff considerations into account as much as possible because we recognize the fluctuating situations are as much happening for them on the home front as it is on our work front, everything from childcare to transportation to, I mean, all of the things we've all been dealing with at home. So, I think as part of that process, we're trying to be sensitive to what our employees need and really trying to stay focused on these incremental steps and making sure so we don't have to backtrack in case anything happens like it happened in New York.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure, I think that's such an interesting and important point is your individual staff members are facing a, a slew of different challenges on a variety of levels. So that communication component is really important. What about when the plans are shifting, how do you communicate that with your members and your visitors and how do you manage their expectations, Julia?
Julia Propp:
So, I mean, I think, with the reopening date part of our intention and not reopen and not announcing the specific date is because we didn't want to backtrack, we didn't want to change it. And we wanted to make sure that we did it, we opened right with a very quality experience. So what we've really been leading with is what our promise to members was during closure. Early on, we were very quick to announce that all memberships were going to be extended during the closure, that has remained true through, and it will remain true until we've reopened.
So trying to give members that assurance that they will feel all have 12 months of their membership cycle. We are assuring them that the experience that they are going to come and have at the museum is exciting and vital and meaningful. What are the exhibitions they're going to be able to see? So we've tried to communicate what we feel confident about and the level of care that we're taking with the safety and protocols, because what we really feel strongly about is the more trust that our audience have when we've reopened, even if we're not among the first to open, they'll feel that much better about coming into our space.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And Alice, how about on your side? How, how are you communicating that with your members?
Alice Stryker:
Almost exactly what Juliet is saying. We've really focused. I'm trying to assure our communities, that we are going to be safe and responsible when we've reopened. One of the benefits that we have is open space. The Intrepid is a 1943 aircraft carrier. So we're very lucky in that social distancing and all of those abilities, they're very easy for us to do. We don't have to worry about crowded, small galleries, which is great.
In addition to everything Julia has mentioned, we've also been doing a lot of virtual content. And so one of the things we've been trying to do for our members is to show them how their membership dollars are sustaining us, empowering our mission during this vital time. We're trying in general to stress the philanthropic meaning of membership and how important that is for us to keep all of our work going. And we're using our virtual programs as that way to advance that message right now while maybe their more tangible benefits aren't available.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. I think that transaction's actually nicely into another question, which is how do we keep offering value to these members? How do you offer a clear value proposition under very uncertain circumstances? So Julia, do you want to start us off there?
Julia Propp:
I think Alice and I both got really excited about this question about how we were going to talk about it. It's such a vital and important challenge for us to grapple with, especially because how do we continue to deliver the value to current members? And when we reopen, how do we make sure that our sales strategy and acquiring and continuing those membership stays important? Because as I said, with all of those extensions that we are promising our members, we're trading, they say that strategy is the art of sacrifice. So we are sacrificing, we are taking a deferment on revenue in order to buy our trust in our members and that value of the experience.
And so I think that's one of those things that it's all about focusing back on the basics of relationship building, but there's also this huge transactional component to it that we have to grapple with. Like for the MFA, like a lot of institutions, 73% of our acquisition happens on site. And as we're moving all, many of us are moving to advanced ticketing online, onsite sales are going to be very small or not happening. So how do we integrate the member value proposition as part of the online process? Which for some organizations’ enclosures, I think this period has really illustrated the cracks of some of where our investments are and where our priorities are.
And so our, since we've been closed, the focus on digital content and the web experience has been at the forefront of our mind. And I think as part of that question on value, something we try to think about a lot, and I think especially as we reopen, is how do we make sure that member benefits are considered additives and not excluding anyone from the value of the general membership experience? So for example, we are going to be hosting member ticketing pre-sales when we reopen. So we'll put blocks of tickets, probably on sale every couple of weeks, members will have 24 hours to have the first crack at them. Now, we're not going, one of the challenges is we don't want them to take all of the tickets because we want tickets to still be available.
But the value proposition is they do get their preferred time slot. Another example is our Member Mornings, which was an event we had previously prior to COVID where we opened the museum an hour early for members, just so they, just so they can have access to the building, but that isn't happening at the exclusion of anyone else. So it's about those that how are we working in the current constraints of COVID and finances and how do we work through all of those to still deliver an experience that holds transactional value that can equate then to long-term loyalty.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And Alice, how about on your side? How are you continuing to keep that value proposition present?
Alice Stryker:
Totally. I mean, it's very similar to what Julia said. One of the things we've also, I mean, honestly, this is like a clone, we're doing almost exactly what Julia said. So one thing I wanted to add is, as we're thinking about our reopening acquisition strategy, one of the things internally that we were grappling with was how do we give something that's exciting to our members without excluding our community? And Julia's hit on it exactly. You don't want to have your members gobble up all of your tickets and they'll have nothing left. So we, initially, were thinking about doing the members only, donors only, philanthropy minded, friends and family day. And then we decided that that was a little bit too exclusionary.
And so we're opening it up to families that have been participating in our free STEM programs for students, teachers who did professionals, virtual professional development with us. And we're trying to make it more of a true friend and family and not just something that is exclusive to those who can afford a museum membership. And so that was a bit of a change for us. I mean, like Julia, most of our membership is transacted on sites. We have a big, long line that is going down to the tier as people wait to get in. There are other really exciting summer things. Our top 10 movie series that we plan, the flight deck.
So this is a bit of a change for us. And I think it's a good one because we've also found over time that those types of membership transactions are declining slowly, but a little bit subtly we're losing those kinds of transactions. So like Julia said, this has been a real moment for us to think about what we can do to improve the quality of our membership long-term, not just in the post COVID reality, but in general, we have to refine our acquisition strategy. Hey, maybe philanthropy is a good way to try.
Julia Propp:
I think one of the things we've been talking about at the MFA over the past year, and this was one of those things that was hiding in plain sight, is really when you're talking about a new member, when a new member signs up, that whole first year really is the acquisition period. So you really can't consider someone a true member of the organization until they opt in for that second year. And so you, to what Alice was saying, I think it's really important, especially as this, the idea of signups in different things, the more we focus on retention and particularly how we think about that first year experience and how are we building trust? How are we aligning values?
How are we making that member feel part of a community that, that our institutions align with who they are and what they want to see in the world, that's really lofty work that you can never get in, in the acquisition process, that can only come as you're developing a relationship. And so I just want to call that out because I feel like the conversations with our stakeholders often become, "Well, how do you get more members? How do you reach new audiences?" And I think the question is less about how do you get new audiences. It's how you keep audiences period.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. I think that that idea of retention is huge. And you've seen that time and time. A lot of organizations have these blockbuster exhibitions that come in, their membership base spikes up while it's there and then drops back down again when it leaves. So a true testament of that commitment is do they renew again a second time? We've got a couple of questions floating in here.
There's one that I saw in the chat that I want to pick up on and, and, and voice. How are you handling the accounting of memberships as extensions could defer revenues into the next fiscal year? Either of you, I'm not going to put either one of you on the spot. If either of you have any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear
Julia Propp:
So I think one of the ways, we're trying to think about this a couple of different ways, and we're very lucky in how we've built out the renewal process in that the majority of our renewals, which 73% come through direct mail, Steady Eddy, will, the large part of our multi-year members will always respond to the first renewal notice they receive, whether it's in the 10th month of their membership, the ninth month, the eight month. So while we are going to be extending people, we're, we're looking at doing a couple of things. One, we are, emphasizing that opt out option at every point in the process of saying that you can make your membership dollars go farther.
You can make your support go farther, if you stay on your traditional membership track. Then we are going to, even though we are going to be extending people, we are still looking at how to insert renewal appeals early on in the year process. So you are still going to be getting those funds in. Now granted, we're going to have a longer, closure period than some institutions. So we are going to see some of that come in. I think this is the question that I am grappling with, and I would love to know how other people are thinking about this. We often talk about members in the 12 month pound, right?
Like how many members do you have on a rolling basis in 12 months? And we're going to be in a place now where we're going to have our 12 months counts, but we're also going to have our active count. And those are actually going to be two very different things, both from an accounting perspective, but also from the pool by which we're actually going to have the opportunity to get members to retain. So it's a tappy pool, I don't know, how are you doing it?
Alice Stryker:
I mean, it's very similar. What we, in terms of trying to initiate our renewal process, we send the communication out to all of our members, let's say, on an ongoing basis, that "Yes, your membership is extended, don't you worry, you're still going to have the chance to take advantage of all of the museums offers for the 12 months that would have been your membership." But we also are sending out renewal notices on the months that members would have left. That's a new cadence for us. And it's just calling attention to the extension or temporary closure and that this would have been their renewal date. And extra stuff that we're hoping, because like usually almost all of our members when they are renewing, they're renewing for the first two, to the first mail.
So we're trying to insert other ones first so that they're getting the money earlier. And if they missed that one, then their normal renewal cycle will pick up because right now we're in our fifth month, we don't know when we're going to reopen. We're hopeful it could be in September, but again, it's just so not up to us. So we too will have , we could be in a situation where there's an 18 month membership cycle. We're trying to be nimble and working with our finance team diligently to make sure that everything on their end from the recording standpoint is above the book and that it's very clear to our accountants how and why we were able to move the revenue, move the memberships. And so nothing fishy happened during our annual audit.
Julia Propp:
Maybe institutionally, we have enough of our peers on this call. If we can introduce an industry term like the COVID count, we have our members 12 month count, and then we have the COVID count. And then, and then we, there's probably a much better term for that. I will volunteer other people to come up with another one for that.
Dan Sullivan:
I think that idea has got legs though. A couple of questions from the Q&A here. And these are just going to be all over the place. One Christina asks, you mentioned furloughed employees, as you start to reopen and, is the plan to bring everyone back? Do you think that there's the possibility that some positions may not be renewed due to budget concerns? Anything that you're able to share along those lines? Obviously, without going into too much detail, would be welcome. Once again, I won't put anyone on the spot.
Alice Stryker:
No, it's tough. I mean, we furloughed 80% of our staff in March and April which is tough. We have a relatively lean membership team. I mean, a little background on Intrepid, fundraising efforts, the museum opened in 1983, I think. And we didn't have a fundraising staff until 2012. And that was because of the addition to the space shuttle enterprise. At that point, the museum thought, "Gosh, in order to maintain this amazing artifact and all the wonderful exhibitions, we really have to invest in philanthropy." We were receiving government grants, donations support from our trustees and we had a membership, but there wasn't really a central team to manage those revenue streams. So in general, our staff has been in a building period.
That's why I'm so excited to be at the museum. It's very much in startup culture. That being said, every single staff member has about 16 hats that they wear. Um, so when we went from a staff of 12, then we got to three, it was a bit of a challenge. And so we remain a pretty lean staff. We've been able to bring back two of our furloughed staff members. One was focusing on corporate support and corporate membership, as well as our annual gala, which we are in the process of figuring out what to do with it. And then another who focuses on our database. And she has been partnering with other teams across the museum. They've continued to be amazingly interdisciplinary and she knows our CRM, which handles our tickets.
So she's been helping to design this time ticketing scheme, and all back with stuff. So the people that we brought back are those who can be on multiple teams and work in multiple ways to help advance the court's permission. As we know more about our reopening, all of the reopening dates or rehire dates that we shared with our staff will then hopefully be able to just slide in time. It just depends on how much time there is between when we know we can reopen and when we can actually reopen. So that's our pickle.
Dan Sullivan:
That's the moving target again. Julia, anything else you want to add in there?
Julia Propp:
I think fairly similarly, not to Pollyanna this moment at all, because I think it's very hard whenever you have a fractured staff, there is a lot of difficulty there, but I will say the one opportunity that those of us that are currently working right now that we have found is the MFA, Boston is a pretty big complex institution. Prior to closure between staff and volunteers, we had a workforce of about 720. And I would say an opportunity that we've really had during this period is to really build bridges across departments and divisions that may not have even worked together in the past that may not have conferred on ideas and really strengthened those bonds.
I know for membership, we recently moved into development and so the conversations we've been able to start having around membership, equating back into philanthropy and really building that pipeline between our community engagement work, our audience development work into donor development, it would really help us with that through line. So it's all challenging, but I think it's really important to say, solutions oriented.
Alice Stryker:
Yeah. And that made me think of something too. So we actually had a very similar shift in our membership team. So prior to the fall, membership was a separate team in the new, in the development department, but it was managed by a separate Director of Membership with a separate team. And we made the choice to merge Membership and Individual Giving in January for the same reason, it was to create a stronger pipeline from members to donors.
And we were already having some of these efficiency conversations and how can we better use the tools to upgrade members and move folks into this philanthropy mindset and then COVID happened and it forced our hand, frankly. So now to say there's a silver lining, but in a way, it really has accelerated our thinking about membership at the museum for exactly what you're saying, Julia.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. And I think this really has been an interesting time to identify ways to cross collaborate. On an organizational level, we're hearing that a lot, but also there's a lot of silo busting going on where folks are now talking to people that they may have never ever come in contact with. Here's another question. How do you maintain trust and loyalty with members, especially when it's so challenging or even impossible to establish any type of clear expectations around reopening? Alice, do you want to start us off with that?
Alice Stryker:
Sure. I think my biggest thing with membership and donors and philanthropy in general is over-communication and vulnerability is key, it's like any relationship. You as an institution, if you're not willing to be honest and go there with your supporters, it's going to show in your donors all the way up through your trustees. And that's why we've tried to, all the campaigns and fundraising that we've been running parallel to our virtual programs has focused on an honest vulnerability, as we are working hard, where we're going to reopen, we are doing all these amazing things to keep our staff safe and to keep you our audience engaged with our mission.
But it's always been very specific to our mission. We've not tried to go above and beyond what our mission is, we're not trying to do anything other than what our mission is. And so I think that those communications, all the communications we have been issuing, have been very much about what we are doing, what we do know at this present moment. We've tried very hard not to conjecture because it's just a fool's errand. It's what you think may happen. It's just probably known at this point.
It's almost like if you verbalize it, the opposite will happen, but we've just been trying to stay present and clear and open and soliciting a ton of feedback from our members. We've been doing a member survey recently, which I think helps. It really opens a lot of communication channels, members got a chance to say what would make them feel safer in the museum and if they would come back, frankly, and those kinds of two way streets, always are going to buy you trust with anybody, not only your members, but your friends too.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. For sure. And Julia, how about on your side?
Julia Propp:
We really do. I think building on what Alice said. I think one of the things that we decided to do very early on turn off the cacophony of emails, emails that were 10, where we tend to be canon blasting and send a weekly e newsletter, to all of our members and friends that always includes, it starts off with a personal letter from our director, then it came reflecting on a piece of art and it's astounding the reaction that our members have had just to that very consistent, personal communication where he's not even, sometimes he'll talk about institutional updates, but oftentimes he's not. And it's about these larger things and these larger ideas we're all grappling with.
And I think I want to give a shout out to Tom O'Connor and his arts marketing group is starting to talk about how do we use audience development and customer experience paired with trauma work to get through this experience? Because there's something about like, as in our cultural institutions in general, we're in this unique opportunity to figure out how we have to use this moment and leverage what we have as part of the healing and recovery process. And I think as we're talking about building trust and maintaining loyalty, so much of that is remembering that there are people behind each one of these institutions, and it's really easy for us in the world of social media and being on a Zoom call all day to lose that human interaction.
so that's been something we've really had at the forefront. And I think in general, it's part of a larger theme where aside from that transactional, what do I get out of the value of this one transaction, we're really trying to move members over the course of that year to by the time they renew for that second year of membership, but not being, what do I get out of this membership, what I am making possible. And I think that's what we were talking about. Trust and loyalty and renewal. They all come hand in hand, but I think some of, a lot of that comes with transparency, personalization, and just building on relationships.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. So I think this brings us to another interesting subject. So we're in a very interesting time as a country. How do you reconcile the relationship between your community and the importance of being a resource for your community while also offering something special to your members and creating value in membership? This might be especially important as membership helps organizations meet their bottom line. So Julia, do you want to start us off there talking a little bit about that?
Julia Propp:
Sure. So I think we all know that the audience landscape is changing and for our institutions to be institutions for everyone, we need fundamental change at all levels in all different areas, but we also know, so that is true. And we also know that we won't be able to do anything in the long-term and less in the short-term, we bring our loyal supporters along for the ride. So we have these mission and financial imperatives, where we have to, we have to be everything for everyone, but we have to be very intentional about how we do that. So it's a big conversation that we've been having at the MFA for some time about how do we build that audience pipeline? How are all of us involved in the work?
And I think when we talk about the relationship between the community and the organization and the bottom line, especially with membership is all about relationships. Membership, to say that you are a member of an organization, that signals true belonging. And how you earn belonging, that is equitable access, that is having everything in terms of inclusivity in all of your invitations, that's having a diversity of offerings for a diversity of audiences. So we really put membership at the forefront with that. The reason why I'm so obsessed with that whole first year experience is because a lot of our data and our work has shown that that first year, whether it's free or paid is the time of acquisition.
And we've actually launched a lot of first year free initiatives where we target audiences and populations within our community that have historically not felt welcome in the museum and given them a first year free membership and a cultivated personalized first year member experience. And as part of that, we're building trust with those we relate, with those audiences, we're showing them who we are, we're inviting them to engage with us, with us at all different levels. So by the time that they come up for the renewal, it is us about continuing that relationship. So audience developing community development, that really sits at the heart of what membership is because membership really is all about building that community. So that I think for us, it can't be either or it has to be both and one has to help and support the other.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And I think, I really like that idea of focusing on that first 12 month experience, especially as that's when you're laying the foundation, you're laying the groundwork for establishing effectively your relationship with that member and what that could look like for the future moving forward. Alice, how about on your side? What are your thoughts here?
Alice Stryker:
Yeah, totally. I mean, it's funny. I feel like I keep saying Julia and I are doing the same thing, but it's true. we're doing a lot of the same things. The Intrepid, in addition to participating in the complimentary membership programs, for example, we have on an autism advisory council that we work very closely with to develop many of our programs for families with children with autism or those who, and any other cognitive challenges. They are critical in the development of those programs for our audience. Same thing, if we have a community of veteran advisors, same thing, they help to create our programs for veterans, which in the New York city landscape, there are not many institutions where veterans feel welcome or feel like they can be part of a, a part of a community.
So we give anybody who's willing to lend their time our complimentary memberships. So yeah, there's lots of initiatives like that. In addition to all of that hard work, we've begun the process of trying to create exhibitions, programs, everything that is more inclusive. The Intrepid is representative of a very difficult history. The Navy has been and remains a very challenging place for, people of color, for women, for those in the LGBTQ+ community. And so it's our job as stewards of that history to bring those stories to light.
And so as a community, a museum that's located in Hell's Kitchen, for example, it's our job to make sure that those stories are told at our museum, that's how our neighbors will come in. If they see themselves in that history. And the space program too, is not exactly the most inclusive place. So we've been really focusing our content as well, using that history to bridge the gap between this steel, giant thing floating in the middle of a community, of a neighborhood, it doesn't look welcoming. And our job is to make sure people feel welcome through our program.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. So shifting the conversation slightly, what are you doing right now to keep your members engaged? What specific things are you doing? And can you talk a little bit about the traction that you're seeing on those? Alice, do you want to start us off?
Alice Stryker:
Sure. So, like Julia, we have been sending a weekly email to our members and donors and our former crew members through just saying what we're up to. It can be anything from amusing from our president to something that we've seen, maybe, around Memorial Day or 4th of July, how would crew members probably be celebrating? What are you doing? Our submarine has proven to be an amazing piece of content [laughs]. And our space shuttle too about how to be connected in isolation. We've been again, sharing stories from our collection and our history out. So that's been greatly to have been seeing the most amazing responses. We've also focused a lot of our attention on creating not necessarily member exclusive programming, but free programming for everybody.
And we've really been putting a priority on getting membership, membership households, the first crack of the information, but they're open and available to all. So the benefit that a member will get as they learn about, which is great, we're trying to plan your week, but again, we really, during the time and focusing on what the philanthropy benefited the membership and all that they're making possible for your membership. So when we say to a member, "Hey, you're the first to know we've got this amazing virtual astronomy program happening with these incredible astronauts. Also, by the way, it's turned on also, by the way, it's free, thanks to your membership." And so that's what we've been using. We've just been using that cadence to drive our communications, during the closure.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. And just one more thing along those lines, have you done virtual events at all? And if so, how did they go?
Alice Stryker:
We have not. Again, our membership base is pretty small. It's only 3,200. So for us, we've gotten a lot more bang for our buck by really promoting these bigger events that are for everybody. Also, with reductions in, staff, we've, it's just not been possible, unfortunately. But we are thinking about how to translate our gala to the virtual space and my colleagues who are hard at work trying to create that scheme would be better resources than I to talk about how they may make that happen. But it's been a challenging one I don't know, if anybody has seen a really good one. I mean, all of us could benefit from it.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. Julia, on your side, can you talk a little bit about how you're keeping your members engaged again, as things continue to shift? What are some things that you've been doing?
Julia Propp:
Yeah. So we've really leaned into like Alice, the programs that are free and inclusive for everybody and featuring them to our members. One of the first things that we started was a weekly blog called Art for This Moment, which is a weekly series where different people across the organization, whether they're curators, staff, our manager of accessibility programs did one on the ADA anniversary, just taking a piece of art and reflecting on what it means to them. And again, that's been a moment in our communications with our events and is like a shout out to our PR and our public programs team. They have been putting on some phenomenal work. We've done two virtual exhibition openings, one for our boss, Scott, and then one for Monet. We did a virtual late night event with like a live DJ and different cool things.
I think probably my favorite though was on Mother's Day, we had a special soundbites concert and it was streamed on social media. It was like on YouTube and everything was online with a professional violinist who played, she curated and played three pieces that coincided with a series of Monet paintings as part of our Monet exhibition. And this was on Mother's Day. And I watched it with my mom who lives in Colorado and I'm in Boston. And I will say, that was probably the first Mother's Day in about 16 years that we spent together doing this thing. And there were a lot of people who had experiences like that.
And I think that's like the one thing out of all of these virtual events that I think has been the biggest surprise to me or not the biggest surprise, but with a good reminder, is that our events should not just be the opportunity for us to connect with our members. It's about our members connecting with the people that they love. And it's actually those memories that are going to be the ones that stick and stick with their loyalty with us, more than them interacting with me or anyone else from the museum.
Alice Stryker:
I totally agree. And for what it's worth, we've been really struggling, it's just like a straight donation during this time. And at the bottom of all of our communications about our programs, we've had a donate button, not a join button and donate button. And the number of first time donors that we've had since your experiences, just like you're outlining, Julia, has been incredibly humbling. Our programs also allowed folks to make a little tribute with their gifts and both of them saying the most incredible things about our programs. And again, I think it's because we've been free and available to everybody. So sure, we may be missing something by not doing something just for members, but I think what we're missing, we're actually making up in revenue and relationships with the broader community.
Julia Propp:
That's awesome. Congratulations, Alice. We've had a similar thing. That's great.
Dan Sullivan:
That's awesome. So we've got a handful of questions in the Q&A here that we're going to get to, but another question I've got, how do you prepare your staff and specifically your frontline staff, or even yourselves as you engage with your members, how do you communicate interaction, best practices and communicating new protocols? What are some strategies around doing that? Julia, do you want to start us off?
Julia Propp:
Yeah, I mean, I think as I said, we're still very much focused on getting staff in the building. So we're just starting to really grapple with how to prepare frontline staff. And we're thinking about this in all sorts of different ways, but I think again, that idea about how do we help audiences work through trauma and that framework, is actually, it's really helpful because it's, the pillars are safety truth and transparency, peer support, collaboration, empowerment of voice, and acknowledging your history. And I think all six of those are super introspective things.
They help get to all of the issues and disparities that a lot of our institutions have been having, but at that practice, equip staff and different people to operate with empathy and compassion and not to say that sometimes we're just going to need to have deescalation scripts on hand because you're all just going to have to wear a mask and like that's going to have to get through it. But I think there's going to be customer service policies and then there's going to be how we enact those policies and infuse them into everything we do. And I think that larger work is actually the meatier work that's going to have more sustained value and impact on our organization.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. And Alice, how about on your side? What are your thoughts there?
Alice Stryker:
Same. We've been, in addition to doing, I know it's like you could have just had one of us on.
Julia Propp:
Yeah, exactly.
Alice Stryker:
In addition to a lot of the empathy work that we're working on internally, we are doing things like deescalation training. Like it's just going to be, especially for our folks that are right on the frontline of just waves of people coming from Times Square, theoretically one day or who knows? It's really important for those folks to feel empowered, to be able to say respectfully to someone, "I'm sorry, without a mask, you're not welcome." But in addition to that, one of the biggest pillars of our institution has always been to create a welcoming, safe space for everybody. And so it's been wonderful to go into these conversations with our staff, to know that we're all already on the same page and we don't want to make somebody feel like they don't belong.
And so one of the biggest concerns that we've been grappling with is what happens if someone says for medical purposes, they're not able to wear a mask? Now, this is a relatively small community, but it's been at our forefront because we pride ourselves on creating an accessible and inclusive space. So we need to be prepared to have something real and empathetic to say to someone who cannot wear a mask while they're visiting. And so that empathy has been key and central to developing a communications protocol for all of our staff. Even those of us like myself, who aren't in the box office every single day, right when we open.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. And I think that, that dovetails with another question that I was wondering, which is, are you planning to prepare your staff ways to deescalate situations with members? And Alice, it sounds like you're doing some training with your team and Julia, it sounds like you've got a script. Anything else that either of you want to elaborate on?
Alice Stryker:
I think for us, proactive communication and having resources available on your website and through your ticketing platforms or however, somebody purchases a membership virtually, I think managing expectations for all of us for every situation is always the key to making sure that you're not going to be disappointed or frustrated. And so we've been trying to create various sections of our website that say, for example, to members, portions of your benefits may not be available. Our gift shop may not be open, our concession stands may not be open. And so just trying to make sure that they know what is or isn't available well before they arrive, we're hoping we'll then diffuse any tension that may be percolating.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely.
Julia Propp:
Yeah. The last step of deescalation work is on the front line, right? It's all, if we're doing our work right, that deescalation is happening in the press release, it's happening on the website, it's happening, everything we're touching is part of the member and visitor experience.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. So another question here before we get to the Q&A, do you have any advice? You're both in high density areas. Do you have any advice for other museums that are operating in high density, in urban areas, or COVID hotspots, just any general best practices that you're willing to share?
Alice Stryker:
I mean, stay closed guys. I hate to say it, but it's not smart. Don't open if you don't have to. I think as frustrating for all of us truly as it was to hear from the governor and the mayor, "Sorry, museums you're not allowed to reopen." And as much lobbying as we're doing to try to show how safe we are, ultimately for all of society, especially we just continued to say put, wear a mask and maintain social distance. If you're able to do that successfully, you're being damn amazing. One of those core things we've been using in our lobbying efforts is that we're planning as an institution to treat all of our visitors and all of our staff, frankly, like they have COVID.
So if we assume every single person has COVID, how does that change, for example, the way visitors create and move around the space? How does it change the box office experience? How does it change the way we emphasize advanced ticketing? And that beacon is, is helpful for us, but ultimately the guidance we've been given still is to just say closed. We're hoping that changes as cases continue to drop in New York city. I mean, it's been great and very encouraging to see how maintaining social distance, wearing a mask and not going to indoor restaurants and bars frankly, has really helped the case count stay very low in the entire Tri-state region. So I don't know if that's not helpful and because most of our decisions are out of our control, but stay closed.
Julia Propp:
I mean, I think to that end, I think making sure you're in lock step with your city or working with your city and partnering. But I think, I don't know, especially since this is a peer call, I think it's worth calling out like when the cultural sector and the nonprofit sector, we have a big feeling of needing to show up. That like when we have to be at work, we need to be at work. We need to be in the office. And I think one of the things as we're working on reopening and it is a testament to the work ethic and feeling of responsibility and commitment. But there's a FOMO of like, "No, we all have to be in the building if we're going to reopen."
And I think this is a moment of really making sure that as an industry, we're practicing self care as we're taking care of each other and we are making it okay. I mean, again, I think this is where focusing on the staff experience, we need to make it okay for our staff to, as much of our staff to be at home as possible and that they are still contributing to the workforce and to not create friction within departments or divisions between frontline and back, backend. But I mean, I think that is going to actually be a lot of the work for us because as much as visitors and everything are going to be controlled by the city, our own internal staff cultures are going to be the things that we're going to have agency and control over.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. So let's get into a few of these Q&A questions here. Now, the first one is from Dave and he asks, "Do you have a written reopening plan? And do you revise it as your opening date and requirements change?"
Alice Stryker:
I mean, I can say for New York city, it's been really great. There has been a consortium of museums that have been meeting weekly since the closure citywide has happened and I can check to see if it's available. I would be happy to share it if I can, but it's basically something that the museum consortium created guidelines for museums to use when they're reopening. And we found for our community that if natural history is going to be giving out complimentary face masks to all visitors, that could hurt a smaller museum that maybe can't afford to do that policy. So we've been trying as a group to create unified open-end protocol so that visitors can feel safe at all the museums and that we're not putting an untoward burden on any of our smaller or medium sized institutions that maybe can't afford some of the more expensive COVID related, safety protocols. So yeah, we're working as a group.
Julia Propp:
Okay. Yeah, we don't have a reopening plan so much, but we have a safety plan. We have a reopening framework, I would say because the framework remains iterative and nimble, right? But the safety plan, I think that is the one that is quickly becoming a very encyclopedic entry, everything from staff protocols, visitor protocols, HVAC systems, I think we're all learning much more about air circulation than we ever thought that we would.
Dan Sullivan:
It's been a great opportunity to learn a variety of new things on many levels. So the next question is from Diana, "What research methods are you using to understand the needs of your members during this time? Are you doing surveys? Are you calling?" What are some of the things that you both are doing? Julia, do you want to start us off?
Julia Propp:
Sure. Well, and I mean, I think industry wide, there's been some amazing research that's been done in the field Slover Linett and LaPlaca Cohen with the Culture Track Survey. We did a lot of that survey with our audience through that work. And I would just say anybody on the, I think that's free and accessible to everyone. That is a huge wealth of information. And also I think just from the Boston area, we've set up a cohort and a listserve of different professionals in the area. I have a monthly call with membership directors and other cultural institutions. And I see that there are a few highs too. And I think it's all about community sharing. I think we'd be at the survey of our audiences, I feel like that's a given, but how do we take that insight and become actionable? I feel like the peer network that we've been able to develop in this time has been so invaluable.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely.
Alice Stryker:
Yeah, I completely agree. And one of the things too, so what we've been doing is sharing exactly what you're saying, Julia, the survey results that all of us internally in New York city have had of our members, of our perspective visitor, the past visitors and pulling that information together to inform this reopening framework and regulations and rules that all of us are going to be adapting together because that really is what's important, is making sure people feel safe and that they've been heard. And so, yeah, it's all of it.
Dan Sullivan:
All of it. Okay, so here's another question. Are you changing membership benefits since a lot of these benefits can't be implemented? Have either of you shifted your benefits throughout the last few months at all, or introduced new benefits?
Julia Propp:
So I can say, before we went into closure, because we're in the middle of celebrating our 150th anniversary at the MFA, yay, COVID. As part of our 150th, we launched a double admission benefit for all of our members. And it was actually, it's actually a pilot that we are testing to see if we increase the admission benefits for our members. Do they bring more people? Do they come more? And then of course, we closed for six months and now, but so we went back and forth on whether or not we are going to, when we reopen, hopefully early fall, we are going to continue these early admission benefits and that's going to help us buy some time as we try to figure out some of the more complicated benefits like guest passes and all of that stuff. Now you guys got a digital guest pass option.
We also are trying to figure out, but I think a lot of those other things, and I think this gets to the other conversation that Alice and I were talking about in terms of trying to go to loyalty and relationships. So it's not about what I get, it's about what I make possible. I think that is the work that this process has taught us like the foils of having a transactional based membership. So having the discount in restaurants and shops and all of these different things, it doesn't mean diddly if they can't come and use those discounts and use the membership. But we know, like we know from our tried and true members, many of them that are in the high risk category, but they haven't visited the museum for years, let alone in the last six months. But those aren't the benefits that actually are meaningful to them. They give for an entirely different reason and that's the sweet spot in the magic that we want to tap into for all of them.
Dan Sullivan:
I think that is such an important element to this thought process. You take the visitation off the table entirely. You can't come at all. What is the value? What's the benefit? And that's really where this shift is occurring from that transactional value to starting to support the mission.
Alice Stryker:
I was just going to say the same thing, where we were actually very, the timing of this was unbelievable. We were hoping to re launch our membership program in 2021. So this was going to be our learning year to have conversations exactly like we're having right now with membership professionals all over the country to evaluate what's our pricing structure, what are the benefits, tangible and intangible of membership and how can we, include some of the things that we find are exciting for people in our new program. That all has taught us that this intangible piece, this piece of philanthropy, the sense of community and belonging is actually the most beneficial part of memberships, COVID or not.
And so that's something, we probably will not be relaunching our membership program next year. We'll just have a go give another year to see what the new normal actually is before we tweak everything. And also we do our website and our brand. With this, COVID has given us ample time to reflect on. But yeah, so we for now have not changed our pricing or benefits, instead we focus on communicating what we hope will be available once we reopen and then how members will have access to more and more spaces as we reopen more and more services once they reopen. But for now, we're not changing a thing, we're just waiting.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. One last question from me or second last question. What are some ways to stay connected to your members or your audience who might not be comfortable coming back yet? Any thoughts on that?
Julia Propp:
I mean, we have to honor that, right? Like I think this is going to be the thing is there's going to be a lot of our audiences. And unfortunately, some of our peers who have opened before, like both of us, have experiences that we aren't seeing audiences come back in droves. And even our loyal members aren't going to want to come. They aren't going to be ready to come back. And the majority of a lot of our core constituents are going to be in that high risk category. And so I think we need to, I think that is actually something we're going to embrace. And this is going to be tough because none of us are operating with amazing budgets and like we're all overstaffed and all of these different things. So we're going to have to hold the virtual space and the onsite space in the same importance. And we're going to have to figure out the bridge for it.
But just because we open our doors, it doesn't mean all of this work that we've been doing in creating this digital virtual content goes away. In fact, it even becomes more important. And I think it becomes a really important bridge as more and more people are becoming comfortable on this digital sphere. They're getting more engaged with technology. This is actually going to be the real opportunity for people who no longer for different reasons come to your institution, how can they stay engaged? It actually transforms that opportunity into something that we can actually leverage and monetize long-term. So I think actually, like I want to hold us all accountable to not letting go of that and actually to lean in.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And Alice, anything else you want to throw in there?
Alice Stryker:
I just want to give a concrete example to exactly what Julia is talking about. So one of the constituencies that are the most important constituencies at the museum above even our most generous donors are the men who served aboard Intrepid and our submarine and the space shuttle. We call them our former crew member community. As you can imagine, these, boisterous, groups consist of folks who are in their late 90s, who served aboard Intrepid during World War II, all the way to folks who were on the shuttle in the 70s. So it's a very diverse age range of people. And this group has not felt comfortable coming to the museum at all. They will not feel comfortable coming to the museum in the near future either.
What we started doing with them, they actually did it themselves, was organizing a weekly Zoom call, where they share resources, they do naval trivia, they share pictures of their grandkids. They share their collections of items. I mean, it is the sweetest thing you've ever seen in your life. And they also have like monthly meetings where they talk about scholarships and things, and that is all happening remotely right now.
And they to Julia's point, have seen a significantly higher participation now than they ever have before. And that's just because it's more convenient. It's easier to log onto a Zoom call than it is to walk all the way into Midtown for a meeting. And so that's something that they probably will continue when we're able to reopen and when they're able to come back aboard, I bet you they'll still take their virtual meetings, they'll take place. Because you can see how happy they are because of them.
Dan Sullivan:
So true. And oftentimes the boundary standing between you and getting to that milestone of like, for example, serving Zoom calls, it may seem larger than it actually is. When in actuality, when you start to facilitate those calls, it's just really easy. You spin the thing up, it takes five minutes. You send out the links and someone sits on the call for 30 minutes. It's the potential challenge of introducing another, just another thing to do, is much larger than the actual facilitation of that. I have one last question. It's a big one. What is a big takeaway that either one of you would share or both of you would share, with each person watching that they can take that's actionable, bring it back to their organization and say, "Hey, I just learned this on this webinar." Julia, why don't you start us off?
Julia Propp:
Oh, I mean, It sounds hokey, but I feel like Alice and I are both talking about this is that it's not about the bells and whistles, it's not about the coupon. It's about relationship building. And set the foundation right. And I also, I think I'm just going to keep evangelizing, first year is, first full year is the acquisition period. I think that's my sound bite.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. Alice, take us home.
Alice Stryker:
I totally agree. And in fact, that's my big thing always is communication, over-communication, communicate vulnerably, like all of the things that you do to establish a relationship with any of your best friends should be the exact same way of managing a membership program. You want to be the friend that shows up and is there and is a shoulder to cry on, a place to celebrate, at any moment. And that's my job.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Great insights. Both of you, thank you so much. A couple of quick things before everyone leaves, a recording of this webinar will be available on the Cuseum website later today. You can feel free to send it to all of your friends as well. And then secondly, we did a little ebook, there'll be a link to that in the chat in a moment, but you can feel free to download The Ultimate Guide to Surviving and Thriving as a Cultural Organization in the 21st century. And that's available, available for download as well on the Cuseum website. It's great. And then lastly, I just want to say thank you to Julia and thank you to Alice for being here. Your insights are phenomenal. Your energy is contagious. So I really appreciate you. Well, thanks for being here and everyone else for tuning in, we appreciate you being here and everyone has a safe and healthy weekend. We'll see you soon. Bye.
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