The Fundraising Process
*This post is directed toward museum professionals, but these simple fundraising to-dos translate to nearly all nonprofits.
In March, I spoke about how zoos and aquariums can engage audiences using social media at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Mid-Year Meeting. Before the session started, I asked folks to raise their hands according to which department they served in their institution. No less than 30 of the 40 people in the room worked in marketing and PR departments. About eight or nine people worked in education, conservation, or husbandry (which is important; online engagement is an effective tool for education)
…and only one person was part of a development department.
Social media does not belong to the marketing department. In fact, the museums that use it best focus on engagement and education. Social media and online engagement are incredible new tools in our ‘museum professional’ toolboxes… Social media informs. It educates. It creates connections….So why aren’t fundraisers getting with these new tools like the marketers?
Creating an effective social media presence requires collaboration with multiple museum departments. Utilizing social media within the development department is just plain smart. I don’t just mean utilizing social media to help meet a museum’s bottom line through mobile giving campaigns (like this one) or publicizing membership events–though it can be used very effectively for these purposes. If marketing, education, and development can work together to track social media interaction and engage audiences, then it can benefit all three divisions.
Here are three easy, low-resource ways that social media can help development departments build connections and keep a pulse on donor engagement:
1) Note interactions with donors on Facebook and Twitter to monitor buy-in.
An advantage that the development division has? They know who the donors are. Engagement of these folks is particularly important and may lead to further giving. Figure out which of your donors ‘like’ you on Facebook and make it a habit to skim your organization’s Facebook page at the end of each day (or week, even) to see if a donor engaged on the site. This information helps you keep a pulse on your donors. For instance, you may just have a better chances making a formal ask to someone who you know is seeing and interacting with your content. That person is actively keeping tabs on the institution and engaged on a day-to-day basis (and you know it).
2) Make a private Twitter list of small and large-scale donors- and make a point to interact with them.
Retweet them, @ reply them. Whatever you do, don’t ignore them. Because Twitter is a site for active engagement and open information-share, there’s potential to summon excitement and connection through this platform. It’s a bit more difficult to create direct conversation on Facebook. Quick Google searches can often indicate whether or not a specific donor has a twitter account. It’s easy to quickly search and compile a list of donor’s Twitter accounts to pass along to the marketing department (or whomever is managing social media). Give them the list and ask them to keep tabs on these folks using Twitter’s private lists. This way, followers cannot see your donors, but the person running social media has a quick and easy way to remember who to keep an eye on and engage.
3) Take note of donor’s interests through social media to hone your story and find your connection.
Social media profiles and activities can provide a lot of personal information about donors. Marketeers use this information to help trace their demographic, but fundraisers should be using social media to fill in gaps about donors’ interests so that they can be more efficiently ‘courted’ at events and on-site. Checking up on social media activities doesn’t just help by uncovering that, say, a donor is running a half marathon next week (which may or may not be useful to you). By utilizing your museum’s social media channels, fundraisers can learn a lot about what it is about the institution that engages the donor. If someone tends to ‘like’ statuses about specific events or artists, that gives you a peek into their interests– And even better than that; it gives you a peek into your shared interests.
Some fundraisers make it personal by being the face of their cultural center’s fundraising efforts for certain donors. When using social media, transparency is critical and this method banks on that fact, in a way.
Generation Y has incredible giving potential, if you can tap into it- and they are on social media. In fact, many of us were raised with virtual connections and it’s an easy way for us to communicate. Fundraisers who can figure out how to use this medium by keeping tabs on and engaging with donors virtually may have a big advantage in the long run.
*Photo credits to Tushneem’s Ramble
How Planned Parenthood Used Social Media to Create a Win-Win Situation for their Cause
February 21, 2011
Over the weekend alone, more than 357,000 people signed Planned Parenthood’s online open letter to Congress to oppose the recent vote from the House of Representatives to bar federal funding for the organization. Planned Parenthood utilized social media to help reposition themselves from a “losing” situation (facing cuts in federal funding) to more of a win-win situation (garnering public support and raising awareness and passion for their cause).
Nonprofits rock at using social media because it supports storytelling, inspires personal connections, and heightens the transparency required to attract donors. It does these things better, and at less of a cost, than a Superbowl ad (or most any ad, for that matter). But there’s an ongoing tension between social media and its ability to have a direct, positive monetary impact for organizations. Like so many actions in the world of nonprofits, it’s hard to monetize and determine the ROI of the effort in terms of dollars.
Planned Parenthood has created a win-win situation: If Planned Parenthood succeeds in overcoming the recent vote to bar federal funding for the organization, then they will have a monetary benefit that resulted from online engagement efforts (they kept funding that might otherwise be lost). But if hundreds of thousands of social media users signing an open letter causes no change in government action, Planned Parenthood still wins. They’ve managed to create a compelling call to action that got their cause into the newsfeed of millions of people in an urgent and compelling way that folks are likely to remember. These people are potential donors with a new reason to contribute. If Planned Parenthood inspires government funding or not, it was still a huge success to summon potential donors who may give money to the organization, should the cuts go through. If your nonprofit organization is going to lose federal funding (which is almost never a “win”), it probably doesn’t hurt to capture hundreds of thousands of hearts in the process.
For better or worse, this case illustrates some interesting ideas about how people relate to causes via social media. Here are some observations that may have led to the organization’s online success:
1. Planned Parenthood’s open letter made it easy to be an evangelist for a cause. Signing the letter takes less than a minute and the letter may have received a lot of attention for that very reason. It made caring about a cause easy and it let people think that they were doing something extremely significant. And they actually were, indeed, becoming evangelists for something significant. Public service and social causes are growing increasingly important to us as consumers (read: supporters and donors), which also may have aided in inspiring thousands to sign the letter. This is over-simplified, but here’s the point: making the letter easy to sign made it easy for people to do something “good,” and because that’s cool and you are cool when you support social change, people want to share that they support it. Result? Lots and lots of easy evangelists.
2. The call to action wasn’t the most important one. It was the most urgent. The call to action isn’t for monetary support, though that would be more active and likely have a bigger impact than adding your name to a letter that may or may not be considered significant in the eyes of officials. Although I hope that it is, it’s not a stretch to see how this online letter might not be taken too seriously. Case in point? The Facebook group called “We Hate the New Facebook, so STOP CHANGING IT!!!” has 1.5 million fans. Not even Facebook cares to listen to the group and it’s on their own platform. Like the Planned Parenthood letter, there’s no threatening action here to make leaders think these people care all too much when it comes down to it. The letter and its support could easily be written off as something that may have more to do with exposure than passionate belief that funds formally allocated to Planned Parenthood shouldn’t go somewhere else. Putting your name on an online letter is something, but it’s far from the most active thing that Planned Parenthood could ask their supporters to do. In fact, Planned Parenthood didn’t seem to ask for active donations at all in their I Stand with Planned Parenthood campaign. Was that the right move? Maybe. Maybe not.
3. Planned Parenthood has cultivated 400,000+ emotional investors just online. That’s a lot of potential passion and a lot of visibility. The above points are far from proving on any level that the social media push was not a great idea for the organization. In fact, though it likely wasn’t the primary goal, Planned Parenthood succeeded in creating a large-scale spread of the most valued kind of marketing: word of mouth. Facebook is interesting territory for marketers. It’s a great way to create conversation and spread your message. However, it is a relatively closed network compared to, say, Twitter- where statements can be searched and seen by anyone. To expand your fan-following on Facebook, you need to get other people to spread your message so that it comes up on the newsfeeds of the users’ networks. Planned Parenthood mastered this by sending a follow-up email to each person who signed up for the open letter with a prominent button asking you to make the message your Facebook status. It was easy and it worked. It’s likely that all 400,000+ supporters knew about Planned Parenthood before coming across the letter, but now those supports have done three valuable things:
- learned more about the organization, assuming they read the letter they signed
- took action to support the cause (emotional investment)
- and many stated their support publicly (solidifying their emotional support and integrating it into their online identity).
4. What Planned Parenthood does next, counts. The organization has built incredible momentum and Planned Parenthood will likely have to do something to harness that momentum before it dwindles. If you’re a museum person, this is the same problem that the Museum of Science and Industry faced after they chose their Month at the Museum winner. How do you keep people engaged for the main event? In this case, how do you get these people to stick around to see if Planned Parenthood gets federal funding? More importantly, how can you utilize this momentum to get people to help support the organization financially if it doesn’t…. or even if it does? There’s a lot of potential here, and there’s a lot that nonprofit organizations can learn about the role of social media in advocacy through what happens next.
As a side for museum-focused folks out there (and others!), Planned Parenthood isn’t the only organization that risks losing funding. There are some scary anti-museum amendments being considered by Congress for FY 2011. While reading about Planned Parenthood, it’s hard not to wonder what the online museum community would do if a severe anti-museum amendment threatened the industry that we both care about fiercely, and that supplies jobs to fellow museum aficionados. Nonprofit organizations in general can learn a lot by watching and supporting Planned Parenthood’s efforts right now. Particularly with regard to the evolving tool of social media which will likely play a growing and important role in advocacy, enagement, and summoning public support to create and realize change.
Please weigh-in with comments about lessons you are taking away from the situation and interesting tidbits that may help shape how nonprofits can use social tools to cultivate political support.
How Museums Can Use Social Media to Engage Different Types of Learners
December 15, 2010
*Can’t see the chart because you are receiving this post via email? Check it out here.
Social Media and online engagement helps museums to reach more people more effectively by communicating content in ways that resonate with different types of learners. In this way, social media can be seen not only as a marketing tool, but a method of engagement for community building– and above all, a tool for learning.
Many have likely heard of the three most widely acknowledged types of learners: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. In Dr. Bruce D. Friedman’s book, How to Teach Effectively, he identifies a fourth type of learner: the reader-writer. I have included it in the chart above because I believe that the onset of the increasing popularity of online tools has given this kind of learner a bit more spotlight in recent years. According to psychologists, most people identify strongly with one of the particular learning profiles mentioned above. Though it’s thought that folks have one main learning style, it’s more likely that an individual learns through a combination of these methods, with one or two standing out has the most prominent.
Museums are heaven for kinesthetic learners, but what about other kinds of learners? An interactive museum is an ideal informal learning environment for a kinesthetic learner who retains information and gains understanding through hands-on activities. It would be crazy to think that museums aren’t, in many ways, heaven for certain kinds of visual and auditory learners as well. But social media and the unspoken call-to-action for involvement that comes with increased social connectivity allows folks to learn from the museum- even when they are no longer at the museum.
- Visual Learners- These individuals learn best from pictures, videos, diagrams, and visualization. YouTube and Flickr serve as powerful ways to reach and engage these learners from home. Facebook is a secondary tool because it allows fans to be connected to a museum’s YouTube and Flickr accounts. In other words, it allows links to these sites to come from one aggregated place– assuming your museum posts statuses that connect to other social media accounts. Moreover, Facebook allows visual learners to observe a sort-of timeline of organizational happenings. This way of showing a museum’s news is helpful to a visual learner. Museums can reach this audience via social media by updating Flickr and YouTube accounts with content related to the museum or the area it covers.
- Auditory Learners- These natural listeners would rather have something explained to them than to read it. Want to get their attention? A podcast should work. YouTube can also serve as a powerful platform for engaging auditory learners, and it’s a tool with twice the power when used with folks who are a part visual and part auditory learner. Museums can reach this audience via social media by creating a podcast or explaining inner-workings of the museum or topics of interest on YouTube.
- Read/Write Learners- These learners like to see things in writing, and many often need to get their thoughts down on paper (or on a computer screen) in order to take reflection to the next level. It seems as though social media is ideal for these learners, as reading and writing are strongly connected to the Internet, and it the primary method of communicating via social networks. It makes sense that these learners would like social media sites like Facebook and Twitter which allow them to read-up on happenings while also providing the opportunity to contribute. I’d guess that most bloggers and blog commentors are read/write learners. Museums can reach this audience via social media by hosting active Facebook and Twitter accounts and maintaining a blog which allows for site visitor contributions.
In sum: while museums are beneficial for kinesthetic learners and other types of learners as well, social media provides an opportunity for museums to engage these learners in a new way. When responsibility for social media is shared among departments within a museum (or content is created in collaboration), the opportunities for spreading the museum’s mission increases. As a side thought, I wonder if for folks there is both a preferred way to learn in general and a preferred way to learn online. For instance, I think even kinesthetic learners have another preference for learning online. Learning from resources on the Internet is commonplace though we frequently have to be wary of our sources. There’s an opportunity for museums to help “own” a chunk of online learning– and social media may be just the key.
Like the photos of kinesthetic learning in action above? The first photo of the Arizona Science Center, the other is from a very cool article about the California Science Center.
MSI’s Month at the Museum: Marketing vs. Mission
November 29, 2010
Did they merge the two?
Do you remember how Tom Hanks’s character walked around in a bathrobe while living in the airport in the movie The Terminal? Or how Natalie Portman got creative while living in Walmart in Where The Heart Is? I thought Kate’s Month at the Museum would be something like that crossed with Mythbusters. I imagined all-nighters spent making Home Alone-worthy physics-filled gadgets to fight off the possibility of living mannequins. I looked forward to hearing the thoughts of a normal person who has excessive time to contemplate every stage of baby chick development. I imagined a cross between entrainment and learning and charming transparency; I was excited to learn along with Kate. Instead, I learned that Kate learned.
Don’t get me wrong. I think that the Month at the Museum was engaging, fun, and a great marketing endeavour that opens the doors for several new opportunities for museums… but why weren’t mission and marketing more united in this innovative-museum-world initiative?
Kate spent her last day in the Museum of Science and Industry on November 18th. The Month at the Museum seemed to be used primarily as a marketing tool for the institution. And I think it worked well in that way. Kate’s glass cube was awesome. The competition was awesome. There’s a sort of magic about having the opportunity to spend the night (let alone several) inside a museum with doll houses, interactive activities, and a darkened 727. However, the Month at the Museum could have transcended the boundaries of a marketing project and more efficiently engaged audiences in the wonders of science while promoting the museum.
Bravo to MSI for taking on a roommate and opening their doors to the world. They have set a great standard. But, should MSI have the opportunity to take on another overnight visitor, I would like to present some changes to make the experience even more time-and-interest worthy for folks at home. The thing that unites all of the following suggestions? Making it more about people and learning, and less about Kate. Don’t get me wrong: as another female twenty-something Chicago native– I thought Kate was spunky and fun. But I don’t know if all demographics relate to Kate, or even if Kate represents the demographic that the MSI was trying to reach… even though she did frequently make me smile.
1) Get people involved during the month. The Month at The Museum initiative was arguably the biggest success during the competition stage. Over 1,500 people applied or submitted videos and folks even created a “We Applied for MSI’s Month-at-the-Museum” Facebook group. The event was publicized in newspapers, blogs, and news broadcasts all over the country. But after the winner was picked, the buzz died down. Why? There’s no reason why Kate’s adventures couldn’t be made to be news-worthy throughout the month by keeping the innovation going. The vision of the MSI is to “inspire and motivate our children to achieve their full potential in the fields of science, technology, engineering and medicine.” That’s an exceptional vision but Kate’s Month at the Museum didn’t help people do that very easily. Getting the community involved in creative ways throughout the event would have painted a more accurate picture of the institution and its values. Here’s a quick brainstorm of things that could have helped:
- putting out a call for things people wanted to see her do in the museum
- hosting a daily “Kate Report” in which she interviews visiting kids and families about what they’ve learned
- posing daily challenges to visitors such as to walk like a T-rex for the rest of the day, do their best impressions of the inner-workings of body parts, or offer a prize to the person who can best explain why a tornado spins (with creative, silly answers also featured).
- put on a could-be historically accurate skit with visitors in Yesterday’s Main Street exhibit
- conduct a real-life version of Leno’s Jay Walking and test the science literacy of visitors (with their permission, of course)
2) Make it about learning more than living. Kate shared what she learned with us through a few videos after she learned it. Case in point? SnugSci Episode 3 (or 2 or 1). However, it wasn’t often that we got to learn along with Kate. It would have been fun to see Kate go around in a snuggie and mash-up cool parts of her tour of the Science Storms exhibit with Olivia, the on-site scientist and one of the creators of the exhibit. And while snuggie science aims to teach us something, most of Kate’s videos are more of a video diary in which the audience is removed from the experience. Some ideas that wold have gotten us more actively involved? Here’s a few:
- make creative mash-ups of tours from on-site scientists
- engage in a ridiculous but scientifically-correct debate with an exhibit interpreter
- walk us through Kate’s favorite interactives as she masters each of them and challenges others to a duel
- spend a full day in the life of a coal miner, having interpreters aid Kate in learning what her day-to-day life would be like working there.
- spend a day living in the Smart Home without using any energy or making any kind of carbon footprint (or try to do that for the whole month!)
3) But a little more living would have been cool, too. Two of my favorite videos from Kate show an insight into her day-to-day life while living at the museum. I love this one where Kate pretends to go crazy being alone in the museum. I also like this one where she actually shows viewers what she thinks is the scariest exhibit at night. Kate lived at the museum for a full month, so it’s fun to see insights into how she lived. (Though I must give some serious kudos to Kate for showing just how fun it can be to work in a museum). Given the reality of time constraints, I think Kate did a good job in this arena, but here are a few things that would have been fun to see:
- a morning routine in which Kate starts training for next year’s Chicago Marathon, showing her route around the inside of the museum visiting her favorite exhibits. Kate mentions taking runs in some of her posts. Why not take us along?
- conduct a museum bathroom inspection and formally propose which bathroom is the very best in the museum
- solve a mystery (the case of the missing bernoulli ball)
- discover a secret hideout in the museum for when Kate needs a break from the cube
- sleep in the Zephyr and create physics-filled booby traps just in case mannequins come to life
- try to summon spirits within the museum
- name the chicks in the hatchery
4) Give us some more fun features to inspire audiences in science education. The Museum of Science and Industry is in the business of inspiring people and making learning fun. And learning is fun– even when you’re not a special, publicized guest living in a glass cube on-site.
- have a short, daily highlight or fun fact and compile them at the end into one video to summarize the weird awesomeness of the month
- on Kate’s first day, write down a list of science-based “Why” questions and make it a goal to get them answered before the month is up.
- make a MATM bucket list of things Kate is determined to do before the month’s end
- create a lip-dub to Weird Science with MSI staff members (this is less about science education, but highlights a sense of community)
Though I am sad that MSI’s Month at the Museum has come to an end, I look forward to seeing how museum’s will build upon the MSI’s idea. I expect to see many more initiatives involving transparency, and I hope that we will build upon these initiatives to merge mission and marketing in order to captivate audiences– with a purpose.
Have ideas for how MSI’s month at the Museum could have better merged mission and marketing? Please leave comments below.
Museums and Cultural Nonprofits: Social Media Doesn’t Belong to the Marketing Department
August 2, 2010
Social Media Marketing has become a common practice in the business world, and of course, nonprofits have picked up on the benefits of this kind of marketing, too. More than that, nonprofits are rocking the social media marketing scene.
But in our nonprofit world– which emphasizes the importance of building relationships to secure donors– pairing social media solely with marketing can cause big problems and overlook the benefits available to organizations through this media. Museums, in particular, have a lot to lose when educators, program creators, fundraisers, and even board members or power players say, “Social media? Why, that’s a marketing thing!”
Development Department: social media helps create connections. Social media is mastered by nonprofit organizations because it’s a low-resource way to connect with individuals. While it’s true that word of mouth marketing is the most powerful kind of marketing, and folks on social media share views on organizations through this media, the connections created have the potential to serve as catalysts for donations in the future. Viewing social media as purely a marketing department endeavor means that your museum may leave many connections to go flat because these connections must be built upon (like any relationship) and a marketing department trying to reach a wide audience may not have the capacity to cultivate these individual relationships. Moreover, this relationship cultivation is often thought to be the job of development folks! This is not to say that development must be running social media, but social media (and communications with the marketing department regarding social media) should be important in the development department. One way to get the development department more constructively involved might be for Marketing to hand over a list of folks who have been engaging with the museum through social media, and for Development to follow-up and be sure to cultivate those relationships. There may be opportunities for future funding in these relationships.
Education Department: social media can teach people things. Many museums do a great job of engaging visitors with educational content through social media so that the visitors’ learning doesn’t end when they exit the institution. In fact, this idea of taking the institution home is powerful in building both connections to the organization and to educational content. What happens when the education folks don’t share educational material through social media? An opportunity to continue sparking interest in a topic or idea is lost. What happens in most institutions is that the marketing folks provide the educational content (or at least link to educational content supplied by the education department). This is not a problem– that is, as long as Education is working alongside Marketing to make sure that facts are correct and that cool information is free-flowing. Education must realize that social media can be an extension of the topics discussed at the museum– and a fun way to learn at home! Obviously, to be most effective, educational resources may need to evolve into new technologies and utilize other forms of new media (mobile apps, for example), but social media should be seen by the department as an educational resource offered by the institution, in a sense.
Power Players: social media keeps your organization relevant. Community engagement and community cultivation are gaining more and more ground in conversations and initiatives involving the future of museums. Social media is a step to help do this. Some of the best museums are already onto this fact enough to devote portions of their websites to social media communications. Being active in social media helps break the mental barrier that museums are slow-moving places that idolize the past and have little to do with the present or the future. The current types of social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc) may be trends, but there’s an argument that social media has already changed the way we communicate on the whole. Board members, Vice Presidents, and Presidents may not be doing their organization any favors by letting them fall behind in current communication methods. In fact, social media is generally low resource– why not rise to the top if you can?
Organizations that do not acknowledge the interconnectivity that social media provides among departments may function less efficiently and effectively than organizations that embrace this new way in which much of the world communicates. Social media doesn’t need to leave the Marketing Department (and arguably shouldn’t), but this idea that social media doesn’t play a role in individual departments or the institution as a whole as it relates to the broader community? That, I think, must leave as organizations prepare for the future.
It requires a thought change, or a breaking down of a vertical ladder. In order for social media to work best for museums and cultural nonprofits, then everyone must work together to maximize the resource because it blurs the lines between so many departments. As a whole, businesses are becoming more organic and interconnected. Maybe social media can be the catalyst that brings this kind of organizational change to museums so that we, too, may function more efficiently and reap the benefits of this kind of collaborative culture.
I’ll be honest: when I left my full-time gig at the Science Center in order to become a full-time graduate student last year, I was terrified by how this change would alter my own viewpoints and how I am perceived as a professional. I was concerned that I wouldn’t be taken as seriously if a majority of my time (the “full-time” part) was spent studying sector management as opposed to actively working in the sector.
Even as I am halfway into my graduate school experience, I can already look back and say that I had a right to be as terrified as anyone undergoing a big change (especially when thinking that my experience might be like this)– but I’d never take back the change in perspective that I’ve undergone for the time-being. I know full-well that by this time next year, the status will switch back and I will return to the full-time working world (oh, the magic of a professional degree; the point is to go back). But I will always understand the importance of thinking like a graduate student. Here’s why:
1) It forces you to see the big picture. There are things going on in every industry and the way we do business is always evolving. Currently social media, communication, soft skills, and Gen Y’s public service motivation are shaking things up in the nonprofit world, but even after those things run their course, there will be something else. When you are a graduate student you see these things– and what’s more: you see their collective effect on the industry because you spend nearly every day piecing together the puzzle. Thinking like this is extremely valuable because it helps you to mentally tackle many sector problems at once, and scientifically, this kind of thinking helps build up solutions more creatively than tackling one at a time– which is often done in a working environment. Thinking like a graduate student in this sense means always keeping an eye on the bigger picture of the industry as a whole, and it will result in creative solutions and a more complete understanding of where your difficulties lie.
2) Grad students have built-in microscopes or telescopes. That’s like having science tools built into their brains (for a few years), folks! This is directly related to point #1. People often joke that grad students always think what they are doing is important, even though it’s not. What’s really happening here (and the reason we grad students think what we’re uncovering is so important) is that we have a different perspective. As mentioned above, in professional degrees, we zoom out on the sector. Academic degrees tend to zoom in on a part of the sector. Either way, grad students are thinking in a way that is not common in workplace environments (whether it’s with their internal microscopes or a telescopes). Thinking differently spawns innovation. Grad students see something non-graduate students don’t see (and often vice-versa). There’s terrific potential here. When faced with a problem after graduate school, I’ll strap my telescope back on and see if I can think about things differently.
3) It makes you aware of your own strengths and interests. In graduate school, you can pursue your own interests within your degree. Beyond MPA student, I have no role defining my duties in one specific area (I can choose as I go). There is a lot of freedom in these programs to make yourself an expert on whatever strikes your interest. Similarly, in graduate school you must do everything from public presentations, to writing case studies, to leading debates, to drawing graphs to illustrate possible solutions to market failures. You learn quickly where you shine… and also where you stink. The bottom line lesson here, however, is to keep exploring and taking up new challenges in the working world. It may lead you to interesting solutions to problems. And trying new things helps you learn a lot more about yourself and how you handle certain situations– it’s teaching me a lot at any rate!
4) It gives you a feeling of purpose (which helps you live longer and makes you better at your job). I have two years while I’m obtaining my degree to challenge perspectives, share crazy ideas freely, and sink my teeth into the sector. I feel a sense of purpose when exploring skills required to improve the sector. Feeling a sense of purpose does more than reduce your risk of getting Alzheimer’s and help prevent depression. It actually makes you live longer. Studies have shown that purpose motivates us to accomplish things and grad students spend two years (or more) devoted to developing their purpose and career goals so that they can work hard for you (or themselves) after they graduate. What can people who aren’t in graduate school do to develop this mindset? Make time to focus on what you are doing and why.
5) It keeps you humble. Folks tend to feel like they are improving in their careers based on how many people are reporting to them throughout the years– or at least I felt this way a bit before I came to grad school. Now, nobody reports to me. I study with a lot of accomplished people and I take classes from distinguished professors. This is humbling. Also, full-time graduate students often take a financial hit to attend school (even if they are employed by the university or working a part-time job– or in my case, both). I’ve worked in hierarchical environments and I’ve started at the very bottom– but being broke, living on ideas, and being surrounded by thought-leaders is every bit as humbling as it is romantic and drive-inspiring. I will strive to keep this perspective and treat everyone as an accomplished classmate, regardless of their background or experience. Good ideas come from everywhere, and there’s no need to get cocky about my own.
5 Reasons Why I Chose to Pursue an MPA over an MBA
May 17, 2010
USC's 2009-2010 Officers of the Graduate Policy and Administration Committee with Associate Dean, Carol Rush
MPAs and MBAs have a lot in common: they are both professional degrees that provide management training by way of economics, policy, statistics, and finance. What made me pick an MPA (Master of Public Administration) over an MBA (Master of Business Administration), you might ask? The MBA is surely a beaten path with many, well known benefits…but considering my interest and passion for museums and nonprofits, an MBA just wasn’t for me. I liked the idea of a professional degree, but an MBA overlooked the defining features in my field of interest. Here’s why I decided to pursue an MPA over an MBA:
1) Museums and nonprofits have harder-to-measure outcomes
A defining characteristic of the nonprofit and public sectors is unmeasurable outcomes because the point of most nonprofits is to fulfill a social mission (nonprofit organizations cannot distribute profits). A powerful business is one that can make the most money (measurable). A powerful nonprofit is one that helps more people, most effectively (not-so-measurable). This does not mean that impact assessments are not critical in the nonprofit world and that they are strongest when they include quantitative data. However, to get an MBA would mean overlooking an opportunity to really think about solving problems of nonprofit outcome measurement and would mean focusing heavily on a monetary bottom-line, which is just not a characteristic of the sector. The MPA focuses on social missions while also emphasizing the skills required to obtain funding for an organization, which is much more relevant to my continuing work with nonprofit organizations.
2) It’s a problem-solving degree- ideal for an evolving sector
If MBA programs study the market, then MPAs try to solve market failures– and there’s an obvious difference between studying and solving. In the former, it’s been figured out, you’re just learning how to do it. In the latter, there’s a large-scale problem to be solved. MBAs are hired to make an individual company more profitable and there are books on this (lots of them!) with clear rules (“buy low, sell high,” “always be closing”). In contrast, MPAs are hired to take action to lead their organizations in making the world a better place… and our literature is not nearly as abundant and the tone is less certain. Our academic journals are filled with what’s happening right now or what’s happened in the past. This is ideal for the nonprofit sector because need and the way people communicate and connect (securing funding, donors, etc) is always evolving. There is certainly no better degree in this case, it’s just based on your goals and interests. Considering my interests, an MPA was the way to go.
3) My utility function includes public service
This is not to say that my utility function– and those of my MPA peers– doesn’t include income at all (or that the utility function of MBA grads never includes public service), but it is to say that public service drives my behavior more than money, and most likely drives the behavior of my classmates as well. It shouldn’t be surprising that nonprofit CEOs don’t make as much money as for-profit CEOs. On top of that, nonprofits are often understaffed and leaders may suffer from serious burnout. So why would us MPAs put ourselves through that? Because we want to make a difference. For some of us (and I’ll blame my background at The University of Chicago for the sincerity of this statement), we want to solve big problems and aren’t afraid of hard things. Some people might hate to look back and say, “I wish I made more money.” I respect that– and to each, his own. But for me, the most heartbreaking thing that I can imagine saying is, “I wish I made a difference for someone,” or “I wish I spent my life doing something I deeply cared about.” The MPA degree helps me build the skills to accomplish the things that I care about.
4) MPAs want to change the world… but we’re not impractical about it
I spend every day with folks who are determined to change the world. Are we starry-eyed and optimistic? Maybe. Too impractical to be effective? Definitely not. These professionals come from top tier institutions, much like the professionals that enter top MBA programs. Moreover, as an MPA, our speakers, mentors, and professors are professionals in policy and the nonprofit sector– rather than bankers and for-profit professionals. If I were to have pursued an MBA, our speakers and mentors would be those who best understand investment banking recruiting and achieving measurable outcomes– which would be much less relevant to me and my interests. Instead, I am surrounded by future foundation CEOs, grant writers, program producers, and nonprofit directors. A frequent happy hour topic for us: how not warm-and-fuzzy it is to work tirelessly for a mission.
5) The future: society’s priorities are placing higher importance on social good.
Signs are pointing toward the need for corporate environments to take on social missions– or at least some corporate social responsibility. Does this mean we might see some MPAs in corporate environments changing up the system in the near future? Perhaps. Consider this: Generation Y, the incoming professional leaders, are said to run on public service motivation. Unlike Generation X, these folks would much rather work for the government than a corporate giant. They want to give back to communities. Moreover, customers are more likely to consume goods that align themselves with some sort of social mission– and communication, transparency, and connection (nonprofit focuses) are beginning to lead corporate environments. In sum, the days of caring primarily about income and individual companies may be coming to a close. In fact, that’s what The Economist predicted for 2010 when they discussed the oncoming decline of the MBA.
When young nonprofit and museum professionals spout their desire to get an MBA because that’s what they think they “should” do, I cringe. There are many incredible reasons to get an MBA and great reasons to get an MPA as well; but I think it’s the responsibility of professional-degree-advocates to know why they are choosing one degree over the other.
How to Lead with Empathy: Read Fiction
February 16, 2010
It’s no surprise that great change-makers and business leaders (like Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Nelson Mandela), when asked about their favorite book, say something like “The Great Gatsby” rather than “How to Make Friends and Influence People.” Perhaps this is because fiction influences people in its own right; it makes readers better leaders.
Looking to hone your leadership skills? Here are five reasons why you should pick up a work of fiction:
Hemingway's 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' is a favorite book of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.
1. Fiction helps you understand other people’s emotions.
A study by the Journal of Research in Personality uncovered that readers of narrative fiction score highly on tests of empathy and social acumen. Not only that, but they score more highly on tests involving social reasoning . This kind of skill allows great leaders to connect with others on an emotional level, and it provides them with the emotional basis to tell compelling stories that engage others.
2. Fiction increases social ability.
Reading fiction puts you in somebody else’s head, and studies show that this is good practice for us in our ability to relate– not just to people on a one-on-one level– but to groups and in differing social situations. Fiction provides information on how and why people react to combinations of social forces, and by putting ourselves in the mind of the main character, we are challenging our own perspectives. This skill comes in handy for every leader, but you can imagine that a politician without high levels of emotional intelligence and with a less-than-perfect ability to maneuver socially might not retain favorable polls for very long.
3. Fiction enriches brain functioning.
Of all of our organs, the brain is the only one that will continue to grow and function if we nourish it properly. Reading fiction provides your brain with new scenarios that buff up our brains. And fiction gets us more involved than you might think: our brains are responsible for constructing the voices, appearances, gestures, and even smells of characters and scenes in novels. When we watch a play or see a film, many of these interpretations are resolved for us– so here’s a brain-enriching tip: read the book before you see the movie.
Nelson Mandela first read his favorite book, 'War and Peace,' while in prison in South Africa.
4. Fiction makes you more creative.
According to research conducted at Emory University, the brain’s reward pathways respond more strongly to unexpected stimuli rather than expected stimuli. Fiction, more so than other genres of literature, provides the most unexpected stimuli. Readers’ brains light up as they face new scenarios. Being exposed to these kinds of creative forces teaches our minds to think and act creatively in return. Want to perfect your creative problem-solving skills? Studies say that detective fiction will help.
5. Fiction makes you smarter. Fiction makes you smarter in two ways. First, reading has been shown to increase vocabulary and vocabulary is arguably the best single predictor of occupational success. Second, fiction exposes you to different time periods and cultures. It’s impossible to read The Great Gatsby without getting a sense of the prosperity of the roaring twenties in America. The Grapes of Wrath takes readers back to the Great Depression. Not only do readers get a professionally beneficial dose of vocabulary by reading fiction, but they also get an engaging history lesson and taste of other cultures.
When Learning is Cool: What it Means to Be Sparked
November 22, 2009
Sparks fly at the Boston Museum of Science. Photo from bostonvisitorsguide.com
From a little spark bursts a mighty flame” -Dante Allghieri
The spark is more than just a concept that museum professionals carry around on a day-to-day basis. Creating sparks is a real and actual everyday goal, and for some museum professionals, it is a decided lifetime mission… At least, this is the way that sparks functioned at Pacific Science Center.
Generally, the spark is understood to be the moment in which a visitor realizes that something– the educational object, experiment, or work of art in front of them– is deeply and sincerely cool. It’s a moment of connection. The spark is a synapse that bridges the junction between the way that we understand the world and how we understand a thing in front of us. Often the spark seems so cool because it gets you to think about something in a new way.
You’ve been sparked before. Try to remember a time when you saw something or took part in an activity (in a learning environment or elsewhere), and you uncovered something that you considered wholly and incredibly awesome. Some things that have sparked me are Paul Revere’s Ride, this speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V, this poem, and this scene from Dead Poet’s Society, for example.
That’s not to say that these same things should also spark and inspire you. Sparks are personal connections– and they happen in museums everyday. In fact, it wouldn’t be a big stretch to say that the creation of these connections is often the aim of integrative exhibitions and museum programs. Sparks don’t always necessarily inspire a person to change career paths, but they ignite or strengthen interest in something. There has been research performed and theories drawn on how to inspire certain kinds of connections in certain kinds of museums, and curiosity (often a post-spark result) has been called a key to happiness by psychologists.
The following is an excerpt called On a Thing Called Art, written by Jeanette Winterson. This clip is about art, but she presents a case for the importance of connections. I find it to be the best case for sparks that I’ve yet to come across. Have a listen:
Sparks ignited in museums and other learning environments (informal or otherwise), lead to connections and curiosity. Schools, museums, community centers, and educational programs provide unique opportunities to open ourselves up to new sparks of interest that may have lasting impressions on the way that we view particular subjects and situations.
I write this post to provide an outline of what I mean when I use the word “spark” in blog posts. Because the spark (inspiring it, sharing it, and understanding it) serves as significant fuel for my professional interests, I felt the need to introduce the topic in my own terms. Please feel free to respond with your own takes on the concept, or with messages about things that have sparked you.
Weighing Outputs: Measuring Social Impact in Museums and Nonprofits
November 18, 2009
Photo from hollis333.wordpress.com
Since writing my last post, I’ve done a bit more thinking about our most recent prompt within the Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers Alliance: How do you measure social impact? Check out some of the responses so far. Don’t forget to follow us on twitter and add your 2 cents by using the tag #NMBA.
Evidence-based policy is not the only thing compelling museums and community centers to come up with some sort of accurate measure of social impact. Donors want to know where their money is going. How is the museum elevating the community? What is the impact of museum programs and exhibits?
…But how do you measure the unmeasurable? Perhaps a certain interactive exhibit at a science center inspired the spark that will fuel a young girl to become a paleoanthropologist in 15 years. How do we measure that– and how do we even know if that spark took place at all?
It makes sense that we have a tendency to focus primarily on outputs (clients served or number of programs performed) rather than outcomes (desired goals) in museum environments. According to Hill and Lynn in Public Management: a Three-Dimentional Approach,
“Outputs may be the only type of measure available, as outcomes may not be available until well after management decisions have been made. The question, then, is to what extent output measures actually correspond to outcome measures?”
Measuring solely outputs in museum environments (especially in regard to community engagement), provides an immediate advantage and a long-term disadvantage in attracting donors. Let’s examine, for example, the fact that the typical output measurement tends to be how many people participate in a program or community engagement event (let’s say that’s 50 people). Our desired outcome is a sparked interest in a certain subject matter (let’s say that 10 years after their visit, 5 people still remember the program and have taken classes in the subject matter, engaged friends in the subject, or passed along the lessons they learned during the program to their children).
Output reporting advantage: The museum may report to donors that 50 people participated in the program. That is 50 potential sparks. The amount reported here is not the amount of people who retained the lessons learned in the program (which we won’t know until years later), but rather the maximum amount of people who could have been sparked by the subject matter during the program.
Output reporting disadvantage: While reporting the output (50 people) may look impressive to higher-level management and potential donors at the time of an annual report, the knowledge of the true outcome of the program (that it altered the lives of 5 individuals in a positive way) is more impressive than the fact that 50 people merely participated. Moreover, the outcome could grow past the amount of original participants if those sparked share their knowledge and with others.
Though output reporting provides an immediate advantage that often proves inaccurate several years down the road (for better or worse), we often have no other choice but to measure outputs because outcomes are not available to us immediately. As more and more museums, nonprofits, and community centers are encouraged to measure social impact through outputs, the old saying still rings true: quality is greater than quantity. It’s possible that outcomes may far exceed (even impressive) outputs.
I work with zoos, aquariums, and museums in the realm of audience engagement using social technology. I specialize in creative community involvement, new media, nonprofit sector evolution, and the role of Generation Y in the workplace. Learn more about me 
