Leading by Design

We read and hear a lot about transparency and accountability these days, but these are by no means new concepts. However, they've taken on renewed meaning in a world where spinning the message and dodging the glare of scrutiny seem to be prized skills. Yet.... “…our funding is principally from sources requiring superficial accountability, our strategic planning is rarely compelling, board and staff are uninformed about exactly who is and is not participating in our exhibitions and programs, and we provide fare that is indexed to internal priorities, with minimal effort to explain what we have chosen not to do, or the explicit rationale for what we have chosen to do. It is essential that museum leaders resist self-congratulation and start explaining our priorities, our intentions, and the desired and measurable outcomes of our efforts.” Maxwell L. Anderson, Ph.D. from “A Clear View: The Case for Museum Transparency,”  Museum Magazine (March-April 2010) pp. 48-53 T...

MY MENTAL LIST OF CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS ABOUT TO GO UNDER was significantly lengthened this week.  Just yesterday a neighbor told me that a small environmental/ natural history research organization she works with was about to fold.  She was told that the board was casting around for a place to transfer the organization's collections of books, maps, photos and videos (although no one knows exactly where that will be despite the fact that they may have to shut their doors in a couple of weeks).   The day before that, a colleague called to say she was retiring from her organization and that there's a movement afoot to dissolve it (not her doing).  A third organization has burned through its endowment fund to the point where some board members think it's time to close the whole place down.   That's all in just the last week. I've been hearing for a long time that the pace of consolidations and dissolutions in the nonprofit sector would speed up as the ...

BRAINSTORMING SESSIONS HAVE A WONDERFUL WAY OF invigorating people.  It's exciting and, yes, liberating to contemplate future accomplishments, even if they're too lofty to achieve.  Cultural organizations are full of creative people with lots of ideas -- big ideas, too -- but few have a structured means of capturing them and funneling them into workable actions.  This is especially true when it comes to developing earned income strategies.  Beyond the typical mix of nonprofit fundraising activities, who's routinely minding the store when it comes to creating opportunities for long-term self-sufficiency beside the director? I recently met with the executive committee and director of an historic site with a massive physical plant.  Almost three-quarters of current income comes from earned income and much of that is from for-profit activities, such as apartment rentals and lease of space to for-profit business.  Their efforts to come up with ideas for income-g...