UK Museums Need to Connect Emotionally With Their Supporters

I'm in London this week, meeting today with a group of museum development directors and fundraising staff to discuss (among other things) the likely impact of impending Government funding cuts and how to mitigate them.

Friday's open letter to the Culture Secretary, signed by dozens of leading British artists, is an important part of the response; obviously all available pressure should be brought to bear to help ensure that any funding cuts are moderate in scope and applied with care. But the long-term adjustment by the UK's cultural sector to the new financial reality will require museums, cultural institutions, and non-governmental organisations to build new types of relationships with their supporters.

The British public have come to expect that cultural institutions will be funded firstly by Government disbursements, and secondly by a short list of philanthropic individuals such as the Sainsbury family, who are in a position to endow building expansions and other major efforts. But as has been shown by the Obama experience in the US and many other political, social, and cultural campaigns, small donors can matter, too.

National tax policy on charitable giving is one of the factors that has encouraged private giving in the United States -- but it's not the only one. People give more often, and more generously, if they feel an emotional stake in the institutions they are supporting. Creating and fostering such emotional relationships will require Britain's museums, galleries, and cultural institutions to gradually change the way they interact with their supporters -- to be more forthcoming with information, to be frank and concrete when they talk about the value of individual giving and support, and, especially, to become better storytellers.

Museums are often seen as formal and forbidding places, but at its heart, a museum is a place where stories happen, and supporters and donors love to hear them. At Blue State Digital, we help organisations build relationships, primarily through email and social media, based on stories such as these. There are the behind-the-scenes stories of the curators and professional staff, and how they assemble and produce exhibitions. There are the stories of museum visitors and their interactions with and responses to the collections and artifacts on display. And there are the stories of museum educators, of the staff at the entry desk and in the cloakroom, and their pride in their institutions and in their jobs.

Stories like these bring tradition-bound institutions to life, especially for younger people who may be casting about for a way to connect emotionally with museums they associate with their parents and grandparents. And the concrete, emotionally significant relationships that arise from these stories are a direct path to financial support in the new funding environment.