MaP Labs
The MaP Community aims to make research insights more accessible to more museums through collaborative inquiry. Labs are community-driven research projects and are an essential part of realizing that goal.
This lab helps gardens and arboreta understand members’ goals to enhance membership programs. Participating organizations will gain tailored insights through surveys, regular updates, and a private briefing. This initiative is designed to align membership strategies with community needs and foster cross-departmental solutions.
🚀 Begins: August 2024
While membership typically makes up a small portion of a museum’s overall revenue, the unrestricted nature of membership revenue means that member dues can provide outsized value to museums. That disproportionate value makes member retention a critical challenge for museums. Since it costs three to five times as much to acquire a new member as it does to retain an existing member, museums can realize a significant ROI by prioritizing retention.
Our research shows that museums usually seek to improve member retention by focusing on member experience (e.g., increasing programs, benefits, or hours for members), but doing so often carries substantial implementation costs. Museums may also survey members to understand what museum benefits are important to them, but those surveys often conflate learning with marketing or sales efforts. The results of such surveys limit museums’ ability to provide unforeseen, cost-effective ways to provide value to members that will encourage them to renew.
In this lab, we’ll bring together a small group of museums to test a new approach that leverages artificial intelligence to collect data from lapsed members. The results of this approach are a unique blend of quantitative and qualitative insights that generate a strong response rate from museum visitors and members who are less likely to respond to traditional recruitment methods.
🚀 Begins: Fall 2024
What triggers museum professionals to increase or decrease their reliance on data? How can a deeper understanding of what motivates data-driven decision-making help museums create the conditions that support more informed decisions? This lab is slated to begin in 2025.
🚀 Begins: 2025
The Future Leaders Lab was inspired by the book Time to Listen and focused on how museum leaders support future leaders. Nine leaders participated in listening sessions, with community members summarizing their thoughts and guiding principles. The research aims to offer valuable insights into cultivating future museum leaders and includes a mental model diagram developed by participants.
✅ Complete
Research projects emerge from discussions with community members. On the community discussion board, you can view a list of lab candidates and upvote research topics.
Museum Members get early access to research findings and can contribute data to MaP research projects. Join the community today to get started for free.