A director describing their museum’s value to a funder is most convincing when the description is specific — this museum, these visitors, this year. General claims about what museums do are available to anyone, which is what makes them weak. Specific claims need evidence somebody has to generate, and generating it is not the director’s job. They depend on staff for it, and they don’t always say so out loud.
That leaves you in the middle. You can see what evidence would make the appeal stronger. Collecting it and making sense of it sits outside anything anyone has agreed is your work, so it becomes extra — done around the edges, justified after the fact.
In this Outcomes Lab session we’ll discuss approaches to communicating value up. We’ll take the topics you bring, and we may also get into:
What do you do when you’re not sure what data would be most useful to your colleagues?
What if you don’t know what your director’s objectives are? Beyond the strategic plan, how do you get visibility into what would actually be useful to them on a Tuesday afternoon?
What happens when the data isn’t perfect, but you need their support to get staff to do the work to collect better data?
What to expect
We keep the group small and the format conversational.
The session is recorded for internal reference; recordings are not shared.
What’s said in the session stays there, without names attached.
Who it’s for
The Outcomes Lab is for people who have run the MaP Outcomes Assessment and are working through what the results mean for their practice. Sessions are open to members — if you’d like to join, you can request membership on the Outcomes Lab page.