Rethinking Museum Membership: Innovative Strategies and Models from The Membership Innovation Group

What if your museum could say, “Thanks for being an inactive member!”

I’ve been trying to get into the habit of taking notes during our MAP Community meetups and then sharing those notes with community members.

In our monthly Membership Innovation Group today, we discussed Rosie Siemer’s recent letter on pricing strategy. I found the discussion really interesting, so I thought I’d share my notes here on the blog/newsletter — I hope the ideas Rosie and others shared during the event will spark some ideas for you, too.

Anything but “free”

We tend to think of free as being a quick(er) way to make membership more accessible to more people, but as Rosie points out in her post, price is actually low on the list of barriers to joining.

So, what’s the alternative? What’s another name for free?

What if we thought of membership as a loyalty program? That’s sort of what the Museum of Us is doing in the example Rosie gives in her article — Members pay for admission and trade their email address for membership status. By giving the museum permission to maintain a connection to you, you become a member.

Yes, people can unsubscribe, and some will — but the Museum of Us is betting that the exchange will be a net gain for the organization.

Labels and identifiers

How might we use familiar labels (e.g., “member”) in more interesting ways?

The Museum of Us is flattening the typical tiered membership approach and calling everyone a member who pays a flat, one-time fee and gives them their email address. It’s a liberal interpretation of “Member” — What if we did something similar with “Donor”? What if everyone who was a visitor was (basically) a member, as with the Museum of Us, and then everyone who was a member was a donor?

What happens when a museum identifies someone who pays for a $10/year membership as a “donor”? How does that change the relationship with that individual and how does that person think differently about their relationship to the museum?

Lateral leveling

Traditional membership programs are about leveling up — pay more and get more.

An alternative is to level… sideways? That is, the museum partners with other organizations that support individuals and families facing economic hardship. The museum gives those organizations x number of memberships to distribute for free. Those donated memberships are funded by more traditional members — a mutual aid model.

Under that model, individuals don’t have to come to the museum (a potentially fraught interaction) and “prove” their financial need. The trusted partner has already verified need. Moreover, the museum may have an opportunity to connect with paid/traditional members in new ways — e.g., “Your membership dollars are having a positive impact on broader communities.”

However, the museum will have to trust (or train) the partnering organizations in how to frame the value of the “free” membership, though. Without adequate communication, recipients may undervalue the membership. (See “don’t call it free” above.) A few participants mentioned Museums For All in today’s discussion — I noticed that in their guidelines, they suggest that participating museums “Use the approved Museums for All PR toolkit resources for branding of the program in all communications”, which speaks to this challenge, I think.

“Use it or share it”?

Membership isn’t only transactional. Museums are social and educational spaces — We want membership to be a tool to incentivize positive behaviors.

What if we tracked member visitation (let’s use visitation as shorthand for usage here), and every time a member doesn’t visit during a given period, we “shared” their member benefits with someone else?

Here’s the really terrible, guilt-ridden version of that message:

As a member, you can visit us for free. Most members visit the museum once every [interval]. We noticed you didn’t visit the museum this past [interval], so we have given a free pass to [random visitor? partnering orgs described above?]

Thanks for being an inactive member!

— Your Museum

Membership and identity

If your museum runs a maker space, how might membership be framed in relation to that creative identity? If your organization is focused on conservation as part of its mission, how can we tie membership — or perhaps the experience of becoming a member — to that identity?

Software often makes becoming a member or renewing a flat, transactional experience.

What if no one became a “member”? What if, instead, they became a “steward” or a “community maker”? (See labels and identifiers above).

Inverting the pyramid

What if, instead of the traditional membership pyramid where people get more when they pay more, museums let people pay less the more they participated?

In this case, the organization would track usage (visitation?) and then reduce the cost of membership (or stewardship or makership) accordingly.

Again, the crude message:

Thanks for becoming a steward. Your card will be charged $50 three months from today if you don’t visit us again. Your stewardship will cost $40 if you visit us once, $30 if you visit twice…

This model acknowledges that people’s time and attention are valuable and that, hopefully, by visiting the museum the individual/family is furthering the organization’s mission. The organization has set up a system that incentivizes that support.

And a lot more

This is just what stuck out to me during the conversation — Or, more accurately, these are just the things that I thought to make a note of when I remembered I had meant to take notes during the call. As always, reply to this email with your thoughts, leave a comment on the blog, or share your feedback. I’m curious to hear if any of these ideas are familiar or energizing for you.

And, if you’d like to join in on our monthly Membership Innovation discussions with me and Rosie, registration for MAP’s winter season is open through Monday, November 8th.

Kyle

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