Join Museums as Progress
Cultural organizations often measure their value through visitor numbers and demographic data, believing engagement is the path to relevance. Tracking these metrics can feel like a carefully maintained junk food diet — momentarily satisfying numbers that offer no real sustenance, distracting from deeper understanding and masking opportunities for genuine impact.
The problem with engagement metrics is that they only matter to the institution. People don't want to be engaged by a museum — they pursue goals that matter to them: creating memorable experiences with friends, helping students grasp complex concepts, exploring a career in the arts … There are many goals museums can support. Engagement is just the shadow someone casts while making progress toward these goals.
MaP³ helps institutions identify and support the goals that matter to their communities, leading to more meaningful impact and sustainable growth. Through an evidence-based assessment and continuous learning, we guide museums beyond surface-level metrics toward genuine progress.
The Museums as Progress Partner Program (MaP³)
Museums operate in complex ecosystems of departments, programs, and community relationships. While strategic planning creates valuable space for reflection and alignment, that clarity often dissolves during implementation. The Progress Partner Program (MaP³) provides a structured assessment and continuous learning pathway that bridges strategic vision with daily operations.
How MaP³ Works
1) Assessment
Developed in collaboration with our Value Realization Partner, Dr. John Falk, the MaP³ assessment provides an evidence-based starting point by examining four interrelated aspects of institutional success through a distinctive outcome-focused lens:
Critical Challenges: We measure alignment around strategic priorities across departments, revealing where different perspectives create barriers to implementation. Rather than assuming everyone shares the same understanding of priorities, we identify specific disconnects that prevent progress.
Participant Outcomes: We identify patterns in how your institution supports specific visitor outcomes, revealing opportunities for strategic differentiation, improved positioning, and articulation of unique value.
Learning Capabilities: We analyze how knowledge flows across your organization, identifying where insights get stuck and how to build sustainable learning practices that align functions around high-value outcomes.
Financial Performance: We explore connections between your strategic challenges and revenue patterns, creating context for targeted investment decisions that maximize limited resources.
Using a mixed methods approach (surveys, lexical analysis, and interviews), the assessment:
Reveals hidden patterns in how different departments view strategic priorities and where misalignment creates friction
Surfaces specific barriers to cross-functional collaboration
Identifies strategic opportunities where targeted investment could drive outsized impact
Creates a baseline for measuring concrete progress rather than activity metrics
Positions your institution for deeper strategic work when ready, without overwhelming your team
2) Program Participation
Throughout your partnership, your entire team gains access to a range of resources designed to build capability while addressing specific challenges:
Full Staff Access to Seasonal Programs: Your entire team can participate in workshops and events focused on addressing challenges uncovered in MaP³ participant assessments. These thematic gatherings tackle the most common barriers to progress identified by museums like yours, ensuring relevance to your specific context.
MaP³ Reading Series: Join discussions specifically selected to address the strategic challenges revealed in your assessment. Featuring insights from Dr. John Falk and other leading voices, these conversations create a shared foundation for implementing your institutional priorities.
Directors' Cohorts: Connect with museum leaders facing similar strategic challenges in the Strategic Museum Exchange. This group provides a space where executives can workshop specific leadership challenges identified in their assessments with peers who understand their unique context.
Advanced Program Access: MaP³ participation unlocks access to specialized programs like The Value Realization Collaborative and The Community Goals Study. These intensive offerings build directly on your MaP³ assessment, creating natural pathways to deeper strategic work when your institution is ready. Your MaP³ participation provides the essential foundation these advanced programs require.
3) Reassessment
At the end of your first year, we conduct a follow-up assessment that measures your institution's progress across all four dimensions. This creates both accountability for implementation and a foundation for continued strategic evolution.
The reassessment examines:
Shifts in visitor outcome perceptions
Impact on strategic challenges
Implementation learnings
Adaptation patterns
The cycle then continues — assessment insights inform ongoing participation in community programs, which drive measurable progress revealed in your next reassessment. This creates an evolving institutional biography that captures your museum's journey toward greater impact.
A Closer Look: Institutional Insight Through Comparative Analysis
MaP³ assessments include benchmarking that positions your institution's performance within the community of participating organizations. This comparative analysis transforms isolated data points into strategic intelligence.
The visualization below represents a composite from multiple institutional assessments. It illustrates how organizations discover their distinctive strengths — such as supporting intellectual well-being outcomes — and use these insights to drive cross-departmental collaboration centered around visitor outcomes rather than institutional outputs.
This comparative approach provides valuable insights and creates a profile of your institution that we use to match you with institutions in our community addressing similar challenges. We also use your institution’s profile to inform our seasonal programming, ensuring we’re providing relevant learning and collaboration opportunities for our participants.
Registration
We encourage you to schedule a call with us to discuss how MaP³ may support your institution’s goals and find out if it’s a good fit for your team.
If you're ready to begin, choose your registration path based on your institution’s annual operating budget:
Rate Change Notice: Fees will increase on April 1, 2025.
Current rates shown above available through March 31.
For convenience, program access auto-renews at the lower renewal fee, which includes annual reassessment of your institution's progress and strategic priorities. You can cancel anytime through your account settings.
We'll verify your organization's budget after registration if needed. Your entire staff receives access upon enrollment.
If your museum is a member of a MaP partner association, you’re eligible for a 15% discount. Email us for more information.
Participating Cultural Institutions
Ready to Build Internal Support?
We've created a template to help you make a clear case for participation to your colleagues and leadership.
The document outlines what your institution will gain, how progress will be measured, specific benefits for your team, and clear next steps for getting started.
Google Doc Version
Make a copy you can edit and share. Best for gathering input from your team.
Word Version
Download and format it your way. A good start for formal proposals.
Need help building your case?
Schedule a call to discuss your institution's specific challenges. If MaP³ is a good fit, we’ll help you contextualize the program.
Looking for Individual Membership?
If your institution isn’t ready to enroll in MaP³, you can join as an individual member.
FAQ
Individual membership provides personal access to MaP events and resources. The MaP³ program takes this further — your entire institution gains access while receiving structured assessment and guidance to drive organizational progress. Think of individual membership as professional development and MaP³ as institutional development.
All cultural institutions and professionals are welcome, including:
Museums of all types and sizes
Public gardens and arboreta
Zoos and aquariums
Historic sites and cultural centers
The MaP³ assessment takes about 20 minutes for staff to complete. We encourage you to sample at least half of your staff and aim for representation across every department and function. Institutions see the best results when they invite departments to block 30 minutes on the calendar for everyone to focus on completing the survey independently while at work. In addition to the survey, we will invite up to 10 staff to participate in private interviews. The assessment is completed within six weeks and leadership will be invited to a one-hour debrief to discuss results. This process is repeated annually to track change over time. Beyond this foundational assessment, MaP³ is designed for flexibility — your staff choose which events and programs serve their needs, with no mandatory time commitments.
MaP³ complements strategic planning by revealing patterns in how different departments view priorities and progress. During planning phases, the results surface insights that inform strategic direction and help align teams around shared goals. During implementation periods, the assessment measures how insights are being shared internally, alignment drift, and outcome confidence.
At the end of your first year, your institution is invited to participate in a reassessment. This creates a picture of your progress while surfacing new opportunities that may have emerged. The program automatically renews at a reduced fee, but you maintain complete control — you can cancel renewal anytime through your account settings without contacting us.
Yes. MaP³ is fundamental to success in other programs like The Value Realization Collaborative. Your assessment results describe if and how other programs can help your institution and which outcomes you can prioritize if you wish to engage in further research or training.
Registration is straightforward — select your tier based on operating budget above and complete payment. We'll verify your budget information after registration and help you begin the assessment process.
We can provide an invoice, which will let you pay via ACH bank transfer. Email community-at-museumprogress.com to request an invoice.