Work With Us
Move your museum beyond traditional engagement metrics to support genuine community progress. We help cultural institutions address critical challenges through research-driven insights, sustainable frameworks, and collaborative learning.
What challenge brings you to MaP?
Audience Engagement & Diversification
Traditional demographic targeting often reinforces the very barriers museums aim to break down. Yet many institutions continue these approaches because they seem like the only option.
We help institutions:
Understand communities through their goals rather than demographics
Identify strategic opportunities other approaches miss
Measure impact in ways that matter to stakeholders
Measuring & Communicating Impact
Visitor numbers and satisfaction surveys tell an incomplete story. Your museum creates deeper value, but capturing and communicating it requires different tools.
We help institutions:
Define success metrics that reflect genuine community value
Gather evidence that resonates with stakeholders
Build frameworks for ongoing impact measurement
Strategic Planning & Cross-Department Collaboration
When departments operate in silos, strategic initiatives stall. Breaking these patterns requires more than good intentions.
We help institutions:
Align teams around shared definitions of progress
Bridge gaps between planning and implementation
Create frameworks for ongoing collaboration
Ways to Work Together
Custom Research & Strategy
Most museums know they need to engage diverse audiences but struggle with how. Traditional market research tells you what people say they want. Focus groups reveal surface-level preferences. Satisfaction surveys measure reactions to what already exists. None of these tools reveal the deeper patterns that drive sustainable engagement.
Progress-Space Research takes a fundamentally different approach. Instead of studying demographics or measuring satisfaction with current offerings, we help you understand the goals driving people's decisions. This reveals strategic opportunities other research methods miss.
Our engagements typically include:
Deep listening studies that reveal hidden barriers and opportunities
Opportunity mapping to identify gaps between community goals and current support
Strategic frameworks that align teams around clear priorities
Implementation guidance that moves insights into action
Through custom research engagements, you gain not just data, but strategic clarity about which community goals your museum is best positioned to support and how to measure that impact in ways that resonate with stakeholders.
Special Programs and Projects
The Value Realization Collaborative with John Falk
Transform how your institution measures and creates value through this year-long program combining research-driven frameworks with practical implementation support.
Define metrics that capture genuine community value
Develop practical tools for supporting progress
Receive implementation guidance throughout the year
The Community Goals Study
Uncover opportunities to support community goals through this collaborative research initiative.
Get custom insights into community goals and progress
Identify overlooked opportunities in your current market
Inform strategic planning with evidence-based audience insights
What’s most important to your institution today?
Developing Your Strategy
It can be difficult to create a simple, specific, and flexible strategy that resonates with stakeholders. Programs like The Strategic Museum Exchange and The Strategy Foundry help museums question assumptions inherent in traditional approaches without abandoning practices that produce desirable results.
Understanding Your Community
Cultivating partnerships with like-minded community groups is a common and often effective way to build inroads with non-audiences. However, most partnerships begin by defining groups on demographic terms, and demographics can reinforce the stereotypes that have fueled fractured relations in the past. Progress-Space Research breaks that cycle by redefining people based on their goals and providing a repeatable process for intentional listening.
Elevating Your Team
Traditional approaches to museum professional development follow a familiar pattern: Staff attend occasional conferences or workshops, absorb information out of context from their daily work, return inspired but struggle to implement new ideas, and the cycle repeats with minimal lasting impact. MaP Academy takes a different approach through continuous learning experiences that integrate with daily work.
Not Sure Where to Begin?
Answer six quick questions to see which pathway best fits your current needs and constraints.