This post was co-written with Anne Bergeron, a nonprofit management and fundraising consultant who leads Anne Bergeron & Co. Consulting (ABCC), a resource development firm specializing in cultural, educational, and social benefit institutions. Through planning, organizational development, fundraising, and strategic communications, ABCC helps nonprofits to envision and create sustainable futures supported by engaged communities.
“When I receive a program proposal, I look at how it fits with the museum’s mission and vision—and I’ve found that most of the time you can find a way to make any proposal fit with mission and vision. But with the decision-making matrix, I also look at specific criteria around stewardship, innovation, community focus, and alignment. That’s where the real decision happens: Is it actually valuable and connected to our community and stewardship ideas?”
—Kate Huffman, Director of Learning and Engagement, Biggs Museum of American Art
Every collaborative, community-based venture faces resource constraints—of people, money, time, energy, etc. How can nonprofit leaders best direct the use of limited resources in ways that further organizational objectives?
We recently helped the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover, DE to consider this very question as we facilitated the creation of their new strategic plan shaped around a facility expansion project already in process. Perhaps not surprisingly, we first posed the resource allocation query with respect to the building, a major investment the museum had been planning for a few years. How could The Biggs ensure that the reconfigured and enlarged facility would serve as a physical manifestation of the museum’s intentions to more fully engage the community?
The architectural team proceeded in its work guided by three lists gleaned from community conversations and ordered by priority—1.) design elements considered to be essential; 2.) design features that would add value; and 3.) architectural characteristics that were aspirational and “dreaming big”—abbreviated as must haves, should haves, and nice to haves.* We were inspired by this codification to develop a different framework focused less on space and more on institutional values. As we aided The Biggs in parsing the difference between wants and needs—e.g., I desire some new window shades, but I don’t really need them, while I do need to pay my rent—we sought a framework that could be used for overall organizational decision-making.
We encouraged the museum to identify its collective values by probing, “What’s important to you personally, professionally, and institutionally?” and then listening carefully to what was expressed—by the organization as a whole reflecting its raison d’être in the region; by the board, staff, and volunteers responsible for carrying out its mission; and by the many constituents, especially artists, who champion its role in the community and support its activities. We then spent time assisting the museum in defining its chosen values to ensure widespread understanding of institutional drivers.
As with most museums, mission, vision, and values serve as guiding lights for The Biggs’s staff and board. But these public-facing statements are purposefully written broadly to allow flexibility in implementation priorities. For this reason, it was important to ask critical questions relating to mission, as well as other issues that surfaced during the planning process: concerns about community, stewardship, reputation, finances, and operational limitations. We enabled the museum to drill down and reflect on what was most pressing to them.
We framed the decision-making matrix as a series of questions that delve further than a simple checklist might. While everyone agrees that the entirety of what a museum does should align with mission, it can be easy to say, “Yes, of course this aligns.” The Biggs’s new mission statement is clear and specific about its aims, although it is general enough to resonate in a variety of situations. For example, when determining whether a new family day, exhibition, or fundraising event can “transform our community through the art of our region: rooted in discovery, guided by collaboration, and open to all”—The Biggs’s new mission statement—staff might simply nod affirmatively without due consideration.
Rather than ask only if an initiative aligns with mission, we outlined a series of clear, provocative questions drawing on ideas that emerged during strategic planning: Will this initiative aid in fostering discovery or transformation for individuals and/or communities? Does this prioritize collaboration and open access? Does this position the greater Dover region at the center of this venture? These questions ask decision-makers to more deeply explore whether a new endeavor will truly move the museum in the direction it wants to go. Here’s the result.
In future years, these queries might change even when the mission doesn’t. As The Biggs’s reputation grows and solidifies, some questions may feel less relevant and could be replaced with others. For instance, “Will this help to cement The Biggs as engaged in cultural placemaking?” could become, “Does this support The Biggs and its partners in expanding cultural placemaking?” Or the community that the Biggs aims to transform might stretch beyond the Dover area to the multi-state Mid-Atlantic region.
The values-based, decision-making matrix that we developed helps the staff to implement the strategic plan on a daily basis. Five months after the planning process concluded, we spoke with Kate Huffman, the museum’s director of learning and engagement, about how she utilizes this planning tool. She described the binder where she keeps the programming calendar and related information. The matrix lives near the front of this binder, which she consults anytime she needs to make a programming decision or explain the “why” of an activity to colleagues, funders, and other stakeholders.
Kate shared an example of how she uses the matrix. While reviewing upcoming programs, she noticed that the museum offered, “…all these one-off, art-making workshops…to the artists community.” As a result of the new strategic plan, she is now working closely with an artist advisory committee and learned that that these workshops hold limited value. “They were just revenue generating and they weren’t honoring our artist instructors. We weren’t doing things in the way this matrix outlines. So we’ve eliminated them for now and are working to rebuild our approach to creative workshops.”
Kate also uses the matrix to assess potential new programs. “Recently, a housing support organization serving the Greenville, DE community reached out to me and said, ‘We’re running a healing arts program and we really want to talk to you about displaying participants’ work or having a Biggs representative come down and teach a class.’ So I visited and had a conversation with them, then ran the opportunity through the matrix, and it fits with everything we’re doing!”
The decision-making matrix turns mission and vision into strategic action at The Biggs. What questions might you ask to do the same at your organization?
*Credit for this process goes to the cultural planning team at SmithGroup architecture and design firm.
Museum Questions 