Across the world, we’re beginning to see museums, zoos, gardens, and other cultural sites reopen after coronavirus closures. Many are initiating phased reopenings, using timed-ticketing and contactless modes of entry, opening to members only, and/or creating special hours for different groups. As these organizations began to reopen in the era of social distancing, many are rethinking what the onsite member experience may look like without the close interactions, friendly encounters with staff, and other personalized experiences that make visiting your organization so special.
Join Dan Sullivan (Head of Growth and Partnerships @ Cuseum), John Perell (Director of Strategy & Member Experience @ Smithsonian Institution), Melissa Dietrich (Associate Director, Membership @ Longwood Gardens) & Zach Winfield (Vice President @ Zoo Advisors) as they discuss what the onsite member experience may look like after coronavirus closures and going into the future.
View the video recording here.
Read the full transcript below.
Dan Sullivan:
Hello everyone. My name is Dan Sullivan. I'm the Head of Partnerships at Cuseum and I just want to start by thanking everybody for being here today. Those familiar with Cuseum, we work with the cultural space to help cultural organizations better engage their visitors, members and donors using digital tools, like digital membership cards and digital engagement opportunities.
Everybody who's a first-timer today, welcome. All of our repeat visitors, welcome back. Thanks again for being here. Couple of quick housekeeping items, most of you probably know the drill by now, but for our first-timers, take a second and introduce yourselves in the chat. That'll be a great way to connect with your fellow constituents. We're expecting around 1,500 folks today that are going to be listening in.
You can also use the Q&A functionality, ask a question. If you see another question that you like, up-vote that. It'll send it to the top, it'll help us prioritize the ones that are the most pressing.
Cuseum has another webinar this week, onWednesday, it's called Museum Think Tank. It's a new thing we're doing, Tapping into Fresh Ideas and Networks to Navigate the New Normal. We had this idea, let's bring some cultural professionals together, and let's bring some innovative thinkers from outside the cultural space, put them in the same room and see if we can generate some really cool ideas. That's going to be Wednesday, 2pm Eastern, Museum Think Tank, so check that out, and let's get into this.
Across the world we are beginning to see museums, zoos, gardens, other cultural sites start to reopen after these coronavirus closures. A lot of initiated phased reopening. We're seeing timed ticketing, contactless modes of entry, opening to members only, creating special hours for different groups. As these different organizations are beginning to reopen, in this era of social distancing, a lot of them are rethinking what the onsite member experience looks like without close interaction, friendly encounters with staff, personalized experiences that are making visiting that organization so special. How are we going to make up for that?
So we've got an awesome lineup today. We have John Perell, the Director of Strategy and Member Experience at the Smithsonian Institution. We have Melissa Dietrich, the Associate Director of Membership at the Longwood Gardens, and then we have Zach Winfield, the Vice President at Zoo Advisors. We're going to discuss what onsite member experiences are going to look like after coronavirus closures, and we're going to see what that looks like in the future.
So first of all, thank you to all of our panelists for being here, super excited to have you and let's just quickly go around the room and introduce ourselves. Melissa, do you want to start?
Melissa Dietrich:
Sure. First I'd like to say a big thank you to Dan and your team. Your weekly membership webinars have been so fruitful with generating ideas knowing you're not on an island. So thank you to you and your staff for putting this together. It has been a lifeline for me and our team to figure out how we are going to move forward.
Dan Sullivan:
Thank you so much.
Melissa Dietrich:
I'm just thrilled to be here because I feel like now I get to give back a little bit. because I learned so much over the week. So, yes.
My name is Melissa Dietrich, Associate Director of Membership at Longwood Gardens. We are a botanical garden. So it comprises over just 400 acres, open for guests to explore outside, and then four acres under glass in our conservatory. And we're just about 30 miles outside of the Philadelphia area.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. Thank you for being here. John.
John Perell:
Hi, I'm John Perell. First I want to call out to, I saw some museums in Buffalo and in Rochester. I'm a Western New Yorker by birth. Been in DC for 30 years. I am the Director of Strategy and Member Experience at Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian Institution is the world's largest museum research organization on the planet Earth. We have 19 museums, nine research and cultural centers, and a national zoo. Overall we have 6,500 employees and 14,000 plus volunteers. We have about 27 million visitors a year. On a memberships level, we have seven philanthropic memberships and two magazine-based memberships for a total of about 1.9 million members. And I've been there for the past seven years.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome, thank you for being here. And Zach.
Zachary Winfield:
Thank you for having me, Dan. My name is Zachary Winfield. I'm the Vice President at Zoo Advisors. We are based out of Philadelphia. We are a full-service consultancy serving zoos, aquariums, botanic gardens and other conservation organizations all over the world in areas like strategic planning, business and conservation planning, feasibility and economic impact research and executive search in organization planning. I would say in short it's our goal to help our clients find that balance between mission and margins so it can be sustainable and impactful for the long term.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. And thank you for being here. So all right, let's get kicked off. So we've got a great spread here. So we've got organizations that are in the planning stages, early stages of reopening. We've got an organization that is just starting, some that are further along, and then Zach is overseeing a number of organizations who are in varied stages throughout the process. So we're going to get a wide range of perspective here, which I'm really excited about.
So, let's start off by just, what are the general plans for reopening? Melissa can you start us off? What does that look like? Take us on a quick helicopter tour of reopening.
Melissa Dietrich:
Within the last few days, we have decided that we should be open within the next two weeks or so. So we have been planning and planning and planning but now, of course, you have all of these concepts and strategies in place. But now it's a moving target of days because we know we need a few days at the very end just for systems to actually, for lack of a better term, to flip their switches and to insure all of our member reservations are accessible online, we need several days for communications to hit all of our members. Thank God, 90% of our members have an active membership, but we have about 1,100 households out of 73,000 that don't have an active email. So those are the ones you really still have to do snail mail to.
So we still have a little bit of a moving target. We are projecting to open around either the 11th of June or the 18th. And once we know we'll, again, we'll start our member communications and get that out. And I do want to share something. So something that I've never used as a communication tool for our members is Call Them All. We've been using it for years to cancel performing arts tickets either if bad weather or something happening very last minute.
But this Call Them All has been fantastic to hit a portion of our members that we have that don't have an active email, but they do have an active phone number. So we've been using that a handful of times and so we have about 2,300 members that we can at least call, get a great message out to them, direct them to a website and they also have a text message service built into that. So if it is a cell phone, it'll automatically send that text message as well. So it's really great to craft, record it, and then send it. So if you haven't used it, take a look at it. It could help you because there's nothing worse than stuffing 1,100 envelopes at the last minute.
We will also do posts on our social media outlets, and we will share with our members from the beginning and we have also shared from the very beginning with our members that their membership will be extended through their closures. So that's, in a nutshell, where we stand today.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. That's great, thank you for sharing and that theme of giving a call to your members has been coming up over and over on this Membership Mondays Webinar Series. It sounds like now is just such a good time to get in touch with folks and they're very much willing and maybe even chatty for a lot of folks to talk with you. So, John, can you talk a little bit about the plans for reopening on your side?
John Perell:
Sure, I'm going to share a visual for everybody to see and this'll help with my narrative, help you understand how we're looking at this. So, the Smithsonian Institution, because we have so many physical buildings that have public access and so many staff members, we're really thinking about it from a gate perspective. So thinking about employees, onsite affiliate persons which are the volunteers, research associates, academics and appointees, travel events and then museums and enterprises, enterprises being our commercial division that has stores and restaurants at Smithsonian.
I'm going to turn my head a little bit because I'm going to read the narrative, because it's a lot. But basically, the way that we're approaching this is in a four phase approach that's governed by specific benchmarks for moving forward. So the criteria includes factors such as COVID-19 case numbers, testing ability, hospital capacity and guidance from local jurisdictions and the federal government.
We are also considering factors that impact our community such as the availability of cleaning supplies and PPE for our employees and what not. School opening, public transportation, travel warnings, and the actions of our partner institutions. Public transportation's a really big one because a lot of people that come to visit us use public transportation and there's questions about safety.
So when we talk about phase one, we're not even in phase one yet, but we're probably going to be approaching that at some point in June, I would imagine. We're not governed by a timeline, we're governed by sort of government guides. And it's not a significant change from current operations. Additional staff who are not currently working onsite and that are not high-risk are going to be able to come in. They're going to monitor how we work, and how the enhanced cleaning works while there are people in the offices.
Phase two is really, telework employees are going to start coming in. We're going to start piloting some visitor services. So we're going to be inviting select groups probably in one or two museums into the facilities. Phase three, we increase our public offerings and capacity and then when we're confident and the workplace is safe and the, and the museums are safe, they'll welcome more people. And then phase four we're going to approach pre-pandemic public operations with additional employees and affiliated staff returning onsite, working.
So again, it's a very loose framework. It all depends on the different units, what the capacity for the units to handle members and donors onsite. But this is really a big framework for us to move forward. and as you can see, it's a scary concept to pull off. But I think it makes all the staff members feel comfortable that they're not just going to ask us to come back to the office since most of us take public transport to work, and that they're really being thoughtful in their approach to this.
And we have a lot of staff right now, and we have a concert- a lot of donors that want to get back onsite and be in our museums.
Dan Sullivan:
That's phenomenal. And thank you for sharing now. We've got a lot of people in the comments asking if they can get their hands on a copy,I can wrangle them after if you want me to.
John Perell:
Yeah, but a simple thing you can do is go to si.edu/cares and there's a section in there about our opening. But I'll send this out to Dan and he can share it with everybody.
Dan Sullivan:
Perfect, thank you. And Zach, what are you seeing, generally speaking, when it comes to planning for reopening, what are you advising or seeing with your customers, with your clients?
Zachary Winfield:
Yeah, we work with a lot of different organizations so the specifics vary from client to client and organization to organization. But it seems like everybody is pretty much working from the same general playbook which is advanced ticketing, timed ticketing, reduced capacity, a slow phase-in of sort of peripheral operations and your onsite experiences or guest interactions, sort of soft openings with members, things along those lines. Pretty much what you'd expect.
Dan Sullivan:
Awesome. And it sounds like what John and Melissa are thinking about for their organizations, definitely trekking on a similar path. So, Melissa, what has the onsite member experience looked like for you in the past at Longwood? How have you really treated your members or gone above and beyond for your members? Can you talk a little bit about what that has historically looked like?
Melissa Dietrich:
Sure. So typically our members are onsite about 11 times a year. So our member events were really designed to spread that attendance and attract members throughout the year. So again, we also know that if, if members have been with us, visiting five times a year, it's about a 75% renewal rate. But if we can get them closer to that 10 times visits per year, it's an 87% renewal rate. So we've been very much geared over the last several years to drive that onsite visitation.
And so that's how we've moved in the past. So we'll do about anywhere from 35 to 39 events, again, scattered throughout the months, giving lots of different opportunities and lots of different touch times of day, night, evening, weekend, mid-week, again, so we can really try to attract that visitation.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. Yeah, and John, can you talk a little bit about historically what that onsite member experience has looked like? How have you really catered to your members?
John Perell:
Yeah, so I think the Smithsonian's are a little bit different than a lot of other museum and cultural organizations where 75 to 85% of our members, depending on the program, live outside of the DC market. So we curate the experience, two different ways for a local versus a national. Then we know that a certain percentage of our members that live outside of DC come every year.
But typically what the programs give to the members are exclusive member events such as ex- exhibition-based events and receptions, curator lectures, special member access hours. And then for the national people, it's publications like guidebooks and coffee table books from exhibitions. And then typically what we've done to go above and beyond is we've really transitioned our events online and then we've really increased cultivation and stewardship with an emphasis on digital. We created a very specific donor website that literally puts everything about Smithsonian, exhibitions and educational resources, all on one page that helps to drive people. So,really helping to enhance the member experience from a virtual standpoint.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great. And Zach, as far as best practices or successes or challenges go, let's drift this conversation a little bit to, okay, the reopening has happened or we're creeping up to it. Can you talk a little bit about what, what some of the best practices you've deployed or what some of the challenges and successes you've seen look like?
Zachary Winfield:
Sure. That's an awfully big question. Well, we've of course been in contact with our clients and we've hosted a whole series of our own webinars on reopenings and guest services and the like. I would say that what we're seeing in terms of successes and best practices from those facilities that have reopened is really the need to remain flexible and be very adaptable.
On the membership front, there has been a lot of talk about whether there would be a need for some sort of, like, reparations being made to members for lost time the facilities have been closed. But of course there are really serious financial implications that go along with that. So one thing that we've seen working really successfully there is that rather than offering sort of blanket refunds or extensions to memberships, just taking those on a case-by-case basis and extending offers for those sorts of things if they're requested to keep members happy. But in most cases, membership constituents have been very understanding of the tight spot that the respective organizations find themselves in and haven't been overly demanding in wanting something back from them.
I'll say that secondly, all but really the smallest organizations have moved to some version of timed ticketing and advanced purchases, that goes for members as well as general admissions. Since capacity is such a major concern, you really have to have tight controls over who is coming in exactly when. Also most organizations are absolutely requiring that all their visitors get those tickets online before they show up.
And lastly I would say, and this is really more of a larger-picture sort of guest services thing rather than specific membership, but by and large the plans that organizations have developed for reopening have in practice worked really well. We hosted a webinar on reopening last week and I asked our panelist to tell us one thing in your plans that really didn't go well. I thought that'd be an entertaining way to end the webinar. But they all really had a hard time coming up with anything meaningful. And I think it turns out that their reopening plans, which were put together largely under duress and in a relatively short period of time, actually worked quite well. So I think the takeaway there is to, is not to try to reinvent the wheel, but to trust your gut and your intuition, to continue to execute on just the fundamentals of guests services and safety because mostly your visitors really miss you and they want to come back.
Dan Sullivan:
It's so true, and a lot of the research is really pointing to that as people are really itching to get out of their houses and, to a safe environment of course. But, really to get back and get a little bit of a change of scenery there. So, let's talk for a second about how this member experience is going to shift after we get opened up again. Melissa, how are you going to be limiting interactions between members and staff? Historically what you've done, how is that going to look different than what you're going to do now?
Melissa Dietrich:
Short answer, yes. Longwood never believed in a whole lot of signage. We believed in putting a person there and having that engagement and that connection. We wanted that relationship. We wanted to engage our guests. So this is hard for us. To know that we just can't put a person every place that we'd like to have a person. So our design team has worked very hard to figure out how to create signage that is not intrusive. because most people who come to our gardens want to take images of the gardens. And so there's nothing worse than having a sign, yes, with helpful information, but that could be a part of that, that view shed and disturb that view shed.
So, I talked a little bit about onsite visitation. It's really the biggest impact for our renewal. So we knew from the very start from our closure, we had to get very creative with our member engagements. But more importantly to create meaningful member engagements that will be critical not just for our current fiscal year, because as Zachary mentioned that when you extend memberships, yes, it is an incredible source of goodwill. But also, you are completely changing your revenue schedule and cycles dramatically.
and so it should not be done lightly, but it was a move that we really needed to make. We didn't even close yet and people were already asking, "Would you extend my membership?" Just over 87% of our members are within a 30 mile radius of Longwood. They're very close, where John's members are scattered throughout the world. Yes, we are, we have members in several countries, and I think there's only two states that we don't have members in. But really our, the bulk of our members are on the mindset of visiting very often and Longwood is a part of their normal routine.
So some of the things that we did very early on to create those meaningful engagements is to increase our social media posts daily. And actually with a unique daily post each for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Our social engagements, like I'm sure many of yours have gone through the roof. We've seen 300 to 400% increase in engagement.
But we also realize this is a place where members and guests can connect to us and ask questions. So then we quickly manned, seven days a week, every day, pretty much from almost nine in the morning till 10 at night, to have someone answering all of those questions and connections. Even if they submitted an image that we like them. Again, these are the things that we were able to do very quickly.
Another campaign that we created was, and we were talking about this for a period of time but this was a great opportunity for us to launch it, Longwood Love campaign. We have members that share these most incredible memories and experiences and family traditions with us. But we wanted to actually give this a framework where members can actually, share those images, those stories, and then we can highlight them. So again, yes, we're not that far away, and yes you can't come and see us. But the magic and the love is still really there, and very much strong.
We created virtual member appreciation weeks during each month. Again, it was something we've done in the past, but now we moved all of these activities online and people are really enjoying them. What I really like is that we've been able to create a lot of new virtual engagement. Like, John has had a lot of these tools in your repertoire. We were always so concerned about competing against our onsite activities that we were a little hesitant by driving too much virtual. Again, we don't know at this point in time, is a virtual engagement just as meaningful as an onsite engagement? But let's be honest, we don't have a choice right now.
And we will take any positive engagement as, as great engagements. So that's what we've been doing to create these really meaningful experiences and touchpoints. And as many as possible.
Dan Sullivan:
It's so true, and again, I think it remains to be seen just how the virtual engagement will prove in the long run comparatively, especially when things get reopened. But the thing I really like about everything in your program is so positive. All of those are very nostalgia-focused, or socially-focused which I think is really nice.
And you actually, early on you mentioned a little bit about how the financial picture is going to look different. And Zach, I don't want to put you on the spot, but Zach is a bit of a finance guru, if you will. Can you talk a little bit about the changing financial picture for these member organizations? And I know we didn't plan for this, but I know you know a thing or two about the finances. So I'd love to hear your perspective on it.
Zachary Winfield:
I'd say it's a little bit early in sort of the cycle to make any wide-ranging statements about what the future definitely looks like. But in terms of Melissa's comment about the challenge associated with extending memberships and what that means for your financial picture, depending on what fiscal year you're on and when your membership sale cycle is, you can easily kick a huge chunk of revenue into a future fiscal year if you start extending people's memberships. And that can be just really complicated and create a whole series of cascading challenges that continue to exist for many years after you make that decision. So that's one thing.
In terms of sort of the larger picture for finances and membership I think this depends a little bit on the type of organization you are and the type of membership, whether it's sort of a philanthropic membership or if you have a more value-based membership. But so much of membership is tied to the ability of people to come use, use their membership,and come visit you onsite. When you don't have that benefit, right, that's the benefit that wins in all, in all the member research, it really puts you in a tough spot .
We're in month three of this crisis, so it's hard to say what this means long term, but I think we'll have sort of more answers to that over the next few months in terms of whether people are able to still acquire and retain new members in a way that the revenue is still moving.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. Absolutely, and I think that actually dovetails nicely. John, on your side, maybe this is a positioning or a marketing perspective, but all along, much of your membership base is not coming onsite or visiting in person. So can you talk a little bit about in reference to what Zach is saying, how has that played into the way that you've charged forward and has it changed much? Has it changed anything?
John Perell:
It's interesting because we are this weird, unique hybrid of a national nonprofit and a museum organization. And over the previous two recessions and I'm going to take this from a recession standpoint because the way that it looks in donor behavior, it looks like a recession right now.
So we've not pulled back on any of our marketing. Again, we are a free admission museum organization that receives about 60% of our budget from a federal appropriation. So we have some level of insurance. But our programs, the way that we market our programs is more from a mission-focus. So the case for the support is always about the mission of the Smithsonian or the mission of the specific museum.
So I think we've actually weathered this very well. People aren't joining to get access to the muse so we're not really being asked to move expiration dates or anything like that. We've stayed in the mail, we've actually increased our mail and our digital outreach to members.
So for my programs specifically, we're trending still about up for about 1% for the year, and our fiscal year is October 1st to September 30th. And then there's a range of how these programs are performing. But I think that we're doing okay. Where we're really seeing the programs taking a hit right now is that $1,000 plus donors are really pulling back and part of it is our portfolios have been hit. There's also distraction. I'm hearing from a lot of different types of nonprofits, advocacy, societal benefit, like food banks and whatnot and animal welfare nonprofits, they're all up 10 percentage points plus right now, through this whole crisis.
So there is a distraction. And so with my $1,000 plus donors, we're really focusing a lot of effort on personal outreach to these people. So we started out having care calls and seeing how people are doing, much like our major gift offices are doing right now. Really talking to people. But throughout our whole organization, we're pivoting now back into steady-state fundraising. So we're going to our $2,500 and saying, "We really need your support to help the important work that Smithsonian's doing. We need that money now." And so we've gone from that soft, fuzzy, warm feeling to back to normal fundraising.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great. And transitioning when you start to think about reopening and John, you're talking a little bit about acquisition and retention. What do you think the future of acquisition, member acquisition or retention is going to look like in this, still in the COVID, but post-COVID era? Can you talk a little bit about that?
John Perell:
So I think it's a big concern. So, we have seen retention softening over the past decade, and it's, it's been a, it's been a challenge to keep up with that. So, in the absence of these physical events where people are in person and visiting, I'm concerned that the digital events won't have as great an impact on retention.
But I think where the opportunity is we've always talked about wanting to have virtual experiences for the national members. And so we've talked about it for years and it always kind of gets put on the side burner because we just have 20 other things to do. And so our hand has been forced. We had to create all this stuff. We had to do the research. And we're executing these events really well. We've created really great digital resources. We've compiled them and created a portal for our members to access it. So again, I think that's going to become part of our new normal. Then, the scary part is that there's 20% of visitors and members that want to come back onsite.
But there's that 25% out there right now that can't see themselves going into a museum. and sometimes they say ever again. And so that's the frightening thing is are we scaring away a whole segment of the population until a cure or a vaccine comes? That's the scary part because we all know the physical presence really does drive retention, it drives the upgrading and is feeding us on a daily basis.
So we're monitoring things very closely with our business partners and we're worried, but we're also hopeful because the one dramatic thing we've seen happen is the acceleration of, of giving to digital. So since this whole crisis began, we're seeing ourselves up 25 to 30% in online fundraising. And we're raising money through things like cultivation which we never could get gifts out of.
So again, softness in direct mail, but the online has just been a big boom. And the fact that people are actually responding to cultivation with, with physical giving is really impressive, I think. I think this crisis is going to truly permanently transform giving patterns.
Dan Sullivan:
And it's so interesting because it is still on the scale of things, such early days. And you're already seeing these trends just so readily apparent and we're only three months into things and who knows how long it could go on for.
John Perell:
Right, and the question is what's the long term impact and once we start understanding that, how do we retool. The thing is that these national nonprofits, these environmentals and stuff have been doing virtual events with their donors for over a decade. So again, our donors give to environmentals, they give to animal welfare. They've been conditioned by some of this. The question is will it equal that excitement of being onsite, seeing your favorite picture, seeing your favorite path in a garden. That's the question.
The one thing we know about our members is that when they become members they had visited long ago and many had not ever visited since then. So they were there as a teenager and then as a 55 year old they're becoming a member. And so the memory is very strong for them. And so that's what really drives them at the beginning. But what really gets people to give more and more is actually getting onsite, interacting with our staff and our curators, and getting that behind-the-scenes experience. And so, will this virtual world be able to fill the gap?
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. No, it's so true. And Melissa, on your side, when it comes to member acquisition, retention and a post-COVID or current-COVID time, what does that look like? Does it look any different than it did six months ago? How has that changed?
Melissa Dietrich:
So our spring acquisition was just hitting the printers maybe a week out before we closed for COVID. So at that point, yes we paid for all of the design, and we paid for all of the consulting. But we were able to put a hold on the print of that. So at this point, because we now see somewhat of a light at the end of the tunnel, we will be relaunching our spring acquisition.
There's a summer acquisition much more focused on not so much driving members to the gardens, because again, not everyone is going to feel comfortable visiting at this time. But sharing what beauty means to people and connecting them to nature. So we are actually going to be launching it in very small segments, usually we do a 200,000 plus mailing. Now we're actually going to be breaking it up into chunks about 30,000 to 40,000 pieces at a time, see how it goes, and then continue to launch.
I do want to mention something. Somebody popped something up in the chat that, yes, we're on this webinar talking about members and COVID and so many of our colleagues are all over the nation in cities that are being very much affected by just inequality. People are so upset and I hope that we can maybe discuss this as colleagues of nonprofits where people come to seek joy and education and learning and understanding that we can maybe talk about this for the next couple of minutes. It's something that our team is looking at very closely. We haven't been posting the past two days because we realized the heartache and especially in Philadelphia has been quite a bit of businesses have been destroyed and people protesting but I'm not sure if people are listening. And so maybe this is an opportunity for us to discuss that.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And there's been a number of questions both in the chat and in the Q&A. But here's one from Katie Doyle. "During this re-opening, how do we feel that we could use this platform as cultural institutions to encourage discourse and discussion about social justice? How can institutions approach this as an opportunity to reimagine the impact a museum can have on the enrichment and wellbeing of its members, visitors and local community?" Melissa, do you want to start by talking a little bit about that? About how the garden could, can be seen as a platform for being able to further that messaging?
Melissa Dietrich: We know that people come to the gardens for respite. They come to the gardens to get away from their daily life to put themselves in a different atmosphere. It's very rare that you would see somebody upset at the gardens. When they are upset I call them they're little bit mortally wounded, they're upset like something isn't the way it should be. We are known to have very high standards and so people say, "Well that's not Longwood." We'll get that. But, we do realize that people come to us to get away from that. And we hope to be a very welcoming organization. At any time when we're open you can hear anywhere from seven to 11 different languages in the gardens which is, which is wonderful, and people come from all over the world. So I hope people will continue to find a piece of nature or a place that they feel safe and comfortable in, and to have that.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Absolutely. John, do you want to weigh in on that?
John Perell:
Yeah, so I think, I highly recommend that everybody goes to either our Facebook page or Instagram or to our website. Our secretary, Lonnie Bunch, who is the founding director of African American History and Culture posted up something last night. But Kevin Gover, who for about a decade or more has been the director of our American Indian Museum said something to his staff today, and I'm going to paraphrase this from David Saunders who's the Director of Membership.
It's just, it goes to all of us in the museum world and what our place is in society. And so he said, "I want to speak with you about what is going on in the world. We are all upset in this upsetting time. It's hard to watch all this happening, and it can be hard to put it all in perspective. It makes us feel powerless in some respects to see this. Remember that we do our part, as small as it feels, we do our part. The work that we do at these museums across the Smithsonian is our part. It will have an effect. Will it be soon? No. It's been too damn long. But our work is one of our opportunities to do something about the racism that has been perpetuated in this country and the world for centuries. We are in a battle against ignorance. Sometimes ignorance is winning, but not most of the time.
"We do what is right and what is righteous. Don't despair. Be thoughtful and kind to each other. Read Lonnie's message, it puts things in perspective. It's a call to continue to action because that is what we do. If you're feeling despair, reach out. Don't suffer alone. We're all looking towards a brighter day."
When I got that this morning between that and Lonnie's message, I was just like, "Wow." It does give you perspective and again, I think it was Colleen Dillon-Schneider said at AMMC that we all in the cultural space have been a safe place for everyone. And we need to do a better job, and we are doing a better job. We are aware.
So I think everybody that's on this call, we want to have our museums and our facilities and our sites be safe for people to visit from a health perspective, but also from a cultural community standpoint.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. No, thank you for sharing. Zach, is there anything you want to weigh in on there?
Zachary Winfield:
I think that most of our clients, 99% of our clients are nonprofit, visitor attractions of one stripe or another. And one of the things that they all have in common is that they really strive to be accessible to people from all walks of life in their communities. But the truth is that they haven't really yet succeeded in doing that.
If you look at the makeup of the visitors to the zoos and aquariums and museums and botanic gardens and science museums, they often don't represent the fabric of their communities in ways that really mirror sort of the demographic and racial, ethnic makeup of those communities. So, this is not a new problem. I think there's a new focus on the problem because of what's been going on in the past couple of days.
But I just, I think our firm has talked about this for years and I think this continues to be an issue, that when organizations are looking at their long-range plans, at their strategic plans and at the development of their missions and their core values and their visions that creating spaces which are accessible to and feel representative of their communities is every bit as important as the mission-specific work that they're trying to do. Because if you're not serving your constituents then, then what are you doing?
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. and we've got about 17 minutes left and this is obviously, this is a topic that we could talk about for, for hours and maybe we should be. But I want to make sure I get to a handful of the audience questions, too, before we wrap up here.
So here's another one. And this is from Hannah Levine, "What are your organizations doing to help black members or donors during this time? What resources are you providing and how are you reaching out? How have your organizations responded to the needs of black communities in your reopening plans?" I'm not going to put anybody on the spot, but anybody who wants to jump in can jump in.
John Perell:
I think it's something that we're clearly thinking of, diversity is a key focus of the Smithsonian Institution. I don't know exactly what we're doing with regards to reopening. At this point there's a lot of stuff up in the air. But definitely, through African American history and culture, that has been an area where we have had a public discourse on the topic of, of race in America. And again, we are trying to reach broader and more diverse audiences.
I think it's, it's going to get more attention and I think people are going to try to figure how that fits into safety for people visiting, but also making sure that we're part of the conversation.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely.
John Perell:
And thanks, Dan.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure. So we've got a number of questions here. I'm going to go down the list. So this one is from Mariah Reynolds and this says, "Have you received any upticks in people asking for membership refunds since announcing reopening? And if so, how are you handling those?" Melissa? John? Zach?
Melissa Dietrich:
We have not announced just yet so we're probably either Friday or next Friday. But we have seen an uptick of, "Well, are you extending? Are you extending? Are you extending?" So I think we've only had maybe about 20 refunds that people have asked. Now it's become a hardship for them and so absolutely even non-during this time, somebody asked for a refund, we've just always done it.
Dan Sullivan:
For sure.
Zachary Winfield:
I would say that, and I think this is true but all manner of complaints and issues that you face with your member programs, you'll mistake the forest for the trees. When then, often it's easy if you hear a couple of complaints to feel like, "Man, this must be a problem that's running rampant." But a lot of times it's just a vocal minority of people who might have a problem or a complaint or want that refund or that extension. I would strongly advise to not put in place a blanket extension policy and to really just handle those on a case-by-case basis.
John Perell:
And that's what we're doing is through member services we handle that on a case-by-case. And again, a handful across the membership programs of people asking to have their memberships extended. The only refund we've had is, oddly enough, related to IRA rollovers because the CARES package is allowing people not to take their disbursement through their IRA this year and somebody asked for their refund for that. So that's the only one that I know of for a refund.
Dan Sullivan:
And what about member events? Lot of people are wondering about how events are going to work, what are those going to look like? And obviously Smithsonian does a lot. John, you want to start with that one? What’s that going to look like?
John Perell:
We're taking a bit of a conservative approach to it, and I'm going to speak central membership and central advancement. Each membership program and unit museum can manage it their own way. But from an organizational standpoint we are actually trying not to have any events. Right now we're talking April 1st, 2021. So no donor travel, no member events until then.
We have some placeholders for our second quarter which is January 1st to March 31st. But based off of the Harris Polls and off of what our members have said, even our national board has sort of said which is a volunteer group of donors, have basically said, "We're not really comfortable coming onsite in October."
So we think there's this comfortable level that will build up. We've budgeted for a full schedule of events in our next fiscal year, but we have the ability to pivot to virtual events. And the reason why we're budgeting for the full events is that if we don't budget for it, we don't get the money, we're hoping to be able to, even in a six month period, do a full slate of events. It's going to be a lot of stress on our staff. But by April our hope and expectation is that we'll be able to figure out, how do you do these events? How do you socially distance with a high risk audience to have these events? The assumption is that we're probably going to have very low attendance at first and it will build up over time. But it's really important to get back to a normal state, whatever that means.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, definitely anticipating that very dipping your toe timidly back into the waters of member events.
John Perell:
The challenge also is, we're also planning for possibly multiple closures. So how does that affect the confidence of your members locally? Is it going to scare them away? We don't have a playbook, and it's scary, but I think we're taking it one step at a time and we're all hoping to find that point where we can get back to normal.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Melissa, on your side, what are events going to look like? Or what do they look like now and in six months how are they going to look?
Melissa Dietrich:
I think very close to what John shared. I think we're going to continue on with our webinars and ensure that we'll bring on onsite events as we can in limited capacities to ensure our staff and our volunteers are safe. But I almost feel it's going to be after January of 2021. I just don't see a heck of a whole lot of events prior to that. I'd love to be wrong. But I have a feeling that this isn't over yet.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And Zach, what are you seeing in your clients when it comes to events?
Zachary Winfield:
So, I'll give a specific example. LA Zoo, Los Angeles Zoo has what's called their Beastly Ball which is, it's an annual fundraising event with a lot of restaurants and a giant auction and that was scheduled for mid-May. So obviously that couldn't go down as planned. So what they decided to do was to move the whole thing online. And I was initially incredibly skeptical of the concept of online virtual events. It didn't seem like it was going to work for me.
But, as it turned out, their results were really just astoundingly good, right? It was instead of buying a ticket, it was now accessible to anyone with a laptop. They moved their auction to an online platform and raised far more money than they expected. And they were able to reach more people with their mission messaging than they otherwise would have been able to because it was so accessible. So, while that's not going to work for every type of event, it's not going to work for holiday lights or Halloween, but while the concept of a virtual event might seem really odd, there is at least one example where it was just a resounding success.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. And here's another question from the audience. "Once your institution is open to members and the public, how do you continue making sure your members feel prioritized? Especially on campus?" So, anybody who wants to jump in.
John Perell:
I'll jump in first. That's actually a big challenge that we have as a free admission organization. We've not traditionally had member bypass lines or anything like that. So as we're figuring out how we approach getting people into the museums, are we ticketed and timed admission? How do we reward our members? Do we give them a code to bypass the line?
So we're trying to think that through to ensure that they are feeling loved.
Dan Sullivan:
And recognized, right? People just want us to be recognized for their support. Melissa, how about on your side? How do you prioritize? Or how do you make your members feel like they're being prioritized?
Melissa Dietrich:
Sure. So when we do open it is just going to open just to our members. lucky we've had member reservations. The members were required to make member reservations for the last maybe nine years to visit during Christmas and over the last six years for summer visitations at night. So we've had these tools in our arsenal and our members are very much used to making these. But now, of course, we're just going to require them from 10 o'clock in the morning until six o'clock at night.
So we're thinking about the first two, maybe three weeks, it will just be opened up to members. And so the logic is, if we're not hitting our capacity, so we're thinking about just about 300 people per every 30 minutes is how we're going to pulse people through into the gardens. And so if we see that members are not taking up that full capacity, then we're thinking about opening up to single ticket buyers a little bit sooner or if the State of Pennsylvania extends or, we get a little bit deeper into that yellow or even closer to a green stage, then we will just expand our capacity and then invite single ticket buyers to come in.
But we see these first two to three weeks, it is just going to be strictly members. And, I think they're going to be thrilled. And especially because it's only going to be about 35% of our capacity, so y- you're going to feel like you're... You have 400 acres to play in really by yourself .
Dan Sullivan:
It's your own garden! 400 acres.
Melissa Dietrich:
I think they're going to be quite pleased with the idea.
Dan Sullivan:
Definitely. And Zach, anything you want to throw in on that?
Zachary Winfield:
Yeah, well first I want to say, Melissa, I'm a Longwood member, so I will be there with my wife and kids. Yeah, I think Melissa's got it exactly right. That's what we've seen work at the facilities that have reopened over the past weeks. The soft openings for members. That's a double-benefit right? It gives the organization the opportunity to test their plan with a small and limited audience, and it also acts as a member benefit, right? These members are getting an early look at something the public doesn't have access to yet. And I would also say another thing to do is, as you're calculating whatever your new capacity is, to make sure to reserve tranches of that capacity just for members just to make sure that those people who are your long-time members, supporters, do have the ability to come onsite even once you get all the public in.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. So I've got one last big question for all of our panelists and I'm wondering what is something big idea-wise, or something actionable that everybody watching can take home and bring back to their organizations? What's one thing that you would advise? Zach, so you want to start?
Zachary Winfield:
Yeah. I'm actually, instead of doing big, I'm going to make a suggestion for a really specific actionable take away. And this was something that I had a discussion with one of our clients about on the webinar last week. They went through specific training with their staff to teach them how to interact with people while wearing a mask, because you don't realize when your face is covered you really lose the ability to have the subtle sort of interactions with guests and to make them feel welcome, they don't see it when you smile. So doing training, body language training and showing them how to, how to make them feel welcome with their whole body, how to smile with their whole face, I think that was really key in making their constituents feel good about coming back and making sure they had a good first experience coming back through the door.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, that's great advice. Melissa.
Melissa Dietrich:
Sure. So I talked a little bit earlier, we don't know if an online engagement is just as impactful as an onsite engagement. So now after each one of our virtual events we do a survey to just the attendees. So we know a lot of people sign up, but not everybody gets to the party on time. And so we didn't want to skew that data, we want to just really hear critical feedback for the ones who actually were part of that engagement. And so now that we're going to have a little bit of a bulk of history of these events, then I think with a little bit more time, because we'll probably have maybe about six, seven months of virtual events, I think we'll be able to understand how important these virtual events are. And, especially with our national members who are not within our 15 mile radius, radius, and how sticky these events could potentially be. So, I'm very excited that we were forced to do a lot of things that we've been wanting to do for a long time.
Dan Sullivan:
Absolutely. Again, a lot of folks have brought their back-burnered projects and ideas to the front burner with everything that's going on. John, take us home!
John Perell:
I think from my standpoint, I think what Melissa said is absolutely right, is to continue with those initiatives that you started because of this crisis. They're going to add value to your program in ways that you don't know yet and continue to measure it. But also with regards to your membership marketing, if you've pulled back at all, make sure that you are ramping up as fast as possible because you want to be hitting the ground running. And if you haven't, good for you because I think that's going to get you moving forward much more quickly. But it's really the marketing that supports your program, you need to get back on that as soon as possible.
Dan Sullivan: Absolutely. It's very much a snowball effect with that messaging and that marketing starting back from scratch, there's an uphill hill to climb.
Well, a couple of quick things before y'all go. First of all, thank you all for being here. A recording of this webinar is going to be posted on the Cuseum website later today. We'll also have some resources to share our shared Google Doc with coronavirus community insights and whatnot. So feel free to contribute to that. that's available on our website as well. We've got another webinar this week, it's on Wednesday at 2:00 Eastern time. It's called Museum Think Tank: Tapping into Fresh Ideas and Networks to Navigate the New Normal. Again, we've got cultural folks, we've got non-cultural folks. We're bringing them together, they're all ideal people. Hoping to break some ground there. Should be really interesting.
I mentioned this last week, we did a little collaboration with Blackbaud. We wrote a book called The Ultimate Guide to Surviving and Thriving as a Cultural Organization in the 21st Century. That's available for download as well. There's a link in the chat, thank you Maddie, and then lastly, thanks for being here. Everyone, amazing insights. John, Melissa, Zach, thank you all. And Zach's got some tools that we can circulate after the webinar around financial assistance for cultural organizations. John's got some docs that we can circulate as well, and Melissa, if you have anything that you want to send over, let me know.
But, again, thank you everybody for being here, and thank you to our panelists. , we really appreciate your insights.
John Perell:
Thank you very much.
Zachary Winfield:
Thank you.
Dan Sullivan:
Bye everybody.
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