Unknown Speaker 33:59 I'm Sheila Rooney from the Reeves Victorian home Museum in Dover Ohio, and I'm the Region Five representative on the Ohio local history Alliance board, and I am happy to introduce to you today, you have Zhang from the University of Kentucky, and she is going to be speaking to us today about benchmarking management policies of house museums and historical sites. Thank you. Hi and welcome. Unknown Speaker 34:27 Hi, thank you for the introduction, Sheila. Well, i I'm you Hi John, so I am an associate professor of arts administration at the University of Kentucky. So we teach about how to run our organizations, and we do marketing, fundraising and specifically I teach financial management for our organizations so it is a little broader or adjacent to historical site management or museum management, but it's very it overlaps and it's very relevant and I can share more context about this project and how I got into it. Oh, I'll have to share my slide, I just realize you're not looking at my slide. Unknown Speaker 35:16 And also feel free to stop me if you have any questions as some things don't make sense to you, and I mean you can use the chat function but I'll be happy to answer any questions you have. Jenni Salamon 35:29 So Unknown Speaker 35:30 I started this project as a consulting project, so the overseas Korean Cultural Foundation, reached out to me and asked me to do some benchmarking research for them. It's a very unique organization so it is funded by Korean government, and it's, but it is a nonprofit in the US, so this is the, it's also called Korean navigation House Museum. So the museum itself is the foundation, it is registered as a private nonprofit, about a private foundation. And it has, it used to be a very, it used to be a litigation house for this Korean dynasty for over 100 years, and it became part of Japanese control during the Japanese invasion and Japan Saudi to private person in the US, so it was lost for a while, from Korea, Korea, and they recently acquired in acquired and renovated, and now it's open to the public so it's a new museum. It opened in 2018, and it's located in Washington DC. So, since it's a new organization Korean government they never ran a museum in the US and they just didn't know how to approach it. They are capable of doing it but they just didn't understand the standards in the US so I was contracted to do research for them. Specifically I examined the governance and management benchmarking practice based on survey responses, and based on survey, Richard. On the questionnaire asked. So, sorry. So the questionnaire included questions where people can upload their policy documents. So, the survey not only included a questionnaire but also included a mechanism where people can share their Polish documents. So I ended up getting documents from 46, museums, they were relatively small and medium sized and a lot of them are historical house museums but some included just historical site, museums, not specifically house museums, to talk a little bit more about how I identified the center and how I collected data. So I started with IMLS museum universe fire, and it has a, it's not quite up to date right now but it's the biggest museum buyer out there that includes all the museums in the US, and it is. It includes like for smaller fires, so I searched among all of them using keywords like house mentioned and home and identified one of the 15 museums that were most similar to the Korean legation house, and among 150 of them actually fewer people responded because of the COVID right they people, the museums were close and they weren't in the mindset to respond questionnaire like this I totally understand that. So it was a little bit difficult to get answers from people, so we caught a lot of museums, I and my assistant caught a lot of museums to get more response. And at the end, instead of just focusing on our initial sample museums, we asked people who participate in the survey to share the link with other people within their network, and that increased our response, so we ended up getting 51 responses, and 46 of them were complete, so they were used in the analysis and the data collection period was from November 2020 to February this year. And in terms of analysis, I use descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis. I also collected financial data for these museums, and some of the museums were government owned, so they don't fire 990 If they, they are part of government. So only 31 out of 46 were included in the financial analysis because of that. Unknown Speaker 40:04 So this is a summary of Polish documents, I received. And these are the Polish documents, we asked for bylaws board contracts collections managed policies, financial management policies, Human Resources handbooks, strategic plans, rental agreement if you rent out a space, and emergency preparedness plans, About 67% of them haired and this one internal document, and some of them did not have all the policies, documents, asked about in the survey, as we can imagine some smaller organizations, didn't have some of the documents and sometimes it's not relevant to have it. For example, if you don't have rented space, you don't have rental agreements policy, and some have them but didn't feel comfortable hearing them, which is totally understandable, and at the end we examined 109 documents. And this is a break out of those documents, and we received the most documents in the collections manage policy that makes sense because that's what we do. And to share more about the just general demographics of participating museums, their annual budget size was mostly between 25k to 1 million, some of them were very big. Initially I didn't include the bigger museums but you know, the survey was sent out to other networks. So we ended up getting responses from larger museums and also much smaller museums, but it ended up being a benefit to the study because we were able to see the varied differences among their policy, policy documents, and if the museums are bigger, they tend to have more complex set of policies versus smaller museums, they may pick and choose what they want to focus on, and number of professional staff calculated in full time equivalent staff members. Typically it ranged from one to five full time staff members so still these organizations are small and run by very nimble staff. So I asked questions about their mission statements and they just copied and pasted that that's what we wanted, so I compiled all of their mission statements and put it in Word crowd, and it, you know, as you know how the word cloud how it works. The, the more the terms are repeated the bigger, it shows up in the cloud. So as you can see history preserved preservation County. So you can you can kind of see what they are focused on what they, their priorities are based on the terms used. And I also asked their challenges. So it was a, you know, we're in the lockdown mode so a lot of people have concerns about COVID, and in general they also had concerns about their relevancy rates historic organizations and we're talking about the past and how can you make them relevant to current issues or people who are now from here or younger generations, it's a constant challenge for them, and not having enough volunteers and staff members, fundraising and funding, there are always an issue of four or four types of museums and staffing was an issue as well. And also you have property rights, historical site and house, house museums and it's a, it's old, and it takes a lot of efforts to make sure they're maintained properly. So those are some of the concerns that I heard from participating museums. So in terms of financial data analysis, I grouped the museums into five subgroups. So based on their body size, so the largest museum was, had the budget, between one and $5 million. There were only three of them, and the large museum between five 500k, and 1,000,005 of them, medium, 250 to 5k 500k, five of them, and as you can see smaller museum group had the most number between 100k and 250 K. There were 11 of them, and the small smallest museum group had a budget size between 50k and 100k and there were seven of them. So based on these group size I analyze their nine nine information to show their financial situation in a way. Unknown Speaker 45:00 So the first thing I looked at was based on their income statement. So the bottom line is they make money or lose money on that year it's a net income. So the largest museum they had lots of positive profit. As you can see most of them actually had a, had a profit, except the medium museum group had a deficit. And the money mix is the mix between armed revenue reprogramming and the fee charging structures versus your arms revenue, or non revenue or contributed income that's any income that you earn from fundraising activities including grant writing your annual giving your major giving and all those things. So as you can see, so the money makes date, these two columns go together and combine the day, they should be 100%. So as you can see a lot of museums rely on their contributed income and this is not surprising, you know a lot of museums, rely on their fundraising income. But the interesting part is the smaller, it gets, the more on the income, the museum generate. So I think it's more about, maybe it's because you're smaller museums, you have more innovative ways to charge people fees, you have maybe programming, like for children and you charge fees, a little bit, maybe you charge admission fees. But I thought that was interesting. So the smaller the museum is, the more likely they will lie on aren't revenue per steer they rely mostly on contributed income. Again, this is very typical for museums and expense or location it. Again, these three columns go together, and they come, they together. If you combine these three numbers, they should come up 200 ish, sometimes it's more than or less than because of the rounding issue. So the programming. As you can see, they spend the majority of their money on programming, which they should and attracts with the industry standard as well, and administration which includes your overhead rate your rent, your, your peers, your, your executive salary, some part of it, not all of it though. So the administrative part goes in there, and fundraising. The money you spent on raising money, including your professional fundraising staff salary was the smallest expense area. And this again is very attractive with the industry standard, but as you can see the smaller the museum is the last money they spend on fundraising so they don't do a lot of fundraising, and also it kind of, it corresponds to the fact that smaller museums have relied less on contributed income, therefore they may spend less money on fundraising. So that's like a snapshot of their financial indicators based on income statement, along with the next part. So it's the next part of the financial analysis was acquitted in circling ratios, and I'm not going to go into too details with this, but what I found about these museums, was that they have so little that, which is amazing, and because I've been studying museums for a while now and most museums not historical museums specifically but most museums, they have, they have a good amount of debt, right, they have buildings, they, they have mortgage they have equipment they, they were get a loan to buy that because you know you most museums don't have a lot of cash laying around to buy it outright, so you will finance it, and that's very typical for a lot of museums but historical sites and house museums they nearly have any debt, and I found that to be very interesting, but also at the same time it makes sense it's historical sites, it's been there, maybe takes a lot of money to maintain it, but you don't probably have mortgage on it, so it makes sense, but there was very interesting part, so I'm not going to go in details of these ratio numbers, unless you have a question later. Unknown Speaker 49:46 So now we're moving into talking about the policy analysis. So as you can imagine some of these documents are very long, and my assistant and I went in there and analyzed all of them, and for the museum that contract me to do the research for them. We provided a very detailed analysis of each policy documents policy set. So, what we submitted for them was almost like a template of what could they can use what they can use the information was all anonymized, so when I got the, you know, bylaws from certain museum I anonymized all of them, and I didn't share the identity of the museum to the legation House Museum that sponsored me to do the research, but they got all the information from the documents. The, especially the positive apart, what should be included and what should be not and how it should be organized and things like that. So as you can imagine, I cannot share all of that today and I also realized that it's Friday afternoon and you know I don't want to talk too much at you, so hopefully you know our be able to share some highlights of each document, or each policy area and if you have any questions later we can ask, you know, ask me later. So the bylaws, as nonprofits, you must have it, and some didn't have it because they were government organizations. So the, the number of people who said no, out here. No bylaws. These museums were government owned, And most of them concert and I also. The trend of a was that they really are regularly updated and they did museums use their bylaws as guiding principles. Although some does not look at it at all and not sure if they are using it. And it also included a number of board members usually bylaws will lay that out and the term limits and things like that. And most museums, they had a board member number between six and 15 That was the most common, but some had fewer some had a lot more. So again, they were regularly updated and, you know local laws change, so you want to make sure that you're following them, making sure that your bylaws are up to date for them. And also there, the term limit was an interesting thing because you know we talk about state boards sometimes, right, you know they are there for a long time, they have their own opinions and they don't want to try new things, perhaps, you have to rotate your board members right you have community members who are supportive of you but at the same time you need new, fresh ideas and that can happen through rotating your board members, and most of the bylaws actually were allowing people to stay on for a long, long time. So it was not unusual to see that you can stay on as a board member for like 10 years before you even take a break or something like that, so you may want to rethink and kind of have a policy so it can be rotated more frequently and conflict of interest policies were mostly included but they will not be detailed enough, so you may want to make sure that you include like detailed accounts of what happened, what do you do when there is a conflict of interest between the data organization, and that board members, and, for example, you know if you are voting on something that affects one board members, personal financial interest and that of organization that person may not participate in voting on that matter specifically so things like that can be included in your bylaws and routine auditing, you know, a lot of them mentioned that, but it wasn't really specific, how often does it have to be done, and it is important right financial information reporting them properly is very important. And also it will help you find if there is any issues with the finances by doing routine auditing. And, oh some changes, if you make revisions to your bylaws, you have to report to the IRS and you can do that by clicking a box and 990 When you report your 990 and you can attach the copy of revised by law. Unknown Speaker 54:40 And board contract. So, most of a lot of them had it, you know, about 18 of the museum's had board contract. So it's a, it's not really a legally binding contract per step but it's more like, like commitment right you're laying out the your board members, legal and ethical duties and expectations at the judiciary of the organization, although they don't get paid, they are responsible for the organization. So you want to lay that out and maybe you can ask them to sign it, although it's, it's not legally binding it creates that formality and commitment. You could emphasize again conflict of interest policy in there. And also, you know disclosure process. And anything that's really important from the bylaws, it can be repeated in the contract, and also if you have any giving requirement, you know, minimum requirement, things like that that can be included in your board contract as a strategic plan. So, a lot of them had it, but, you know, a good number of them did not have. And some of them were working on it. But it's a, it's a plan for the future, but short term not really a 10 year plan but like a three to five year plan or it could be shorter. It could be a little longer, but having that plan gives you the roadmap where you want to go in the next two to three years. So as I said, about half of the participant museums did not have it, and it could be a meaningful, it could provide a meaningful and useful strategic planning efforts based on a clear mission and vision, and also based on a strategic plan documents that we thought were really good, they share the concrete and achieve of rewards. They had a specific timeline and people who were in charge of each step, as well as measure for success. So this is a breakdown of the weaknesses and strengths in strategic planning, as I shared earlier, but this really details it. So, if, when the chords were not good, they were like loosely tied to mission and design, and it didn't indicate where the chords were heading in terms of verses in the good, strong cores, they were really the mission with a clear destination in mind. So you're thinking about your vision where you want to go and gorgeous goals are stated as continuation of status quo so you're not really talking about what you want to be, but more about maintaining what you have and how can we just stay versus transform and moving forward now, I mean you don't have to always Transform and move forward sometimes maintaining status quo is important, but you want to have that balance and goals, cores provide a realistic stretch, and build on past and current achievements, so it's related to what you have done so far but also moving forward and goals may be linked to current issues, some good cores. Included with these qualities. And, you know, weak weaker strategic plan they had steps that didn't really identify it just had a list of things but didn't really say clear steps to get there, versus in a better ones. There were steps. Goals sub goals, not, and so the detailed picture of the course and also how they relate to the bigger plan and no responsibilities included in a weaker plan versus clear ownership and responsibility for each core was provided in a stronger plan so it will say, who's responsible by their job tighter, the committee name and the team or department, so we know exactly who's in charge of that step and broad and veg wars, right, it's, you don't know what to do right if they're vague, so specific, actionable cores and sub course with specific timelines and measure for success are important. And if you do not have this, you know, what was shared in the strength, stronger strategic plan, two chords are loose, it's not Unknown Speaker 59:32 specific, we don't know who's responsible for it, then it's not really used, and also you know you may you may hire someone to do the strategic plan for you and it sits on a shelf. So that's a lot of waste of time and money, and your value versus shelf space. So, it's not good, it's not working. Dynamic Document versus if it's done properly, it can be a dynamic document that will lead you to the next chapter for your organization. And the next collection policy, so I got most, a lot of collections policy from museums, 23 of them share them. And as you can see, nearly all of them had some sort of collection policy, and that included a petition policy the accession policy conservation policy and other. I don't know what other entails, I assume it's part of the larger organization and they perhaps share some of documents with them. Some really didn't have any four of them actually did not have any collections policy. So it's a separate collections management policy that is detailed and specific to its unique collections needs and interests. So it has to be tied to your collection right your local interests, your mission, and it will include a condition deaccession conservation, I mean this, these are pretty standard things and I think you know more about this than I do. And, you know lawns, you want to be very careful what you accept and what you don't accept and how long the process of it. And some of the documents actually talked about preventative collect collections policy. So instead of acting, after the fact, something goes wrong and you have to, you know, really fix it right it deteriorated and you have to find a way to address that, or it could be lost right versus you want to adopt more active. active collections care policies so you can instead of waiting right you can proactively maintain your collection, you know, a systemic way so you will have fewer emergencies, with your collections. And a lot of the mentioned software and most of them use that right past perfect, is like the standard for a lot of museums, and I don't think I've seen any other program listed, it may not exist, maybe it's a monopoly. Okay, and the financial policies. So only nine of them share their, and they had them right it's not like they don't have them, but they didn't feel comfortable sharing them with me. Compared to other policy areas. And some of them had a fundraising guidelines and policies some investment endowment policy if you have one, and cannot control policy, and more than 15 of them didn't have any. So that is a concern. So it's important to have general Finance and Accounting Policies and Procedures Manual, There is written in a way that can be understandable by lay lay people without special knowledge in financial management, and again the conflict of interest policy in terms of finances should be included. And in internal control up here, internal control right like, how do you make sure you set up a process properly so there is a last chance of people stealing money or though we trust our employees, things like that happen, and if you have the policies that are properly, you may avoid it and donations gift acceptance guidelines right you we have to follow IRS guidelines to properly acknowledge gift and give gift receipts to the donors so they can deduct their gifts in the when they fire their income tax. Unknown Speaker 1:03:55 HR policies. A lot of them have had it about 30 of them out of 46 and some of them didn't have and other again these are the organizations that are part of larger organization or government than they have, they just shared what they had in their mother organization. An employee handbook lays out benefits responsibilities, disciplinary actions and processes, and they all have to be aligned with laws and regulations, again these things change laws don't change that quickly and often but they do change so you want to make sure that your handbook is up to date with changes in laws and regulations. And actually HR policies were the longest for all the museums. After collecting the policy. For me, It was similar, but some of the HR policies were very extensive like 80 pages long. So, I mean, you could have there right but at the same time, if it's that long is that usable for your employees, you may want to have a shorter version of where like a summary version aware, but some of them are very difficult to get through and written in a way that's not accessible to lay people. Unknown Speaker 1:05:18 And if you have Unknown Speaker 1:05:20 rented space to rent out a lot of them did write more than 2525 museums had renter spaces and they had the renter agreement policy, and some didn't, right some museums don't have a space like that, or it's dangerous to rent out a space to keep her but they may destroy or, you know, change your environment in a way that's not sustainable for your organization. And sometimes they some of them had it like ad hoc right they sometimes rented out sometimes they didn't so they didn't have very proper policy but they sort of had to do it, it's good to have parties involved to sign a rental agreement. And it should contain both contract right you actually find and this will be binding contract, and also guidelines, what to do, what not to do, is food allowed. What kind of food is allowed, and things like that nature. And also you can say the purpose of a right as a nonprofit, you may not be able to rent it out for political activities and you want to say that in your policy and clear a specific eligibility for renting would help provide a justification for who can borrow your space right again the political activity if it's supporting one candidate over another, you may, you can't do that but if you have a justification, you can show it to them, they know we cannot rent it out to you. Because of this, and also you can avoid potential future disputes regarding use of space, because it will be all laid out and they are assigned. So if some, some dispute happens, you can show it. Look, we agreed on this, you cannot do this. And lastly, emergency preparedness policy, only eight of them share them. Although a lot of them had it right they had more than 25 museums had emergency preparedness policy. Some didn't have more than 15 of them didn't have, and some we're working on it. And I think we will need more of these right with the more disasters happening and you know more civil unrest is happening so you will have to be ready, especially in depending on your location right so this museum that I did the research for it was in Washington DC. So, you have more chance of running into political and civil unrest type of situation that you may want to be careful about. So it will be a reference for your staff and volunteers, and managing emergencies in situations, including weather and civil unrest or anything else right that you were not expecting. And it should be widely distributed shared and updated to ensure the fit for purpose. And it's always good to involve your local staff who know that they're doing an environment, on a daily basis. When you create these documents, and I saw one example among eight. It was so long, it was like 200 pages long, it was done by an external consultant, but it wasn't very helpful. It didn't even include the, the emergency numbers in the city. So, those things cannot be useful if people are using it, have to flip through 200 pages of document to get to number that doesn't exist. It's difficult to use, it's not usable so you. So you want to avoid that. So that's all I have in terms of presentation and if you have any questions or stop sharing. Do you have any questions, comments, Unknown Speaker 1:09:35 Allison. We actually, we have two questions that are in the q&a. So the first one is, is there a defined relationship between goals and strategic plan. And this, they said that this may be discussed later in the presentation but do you think that there's a defined relationship between goals and strategic plan. Oh, Unknown Speaker 1:10:05 I don't think I'm understanding the question. Unknown Speaker 1:10:10 And it was an anonymous participant so if you want to send in another q&a and kind of clarify a little bit, that'd be great. We can move on to the second one though we do have another one. So, in the strategic plan analysis. When looking at small museums group. How many had strong strategic plans versus weak strategic plans. Unknown Speaker 1:10:28 Oh wow, I don't recall the exact number, but it wasn't about the size of the organization, it's more about how they approached it, so it's not, it doesn't correlate to the size of the organization. So it was, I mean it door. I will say there were fewer stronger strategic plans done than weaker ones, but it did not correlate with the size of the museum. Unknown Speaker 1:11:06 Awesome. So we just had another one come in that several of the points in the strategic plan sounded like concepts that we have included an annual goals. So I think that's a clarification to the first question. Unknown Speaker 1:11:20 Yeah, I mean annual goals will be part of the bigger strategic plan. So it should connect to your like where you want to be the bigger goal in three or four years, and your and your small goals to those steps to get to the goal so they are necessarily interconnected and you don't, I don't think you can do one without the other. Unknown Speaker 1:11:45 I said we had another one come in, it says, What did you find was the most common shortcoming with board policy documents. Unknown Speaker 1:11:54 Thank you man, talking about board contract policy. Can you repeat the question. Unknown Speaker 1:12:03 Yeah, absolutely. It says, What did you find was the most common shortcoming with board policy documents I Unknown Speaker 1:12:12 think one would be, not many of them had it. So there will be one, I suggested, most of them have one another is it wasn't detailed enough, it wasn't really specifying their roles and responsibilities as board members, and also, like, I don't know I mean, I have a funny feeling about requiring minimum donation amount from board members I think they should give for at the same time. I think it's effective to set the minimum amount, I think it is effective, so therefore it's good included, but at the same time I understand a lot of people are very funny about it, requiring that. So I found that they were not really designating the specific amount, like a minimum amount, they have to give on their yearly basis. So, that is a drawback, but also at the same time, I understand why they are not addressing it. Unknown Speaker 1:13:19 And then be another question that just came in, it says, so is the strategic plan actually long term goals. Unknown Speaker 1:13:27 It could include both short term and long term goals. So the strategic plan will include your long term goals, and also the smaller steps, and your boards that will help you get to the long term goals. So maybe I will think of an example so if you want to have endowment, by, you know, five years, that's your long term goal to get there you want to have a campaign right you have to maybe hire your campaign manager, you want to have your science base your public phase, you want to set when it will be any step who's responsible for doing that what kind of communication, you will do, who you want to reach out to those things will be more like smaller steps to your long term goal of having an endowment. Unknown Speaker 1:14:23 So, and so this is not a question but it just came in at CES, I thought this presentation was excellent, we'll try to share with the board of my organization. Unknown Speaker 1:14:29 Oh, thank you. So I'm working on a report based on this, other than the report I gave to the radiation museum, but I'm working on a publication based on there so once that's our short share, I mean I will share that with my participants, for sure, but I will try to share that with the organizer of this conference when the paper comes up. Unknown Speaker 1:14:56 So if folks have any more questions we're going to give them a few more minutes to Pullman, we don't have any new ones right now but if you do have a question and you are a participant, make sure to put it in the q&a, or in the chat, let me go ahead and open up that chat as well, nothing coming in just yet. I'll keep you updated though. Awesome if nobody else has any more questions I think we can go ahead and wrap this session up, I'm Sheila are you, how do you guys have anything else to say as concluding statements. Unknown Speaker 1:15:45 I just want to say thank you so much for participating and I know it's Friday afternoon, and we'll have a great weekend and if you have any questions, feel free to email me, you can just google me. My name is very unique and you will only find one person coming up. Unknown Speaker 1:16:03 And sorry just before we, we leave we got one more question, Where can we find the IMLS information that you mentioned. Oh, Unknown Speaker 1:16:14 It's called me. I'll drop the link, put in the chat. Unknown Speaker 1:16:47 Awesome, so I, the chat, and the recording will be available after we go through and get that all together on our side. So thank you both for being here she learned you huh, and have a great rest of your Friday. Unknown Speaker 1:17:00 You too. Thank you, you have very much. I thank you for all the attending. Transcribed by https://otter.ai