From the Wallace Foundation website:
"The last in a series of 10 [Wallace Foundation Building Audiences for the Arts] case studies explores how The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco worked to attract families of all backgrounds and build the next generation of museum supporters. It describes how the museum convened focus groups to better understand the needs of families with young children, designed programs and exhibitions to meet those needs, offered family discounts and entered into community partnerships to build awareness of the museum’s offerings.
Although The Contemporary Jewish Museum sought to attract families, it did not want to become a children’s museum. It therefore took extra efforts to balance the needs of children and adults. It worked to manage parents’ expectations, created spaces for children to work on activities and trained its staff to draw families to areas most appropriate for children.
These efforts resulted in a nearly nine-fold increase in family visitors over seven years, the report finds. Authors suggest that the museum’s successes relied in part on a nuanced understanding of its target audiences, mutually beneficial partnerships with schools and libraries and careful evaluation and refinement of engagement strategies."
Points of Interest:
"Discounts alone weren’t enough to attract families to The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. The museum had to offer tailored family programming as well.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s effort to attract families shows how strong community partnerships with mutually beneficial goals can achieve results.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum balances needs of children and adults by creating child-friendly spaces and training staff to help families find them."
From the report's Introduction:
"The individual case studies are the products of multiple interviews with key staff and analysis of program elements, budgets, and planning documents. Unlike similar efforts, however, each draws from a multifaceted base of data and evidence collected over a period of several years, including ticket purchases, online activity, and participation in a broad array of programming, as well as qualitative and quantitative research undertaken by independent consultants and the organizations themselves to inform program development and to evaluate results. That research was integral to each program, and of such importance that in 2015 The Wallace Foundation published a companion guide on using research to support audience building that draws from practices and examples employed across the 10 organizations, called 'Taking Out the Guesswork.'
Each case study in this series begins with a brief executive summary and a “scene-setter” describing an actual component of the program. That is followed by an overview of the environment within which the organization was operating, its audience-building challenges, and the program it built to address those challenges. Detail follows about strategy and tactics, and key decisions and adjustments made as the organization developed its approach and refined it in response to new information. Additional specifics are provided on how progress was measured and what results occurred, and an analysis highlighting elements that led to success follows."
