Museum opens the books to anyone who cares

Can a nonprofit organization share too much information? Maybe. But I doubt it.

One organization that's trying to find out if there can be TMI is the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which has an online Dashboard of facts about the museum. Lots of facts, including these:

• The museum uses 41,614 kilowatt hours of electricity per day.
  
• The museum has 418 artworks with gaps in their WWII-Era Provenance.
  
• There have been 53,843 views of the museum's videos on YouTube.
  

That's just three pieces of the tons of information they offer. It would be easy to say it's too much, that it's too arcane, too detailed, to boring for donors to care about.

But remember, one person's boring factoid is another's hobby. Or hobbyhorse. By putting it all out there, the Indianapolis Museum is telling its public that anyone who cares is an insider. Is it possible someone will go ballistic about their electricity use, or their ownership of possibly plundered art? Sure. But it's not likely. And their openness defuses these things -- much more effectively than trying to keep secrets.

If the information is too much, nobody will look at it. Even so, the very fact that they're sharing it makes people respect the museum more. And who knows what info-sated donors might choose to do for an organization they feel trusts and respects them?

Thanks to The Artful Manager for the tip.

Technorati Tags: fundraising, Indianapolis Museum of Art

Comments

[Craig Weinrich]

This is fabulous, and I'm borrowing some ideas for our scorecard(not online yet).

Is it me, or is 78% of revenue coming from investments rather high? Am I reading that wrong?

[Joe Miller]

Maxwell Anderson and his team are doing a truly wonderful job of transforming and improving the IMA. The sharing of so much information with the public, donors and other interested parties is part of this truly wonderful transformation. Making it so easy, with their 'Dashboard', is right on.

[steve cunningham]

Jeff - great post. I think there are a couple of things going on that makes what IMA is doing "bang on".

The balance of power in media control is shifting from the advertisers/non-profits to the consumers/donors. This now means we have even LESS time to make an impression on the potential donors who know nothing about us (the old 30 seconds is now more like 5).

However, because people now have the ability to filter these messages, they are now be able to spend MORE time with the products/causes they find meaningful to them. And if the IMA creates meaning for me, I WILL find those stats interesting and spend time with them.

SO, the job of creating meaning in people's lives is getting even harder, but for those who get it right a much more meaningful and deeper relationship is available than ever before.

Would love to hear your thoughts...

[Nancy E. Schwartz]

Love it, Jeff. I credit IMA for crafting a dashboard -- it's a must to convey nonprofit marketing value, and other value, for internal audiences -- and to use it in such a creative way with its community. Such stats are a new component of messaging, now that transparency is a must. IMA has done a stellar job of conveying stats in a way that's meaningful and easy to digest for its supporters.