Assessing Risk

So much of what is happening falls outside our realm of personal experience, it can be hard to make rapid, intuitive judgements about risk. When faced with the current spate of EOs and announcements, it may feel natural to focus on the potential risks of noncompliance. However, it is useful to remember that there is actually a spectrum of risk:

• At one end are potential legal or financial actions, by the government or nongovernmental groups, that might damage an organization.
• At the other end, preemptive compliance (or as some have called it, “anticipatory obedience”) can pose a risk to reputation, to the ability of an organization to deliver on its mission, and to its duty of care for its staff and its community.

It is also important to consider the cumulative impact of individual or organizational actions on society. Decisions that keep us safe, individually and institutionally, in the short term may over the long term collectively create undesirable futures. For example, self-censorship of content might help an organization avoid unwanted attention in the current political climate, but what kind of future would widespread self-censorship help to create?

Asking Questions

How can you make wise decisions within the context of this whole spectrum of risk? One approach is to start with a framework of questions that can help tease out potential consequences of action or inaction. For example, here are some questions I’ve been hearing museum leaders ask as they consider how to respond to the expanding list of Executive Orders affecting charitable nonprofits. (Prefacing with the disclaimer that I am not an expert in either legal or legislative issues, I’m just outlining the issues as I’ve heard them discussed.)

• Does a given EO apply to our organization? Some EOs are directed at specific businesses that receive federal funding or a federally regulated. For some museums this may be a clear “yes”: for example, if their governing authority is part of the federal government, or if they receive grant funding from a federal agency. On the other hand, as we saw with the implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, “federal funding” finds its way to museums through a wide variety of channels.
• Is the guidance in a given EO clear and consistent? The wording of some of the EOs so far have been vague, and in some cases conflict internally or with subsequent communications, making it difficult to determine what organizations they apply to, or what compliance they are trying to mandate. For example, the EO Executive Order “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” names accessibility (as part of DEIA) as a preference that “can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation”. However, it’s not clear whether the EO is actually targeting accessibility, or, if it is, whether that would stand up to constitutional challenge. (Disability rights lawyer Eve Hill thinks not.)
• Is it possible the EO may be challenged in court? (Many of them already have.) It may take some time for these challenges to wend their way through the system to determine whether they are eventually implemented. This being so, might it be prudent to wait and see, before taking any actions, absent an immediate threat?
• Are the consequences spelled out? The EO “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” requires each federal agency to “identify up to 9 potential civil compliance investigations of corporations, large nonprofits or associations, or foundations with assets of $500 million or more.” Some museums fall into that asset category, but what are the implications of these “potential civil compliance investigations?”

More generally (not EO specific)

• When might “taking a stand” make a difference, and when might it put an organization, and its staff and audiences, at risk? If both, how do you weigh the benefit and harm of these impacts?
• What are the values, and opinions, of our museum’s key stakeholders (board, staff, funders, donors, and community members), and how do they support or conflict with pressure from the government, funders, donors, and activists to behave in certain ways?

It also may be useful to set aside questions that might not provide useful answers, for now. For example:

• Many legal scholars are weighing in on whether any given action will hold up in court, asking “does the government have the power to do this?” Even a consensus on these issues might not provide useful guidance, as the administration may not comply with court rulings. For example, this week the administration announced it would defy a court order to prevent the funding freeze at the National Institutes of Health from going into effect.
• Many museums are taking the prudent step of conferring with attorneys about their specific circumstances, but this input may be of limited use as well. The administration has shown it is willing to take steps a lawyer might not anticipate, such as breaching the terms of contracts that have already been signed, or giving the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) unprecedented access to government IT systems and directly block payments, change code, and delete information without going through established channels.

As you create your own decision tree, incorporating these or other questions, here are some resources that might be of use:

• The National Council of Nonprofits’ continually updated summary of Executive Orders Affecting Charitable Nonprofits
• Guidance from the Federal News Network on Navigating the Trump administration’s executive orders: Key implications for employers and federal contractors.
• The Legal Landscape Around DEI Is Shifting. Your Messaging Should, Too, Harvard Business Review (accessible when you sign up for a free account).
• ‘It’s Not Over’: Steps to Rethink Fundraising After Trump’s Spending Freeze, The Chronicle of Philanthropy (paywalled, check to see if any of your colleagues have a membership.)

I’ll work on the next installment in this series. Please let me know what you would find helpful and share resources I can integrate into this work. Comment on this post, connect with me on Bluesky @elizabethmerritt.bsky.social, and join the Future of Museums Community on Museum Junction to DM me and discuss these issues with your peers.

Yours from the future,

Elizabeth Merritt
VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums
American Alliance of Museums

Step 1: Start from a Stable Base

I want to start by emphasizing the need to care for yourself and those around you. Fostering mental, emotional, and physical health not only minimizes harm, but sets the stage for effective response. If you, or members of your family, participate in sports, you may be familiar with the precept “start from a stable base”—a strong and balanced core. It’s not possible to respond effectively to challenges when you are off balance, or, as the idiom goes, “caught on the back foot.” While self-care may seem out of reach right now, it may be a useful practice to deploy when circumstances permit. With that in mind, here are some resources you might draw upon:

• From TrendsWatch, Take Care: Building resilience and sustainable practice addresses the history and importance of the self-care movement, its implications for museum workers, and steps museums can take to care for their staff and community.
• Several resources from the estimable Seema Rao of Brilliant Idea Studio:
  • An essay on how to set aside time and space for a self-care plan in the workplace.
  • Objective Lessons: Self-Care for Museum Workers, 196 pp., digital edition available from Amazon.
  • An episode of the MuseoPunks podcast, in which host Jeff Inscho and Suse Anderson interview Seema and Beck Tench to create an Ode to Self-Care.
  • A webinar in which Seema joined me to discuss how museum workers can employ self-care to sustain physical and mental health, and how museums can foster self-care in the workplace and create a less stressful work environment.
• The Hidden Brain podcast recently aired an episode titled Wellness 2.0: When it’s all too much, in which researcher Sarah Jaquette Ray talks about how we can reclaim our sense of efficacy and purpose in the face of big, systemic problems.

Step 2: Identify Credible, Manageable Sources of Information

The sheer volume of news and commentary about the impact of current events is, frankly, counterproductive. It can be more useful, and healthier, to identify a few credible, useful sources of information to monitor on a regular basis. Here are a few sources that I am using to stay informed:

• The National Council of Nonprofits has created a summary, updated daily, of Executive Orders Affecting Charitable Nonprofits, including a list of related actions and capsule analysis of nonprofit impact.
• Patrick Reis, senior politics and policy editor at Vox, has created The Logoff newsletter to provide a daily synopsis of political news that allows you to “log off and get back to the rest of your life.” Each entry summarizes what’s going on in the White House, provides some historical perspective, comments on the impact, and offers some thoughts on what may come next.
• The weekly NPR Politics Newsletter is also a good source of “political news without the noise.”

Step 3: Organize Your Mental Inbox

I’ve written in the past about the importance of establishing healthy filters for consuming content. That is more important than ever, given the pace of change under the new administration. How can you ensure you stay informed of things you need to know without becoming overwhelmed? Consider creating categories to organize the information pouring into your feeds. As you sort through the headlines, identify whether a piece of news:

• Has immediate impact, for your organization, your family, yourself. For example, might your museum need to remove material from its website, reassign staff, or cancel government-funded events or contracts? This is your priority basket, for your attention even if all else gets filtered out.
• May potentially have impact, depending on how things play out. Some of the recent executive directives can be challenged in court, require legislative approval, or must go through additional processes before they can take effect. To help identify what you might flag as having potential impact, it may help to review this explanation from National Public Radio on the difference between presidential orders, memorandums, and proclamations.
• Is of concern, but is not something you have the responsibility, or even the ability, to cope with yourself. To paraphrase something Dr. Ray says in the Hidden Brain interview (above), the mental suffering we inflict on ourselves does not, itself, make the world a better place.
• Is noise you can, and should, ignore. Some of the issues raised in press and commentary are speculative at this moment—worrying about what might happen but hasn’t happened yet. Learn to filter: is it something you could prepare for? Does it increase stress without providing useful, actionable information? Scrolling social media feeds, be alert to memes, AI generated fakes, and misinformation that may just make things worse. (Though if a little bit of meme humor makes you feel better, then consume as needed.)

As always, I will do the best I can to search, filter, analyze, summarize and share news that can help you respond to current events and plan for the immediate future.

Warmest regards,

Elizabeth Merritt
VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums
American Alliance of Museums

For those of you who are new to AAM’s forecasting report: each edition of TrendsWatch examines a few important issues that are shaping the future of society, museums, and the communities they serve.  Because our focus is on trends (forces of change that will play out for years) rather than fads (transient cultural blips) the articles in the report form part of longer arcs of conversations via blog posts, webinars, and sessions at the AAM Annual Meeting and the Future of Museums Summit. Sometimes the report sparks larger initiatives, convenings, and reports (for example, our deep dives into museums and the future of K-12 education, healthy aging, and most recently repatriation, restitution, and reparations).

Often TrendsWatch enriches AAM’s existing coverage of standards and best practices with a futures-oriented exploration of key issues. For example, AAM has rich resources on recruiting and managing volunteers, including blog posts, articles, and a best-selling toolkit. This year TrendsWatch explores how shifts in demographics, culture, and values around volunteerism may affect museums and museum practice in the coming decade.

Because the issues covered in TrendsWatch are of enduring importance, the TrendsWatch library is a valuable resource for museums and museum people. Each edition includes concise briefs on key issues, explores the implications for society and for museums, and suggests how museums might respond. (At the end of this post, I’ve included a recap of some issues of continued importance addressed in previous editions of the report.)

TrendsWatch 2025 Topics

Feature articles

The Next Era of Volunteerism: How can museums create equitable, accessible, and effective volunteer programs?

By giving their time, volunteers help knit together communities and plug the gaps in government and for-profit systems of support. This generosity benefits the giver as well: volunteering provides a meaningful source of social connection and contributes to health and wellbeing. But the who, how, and why of volunteerism is increasingly being questioned both by volunteers and the organizations to which they give their time.  What is the best future we can envision for volunteering in our society and in museums? How can museums address issues of equity and accessibility while valuing the work of people who donate their time, and recruiting the volunteers they need to do their work?

Stop, Look, Think: How to manage digital vulnerabilities.

The world’s first web site was published on August 6, 1991, and by 2004, 88 percent of museums reported having a site. Social media began its explosive growth in the early 2000s—fast forward two decades, and one museum alone, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, has over 13.3 million followers on the major social platforms. Now it’s hard to imagine operating a cultural nonprofit, managing collections, or interfacing with the public without digital tools and platforms. Customer relationship management (CRM) software is integral to managing communications, membership, and donor relations. Museums use artificial intelligence for business analytics, for attendance projections, and to establish variable pricing for tickets.  But along with power, scale, reach, and almost magical abilities, the digital era brings new challenges. What risks are posed by our current reliance on digital storage, platforms, and tools? How can museums recognize and mitigate these vulnerabilities?

Facing the DEI Backlash: How can museums serve their communities while avoiding culture war skirmishes?

Diversity, equity, and inclusion, aka “DEI,” is the latest battleground in the current round of culture wars. At the national level, that has led to historic court decisions curbing opportunities or funding that appear to favor (or exclude) any protected class. Publicly traded companies are backing off from DEI commitments and training. Colleges and universities are searching for ways to foster diverse student bodies without using race as an admissions criterion. Museums have been targeted by protests or lawsuits related to DEI initiatives ranging from admissions programs to internships. How can museums avoid, or respond to such attacks? What can organizations do, individually and collectively, to continue to serve their communities in ways they feel are just, equitable, and appropriate?

And more!

The Short Take essay, Pulled in All Directions, looks at the internal conflicts wracking museums as leaders struggle to navigate the often conflicting demands of staff, board, donors, and community members about how the museums should respond to a range of issues.

For Your Radar suggests two terms deserving of attention: targeted universalism as an approach to DEI that seeks to be effective while minimizing backlash, and managed retreat—the proactive relocation of people and infrastructure in the face of climate change—as an issue for large portions of the US in coming decades.

This year’s Trend Alert takes the form of an IRS 990 form from the year 2035, to explore how museum practice, and finances, may change in the next decade.

Finally, the issue takes the pulse of the post-pandemic world with a roundup of statistics on key indicators, including employment and museum attendance.

How to engage in the coming year

Join me at the AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo in Los Angeles this May, where I will give a session based on this year’s report, offering updates and some new provocations.

Watch the AAM events calendar for Future Chats related to this year’s themes. In these webinars, a guest helps me pick apart a recent signal of change (it might be a news story, a research report, even a photograph) and examine its implications for our lives and our work.

Use the Future of Museums community on Museum Junction to share your experiences with these trends and seek input from peers. I use the community as a place to connect with museums and museum people doing work on this year’s issues and emerging topics of concern.

I would love to help you explore these challenges through a talk or workshop at your museum or conference. Use the form on the Alliance’s Advisory Services and Speakers Bureau page to start a conversation about such opportunities.

Use the TrendsWatch Library to Inform Your Work

I encourage you to explore the extensive collection of resources available through CFM to enrich your planning. This includes past editions of TrendsWatch, blog posts, videos, and specialized reports. Here are a few examples of resources you might want to review in the face of current challenges. The text below includes direct links to articles, as well as links to the entire copy of the related TrendsWatch (TW) report.

• Recent climate-driven disasters, including the fires devastating Los Angeles, and the damage inflicted by Hurricane Helene, emphasize the need to pay attention to changing climate risk (TW 2023), rising sea levels in particular (TW 2015), and how museums can help with emergency response in the face of disasters (TW 2022).
• Many museums are experiencing an increase in the number of unhoused people camping in their neighborhoods or on their grounds. This TrendsWatch article from 2019 explores the “wicked problem” of housing insecurity, what it means for museums, and how some museums are responding to the needs and challenges posed by homelessness.
• Revisiting CFM’s 101 introduction to blockchain, and digital currencies (TW 2019) might help you understand and assess the incoming president’s proposal to establish a US bitcoin strategic reserve.

I look forward to exploring the TrendsWatch themes and emerging issues.

Warmest regards from the future,

Elizabeth Merritt
VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums
American Alliance of Museums

“People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn’t. Social attitudes don’t change in a straight line. There’s always a backlash against progressive ideas.”

–feminist author Erica Jong

This article originally appeared in Museum magazine’s January/February 2025 issue, a benefit of AAM membership. 

How can museums serve their communities while avoiding culture war skirmishes?

Diversity, equity, and inclusion, aka “DEI,” is the latest battleground in the current round of culture wars. At the national level, that has led to historic court decisions curbing opportunities or funding that appear to favor (or exclude) any protected class. Publicly traded companies are backing off from DEI commitments and training. Colleges and universities are searching for ways to foster diverse student bodies without using race as an admissions criterion. Museums have been targeted by protests or lawsuits related to DEI initiatives ranging from admissions programs to internships. How can museums avoid, or respond to such attacks? What can organizations do, individually and collectively, to continue to serve their communities in ways they feel are just, equitable, and appropriate?

The Challenge

In the 1950s and ’60s, civil rights activists mounted successful campaigns to dismantle laws and practices that explicitly or effectively segregated the US in education, housing, and employment. In the following decades, these efforts expanded to encompass equality of opportunity for people of color generally, women, and people with disabilities. It was clear, however, that merely “leveling the playing field” was not going to make up for inequities created by centuries of discrimination. To close that legacy gap, efforts at the federal level evolved from simply treating applicants equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin to taking affirmative action to expand opportunities for minorities. The goal, as captured by a meme that took off in 2012, was to help everyone “see over the fence,” rather than offer them all an equal boost (see image at left.)

Now the US is experiencing the social equivalent of Newton’s Third Law, with a new generation of activists pushing back specifically against the past decade of efforts to advance DEI. Ironically, these arguments are often grounded in the very laws that attempted to erase entrenched disadvantages, contending that actions designed to foster equity of outcome rather than equity of opportunity are themselves discriminating based on protected statuses such as race and gender. Encapsulating this view, in 2024 Elon Musk declared to his 199 million followers on X (formerly Twitter) that “DEI is just another word for racism.”

This new wave of anti-DEI activism quickly racked up a long list of successes with regard to education, grant making, and government assistance. The Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2022) that institutions of higher education can’t take race into account in evaluating applicants, even in the interest of creating a more diverse student body. In 2024, the American Alliance for Equal Rights sued the nonprofit Fearless Fund over its program of awarding small grants to Black women–owned businesses. While the fund settled before the court reached a decision (by promising not to revive the grant program), that case is expected to have a chilling effect on race-based preference in grantmaking more generally. Also in 2024, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the racially based federal assistance provided through the Minority Business Development Agency violated the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution by discriminating against white business owners and directed the program to provide assistance “regardless of race.”

Higher education, already characterized as a bastion of liberal ideology, has been particularly vulnerable to attack. As of spring 2024, over 30 bills designed to curb DEI initiatives at public colleges had been introduced in state legislatures across the US. These efforts have already succeeded in Florida, North and South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Alabama, and Idaho. Arguably the most extreme is a new law in Iowa that not only bans DEI offices in state colleges and universities, but also explicitly prohibits administrators from taking positions on a long list of specific topics, including implicit bias, anti-racism, and social justice.

In the business realm, pressure has been brought to bear by consumers and stockholders, leading John Deere, Lowe’s, Harley-Davidson, and other companies to pull back from DEI training and commitments to DEI values. Some companies have also downplayed or pulled back from their commitment to so-called ESG investing—financially managing funds to improve the environment, social outcomes, and good governance. For-profit companies are facing challenges from the judiciary as well. In 2023, 13 state attorneys general put Fortune 100 companies on notice that they might be subject to legal actions for factoring race into hiring and contracting in their efforts to diversify their workforce.

These high-profile examples have had a chilling effect, leading organizations to effectively self-censor to get ahead of possible legal or legislative actions. Some colleges and universities are preemptively dismantling or downplaying their DEI programs. Even the Society for Human Resource Management, the preeminent association providing training and best practices for HR, announced it was removing “equity” from its equity, inclusion, and diversity efforts. SHRM’s chief human resource officer explained the action, saying, “Because there’s so much lack of certainty around the definition of what equity means, that means it’s a distraction.”

The abundant press about anti-DEI efforts obscures a key fact, however: the majority of these high-profile lawsuits, protests, and actions are driven by a relatively small number of wealthy individuals, lawmakers, and conservative think tanks. Research suggests that public opinion is more nuanced on the topic of DEI. On one hand, 2022 research by Pew found that 82 percent of US adults felt colleges should not consider race or ethnicity in deciding which students to accept, and 2019 polling showed that three-quarters of US adults thought companies should not take race and ethnicity into account when hiring or promoting workers. But other research suggests that the majority of Americans support DEI efforts. Recent public opinion polling by IPSOS and the Washington Post found that 69 percent of Americans approve of affirmative action programs that are designed to hire people underrepresented in the workplace (including racial and ethnic minorities). Tellingly, only 14 percent of respondents said that DEI had personally hurt them.

Some feel that attacks on DEI have peaked, leaving overall efforts to pursue equity of outcomes stronger than ever. Even in the face of pressure, some companies and professional associations are reaffirming their commitments to DEI. College students are protesting attempts by legislators to curtail DEI programs on campus. In Florida, which has topped the leaderboard on state efforts to suppress DEI, the majority of anti-LGBTQ legislation stalled in last year’s legislative session. Recently, a US District Court of Appeals struck down Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, a law banning some mandatory DEI training in the workplace, and one of the earliest salvos in the current conflict. This backlash to the backlash may prove to be a healthy corrective, a signal that “this too shall pass.”

What This Means for Museums

Many college and university museums have been affected by the laws restricting DEI programs in higher education. Others are bound by state laws that affect the operation of any business, for-profit or nonprofit. AAM’s 2024 Snapshot of American Museums suggests that DEI backlash is having a significant impact on the field as a whole. In that survey, one-third of respondents indicated they had experienced some kind of backlash: over 11 percent reported that donors had threatened to withdraw support in response to content related to diversity, race, gender, or sexuality, and nearly 7 percent said government entities had withheld or threatened to withhold funding for similar reasons. Almost 10 percent said educators had requested to preview content their students would see or do during a visit (presumably fearing protests by parents or conflict with district policies), and 5.6 percent said they were constrained by legislation governing what they could do regarding DEI training. Eight museums (2 percent of respondents) were facing lawsuits or threats of lawsuits regarding DEI-related internships, fellowships, or other programs.

Museum people are also worried about what is yet to come. A third of attendees participating in an AAM webinar in September 2024 felt that the current cultural discord could lead to decreased funding from the government and donors; 27 percent were concerned about the risk of public controversy or negative press and the risk of self-censorship.

Fear itself can have a real impact, even if the things we worry about don’t come to pass. For example, the specter of legal action can curb museums’ willingness to take bold, potentially controversial actions. Even if they are confident that they would prevail in court, museum leaders may not want to risk a lawsuit because of the financial costs, time, and attention such actions would divert from museum operations, and from the stress they would impose on staff.

To advance the museum’s values, leaders will have to choose their battles wisely, focusing on effective actions that do the most good while incurring the least harm.

Sidebars

Museums Might …

• Engage legal counsel to conduct an audit of policies and programs and identify vulnerabilities. Even if a museum does not have access to, or can’t afford, paid council, staff can look for clear exposures (e.g., programs or application processes that may appear to have eligibility components linked to race).
• Assess the museum’s capacity to respond to DEI backlash, whether in the legal system or the court of public opinion.
• Factor potential backlash into planning for potentially controversial exhibitions and programming (e.g., budget for additional communications or legal counsel, or procedures for responding to group protests or individual concerns).
• Lead broad, inclusive discussions with members of the governing authority, leadership, and staff to identify when the museum might want to avoid exposure and when actions core to the museum’s mission and values are worth the risk.
• Consider areas in which they may have leeway regarding DEI decisions. For example, not being beholden to stockholders, private, nonprofit museums can invest their endowments to serve their mission and values as well as their financial needs.
• Review hiring procedures to ensure that DEI processes are effective, are helpful to managers, and cannot be framed as explicit racial quotas.
• Build deep, enduring connections with communities that have been underrepresented and underserved in the past. (See “Cultivating Organic Staff Diversity” sidebar on p. 33.)
• Ensure the physical and psychological safety of staff from potential abuse by visitors in response to the museum’s content. This may involve training, a clearly communicated code of conduct for visitors, emergency response procedures, and support for the mental health and wellbeing of staff.
• Study the data on DEI training programs, and use approaches that are shown to maximize impact on DEI goals while avoiding backlash.
• Be sensitive to language and thoughtfully evaluate terminology that might trigger anti-DEI activists OR alienate marginalized groups. Consider using words like “unity,” “community,” and “belonging,” which resonate across the political spectrum.

Cultivating Organic Staff Diversity

The need for museums to take specific steps to “build diversity” in their board, staff, and audiences is rooted in their history as institutions that, for the most part, were founded and funded by white individuals and centered on a white, Eurocentric approach to their collecting and interpretation. This history, in turn, has resulted in museums creating spaces that people of color may feel are not “for them.” Also driving this gyre, many core museum roles (educators, curators, development, management) are predominantly filled with graduates of academic programs that are themselves disproportionately white.

It can be tempting to break this chain at the proximal link—in the case of staff, through the hiring process. There are two strong arguments against this strategy. As recent events dramatize, structuring recruitment in a way that can be interpreted as reflecting racial preferences may expose museums to backlash, including legal action. And, over the past decade, this approach has failed to create the level of progress the field desires.

It may be both more effective and less contentious to take a more organic approach to building diversity through a museum’s partnerships, collaborations, and relationships. By cultivating meaningful, enduring relationships with groups with deep roots in the communities they want to serve, a museum can come to be seen, and trusted, as a potential employer. BIPOC religious and fraternal organizations, social service groups, community arts groups, and health and wellness centers can be valuable and valued partners in shaping museum programs and services to align with community goals. These relationships, in turn, can help increase the diversity of a museum’s board of trustees, which AAM’s Facing Change initiative has identified as an essential step in DEI practice.

This approach may require organizations to make different choices. Any organization, even the biggest, has limited time, attention, and budget. Cultivating new partnerships may mean giving less time and attention to some historic relationships, or even sunsetting them entirely.

It’s not enough to attract a diverse applicant pool—museums may need to refresh their hiring procedures to remove counterproductive barriers as well. For example, requiring applicants to have a college degree excludes 70 percent of Black job seekers, 80 percent of Latinos, and three-quarters of American Indians and Alaskan Natives. Ensuring position descriptions reflect the training and experience needed to do a job can eliminate some spurious filters. BIPOC Americans are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and, therefore, disproportionately affected by policies that exclude them as job applicants. Museums may want to join the movement to “ban the box,” also known as fair chance hiring, by removing check-box questions about criminal convictions and arrests from applications and delaying background checks until a conditional offer has been made.

Sometimes the most effective strategy in making change is to concentrate on what we can do while quietly working to change the systems that dictate what is not allowed.

Museum Examples

In 2022, a school district served by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, proposed an addition to its contract with the museum: “All services provided by [Organization] under this Agreement will be secular, neutral, and non-ideological in content.” Staff felt this was problematic on several levels. It would seem to exclude showing students any work containing religious imagery (much of the museum’s African and European collections), that conveys or engages with ideology (most of its modern and contemporary art), or that holds any non-neutral perspective (arguably any work of art). In response, the museum negotiated alternative language: “All services provided by [Organization] under this Agreement will be non-dogmatic in content.” Rather than reacting to the district’s proposed language as an attack, staff worked to find mutually acceptable ways to frame what museum education can be at its best: non-dogmatic and able to approach and consider radically different perspectives in a productive learning environment.

Colonial Williamsburg, the world’s largest US history museum, reaches millions of visitors each year who bring a wide range of perspectives and attitudes toward the history the museum interprets, both on its historic grounds and online through its digital channels. One journalist called the museum “ground zero for all the contradictions and moral conundrums America represents.” To manage these various and conflicting expectations, the museum’s interpreters receive ongoing training from staff historians, including sessions in which they learn how to build on visitors’ own experiences to foster understanding of the past and the present. Using a pedagogical framework based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, interpreters help build a sense of belonging, so that guests feel safe enough to open up to new ideas and potentially uncomfortable thoughts. Skilled interpretation can do the emotional and intellectual work needed to bridge conceptual and ideological divides.

Believing that deep and authentic community engagement inoculates organizations from shifting political viewpoints on DEI, the Mississippi Museum of Art has implemented initiatives that deepen trust with undervalued communities. The museum’s Center for Art & Public Exchange (CAPE) is a think tank that explores issues and tests solutions around how the museum is accessible and relevant to diverse communities. CAPE went to the community and asked what tools people needed to make sense of the artwork, focusing on feedback from underrepresented groups and those in ZIP codes near the museum. The initiative integrated successful pilot practices, including Community Advisory Councils and community co-creation, into the organization as a whole. The initiative has helped the museum reach its goal of being a third place where people can convene and have compassionate civil discourse.

Resources

Museum Best Practices for Managing Controversy, National Coalition Against Censorship
This document is designed to provide museums and other cultural institutions of any size or scope with guidelines that can help manage controversial content and transform controversy into an opportunity to learn about the nature of diverse opinions and an institution’s ability to address them.
ncac.org/resource/museum-best-practices-for-managing-controversy

The COVID-19 pandemic was the defining global disruption of the 21st century to date. While the virus still poses a serious risk, especially to older adults and people with compromised immune systems, cases leading to hospitalization and death are orders of magnitude lower than their peak in 2020–2021. COVID lockdown affected every aspect of our lives: how we learned, worked, dated, ate, connected with each other, and consumed culture. In the aftermath of this massive disruption, some of these practices may act like a rubber band, snapping back to their original form. Others may be stretched into a new shape entirely. Here are some key metrics mapping the contours of the post-pandemic landscape.

Office Vacancy Rates

During the pandemic, office vacancy rates were both a symptom and a cause of pandemic-related damage. Empty downtowns reduced tax revenues, gutted restaurant and retail income, and, in some cities, fueled residential migration. While there is considerable variation among cities, the overall office vacancy rate remains high, reflecting the long-term impact of hybrid and remote work, and relocation of some businesses.

Office vacancy rates,
US average

2019    16.4%
2021    18.6%
2024    20.1%

Source: Moody’s, moodys.com

Going forward: Will some urban cores continue to struggle while others rebound? How might this shape who lives, works, and spends time downtown, and how might that affect museum visitation?

Hybrid and Remote Work

The pandemic forced businesses to embrace remote work, and while some are implementing back-to-office policies, hybrid or 100 percent remote work is now mainstream.

Percent of US workers working hybrid/remote

2019   32%/8%
2021   31%/48%
2024    53%/27%

Source: Statista

The nonprofit job board Idealist reports that as of June 2023, 38% of nonprofit job listings were for hybrid work, and 19% were fully remote. Of people searching for nonprofit openings by location, 88 percent were looking for remote work and 7 percent hybrid. Remote positions were receiving nine times as many applications as on-site jobs.

Source: National Council of Nonprofits

Going forward: While return-to-office policies may continue to drive hybrid/remote work levels down, many believe that the pandemic has permanently shifted such work arrangements into the mainstream. How might museums integrate hybrid and remote work into their policies to attract and retain the staff they need? How might they support the need for connection among staff who rarely see each other in person?

Employment

After a dramatic spike in 2020, the civilian unemployment rates dropped back close to pre-pandemic levels and continue to hover around 3.5–4 percent. This low rate of unemployment may be contributing to the hiring challenges museums continue to experience. In 2024, 51 percent of museums that were recruiting reported having trouble filling open positions (though this was an improvement from 2023, when this figure was 60 percent).

Civilian unemployment rates

Nov. 2019        3.6%
April 2020       14.8%
Nov. 2022        3.6%
Sept. 2024       4.1%

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; AAM National Snapshot of United States Museums, 2024

Going forward: What might museums do to make their jobs more attractive in an economy experiencing full employment?

Museum Finances: The Bottom Line

AAM asked museums to compare their net operating performance in 2023 to their 2019 finances.

One-fifth of museums (19 percent) report their net operating performance had decreased compared to 2019, with a median decrease of 20 percent.

One-quarter of museums (24 percent) reported no change in their net operating performance compared to 2019.

Over half of museums (57 percent) reported their net operating performance had increased compared to 2019, with a median increase of 20 percent.

Source: AAM National Snapshot of United States Museums, 2024

Going forward: As we explore elsewhere in this report, in coming years museums may spend more on insurance, wages, and benefits, and on maintaining good data hygiene. How might museums balance new strategies for income and expenditures to maintain a healthy bottom line?

K–12 Education

Pandemic disruptions to in-person schooling and social interactions inflicted measurable damage on school readiness, reading and math performance, and mental health. Children who were ages 1–4 in spring 2020, when the pandemic closed schools and early learning programs, are now struggling to master age-appropriate skills like holding a pencil (or crayon), identifying shapes and letters, managing emotions, or solving problems with other children.

8th-graders at or above
proficient in math

2019    33%
2022    26%

Chronic absenteeism among
K–12 students

2018–2019            16%             

2021–2022            30%

Source: The Annie E. Casey Foundation

Going forward: Will there be increased demand for out-of-school learning experiences to help close the achievement gap? Might children on field trips need more behavioral and social-emotional support during their visits to museums?

Museum Attendance

As of fall 2024:

Half of US museums had not yet returned to pre-pandemic attendance levels. The average attendance level for this half was at 78 percent of pre-pandemic numbers.

33 percent of US adults reported having been to a museum in the preceding year, slightly above pre-pandemic norms.

In addition, about 3 percent of people who visited museums frequently pre-pandemic had not returned to museums at all.

Sources: AAM National Snapshot of United States Museums, 2024; 2024 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers

Going forward: Will the “lost 3 percent” of frequent museum-goers ever return? How might economic concerns, severe weather, and internal migration affect visitation in coming years?

“Tug on anything at all and you’ll find it connected to everything else in the universe.”

—John Muir

This article originally appeared in Museum magazine’s January/February 2025 issue, a benefit of AAM membership. 

In foresight, calling something “complex” means it has many different facets, but it also means those facets are inextricably intertwined. In a complex world, tweaking one variable causes a cascade of change. Case in point, the trends examined in this report. A decline in volunteerism deprives society of a very effective way to connect with each other. That disconnect makes it easier to stigmatize the “other,” people you don’t see in your social circles, and to resent policies and programs designed to lift them up. When social media was new and bright with promise, many hoped it would be a digital tool for bringing people together and fostering new connections. While social media has indeed helped people “find their tribe,” sometimes those tribes are supportive and loving communities, other times they are hate-filled echo chambers cultivating resentment and insecurity.

In short, complex systems are resistant to simple solutions. Every choice involves tradeoffs, and planning entails exploring the ripple effects of each decision. A museum might use free digital platforms to expand its reach and impact … but in so doing give up a measure of control to the companies that provide that free access. In the interest of equity, a museum might decide to shift work from volunteer to paid labor, but, as a result, fewer people enjoy the benefits of volunteerism (health, social capital, connections).

In a complex world, planning becomes less like pushing button a, b, or c and more like skillful manipulations of the slide bars on a sound board. How much can we “up the gain” on our digital assets before the future costs of maintaining those assets become too high? How much can we mute our dependence on volunteers before we become inaudible to the community that supports our work? How can planning bring unity to the mix of approaches we use to achieve our missions?

For this reason, I hope you read the chapters in this report as parts of a whole, hearing them in conversation with one another, rather than as stand-alone essays about distinct trends. Digital planning isn’t just about what technologies we use, it’s also about the choices we make regarding autonomy, privacy, and sustainability. Volunteer programs aren’t just a way to do more work with less money, they also provide tangible benefits to individuals and communities. Pursuing diversity, equity, and inclusion is a complicated process of setting clear goals, while navigating legal and cultural barriers, and trying to find common ground around shared values.

I also hope you consider the complexities of these trends both externally—how the museum interfaces with society—and internally—how museum staff and volunteers connect with each other. To paraphrase a proverb, change begins at home. If museums are to help bridge divides in society, foster tolerance and inclusion, and support respectful dialogue on difficult topics, we have to create an internal culture that lives those values.

In addition to trends, our path into the future is shaped by significant events. As I write this introduction in October 2024, we don’t yet know the outcome of one major force of change—the upcoming presidential election. Whoever is sworn in as the 47th president of our country will have a profound effect on the future we will inhabit. I look forward to exploring that world with you, its challenges and opportunities, in the coming year.

Warmest regards from the future,

Elizabeth Merritt
Vice President, Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums,
American Alliance of Museums

How to Use this Report

Use this edition of TrendsWatch as a catalyst for adapting to your museum’s rapidly changing
environment:

• What role does volunteerism play in your museum’s operations and service to its communities, and how can you provide equitable access to the benefits of volunteering?
• What steps can your museum take to manage the digital risks arising from how you create and store data and your use of commercial programs and platforms?
• How might the current backlash to DEI affect your museum, and what can you do to avoid or manage such pressure?
• How might you create systems that support difficult conversations in the workplace in a productive, mutually respectful manner?

Each article includes a list of things museums might do to tackle these issues. Share this report with your students, clients, colleagues, staff, volunteers, and board of trustees to foster discussion about how your organization will build the post-pandemic future.

What Is TrendsWatch?

TrendsWatch is the annual forecasting report produced by the Center for the Future of Museums (CFM), the American Alliance of Museums’ think tank and idea laboratory for the museum field. Each edition is built on a year’s worth of conversations along with scanning and analysis of news and research. The report goes out to members and subscribers as the January/February issue of Museum magazine, and a PDF version is released on the AAM website at the end of March. You can find dozens of embedded links to original sources for the information referenced in this text in the digital issue of Museum and in the PDF.

The text for this report is written by CFM’s Director, Elizabeth Merritt, with input and advice from many people inside and outside the museum sector. (See p. 1 for a list of people who reviewed and commented on the articles.) We encourage you to join this conversation. Please share your thoughts and questions by:

• Posting to the Future of Museums Community on the Alliance discussion forum Museum Junction at
  bit.ly/Future-of-Museums-Community;
• Submitting guest posts to the CFM blog; and
• Emailing CFM at futureofmuseums@aam-us.org.

Elizabeth and her colleagues are available to support your work via speaking engagements, workshops, moderating discussions, and consulting. For more information on those services and to request our help, visit the Alliance Advisory Services and Speakers Bureau page on the AAM website.

Digital information is inherently far more ephemeral than paper.

—Natalie Ceeny, CEO, National Archives (UK)

This article originally appeared in Museum magazine’s January/February 2025 issue, a benefit of AAM membership. 

The world’s first website was published on August 6, 1991, and by 2004, 88 percent of museums reported having a site. Social media began its explosive growth in the early 2000s—fast forward two decades, and one museum alone, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, has over 13.3 million followers on the major social platforms. Now it’s hard to imagine operating a cultural nonprofit, managing collections, or interfacing with the public without digital tools and platforms. Customer relationship management (CRM) software is integral to managing communications, membership, and donor relations. Museums use artificial intelligence for business analytics, for attendance projections, and to establish variable pricing for tickets.

But along with power, scale, reach, and almost magical abilities, the digital era brings new challenges. What risks are posed by our current reliance on digital storage, platforms, and tools? How can museums recognize and mitigate these vulnerabilities?

The Challenge

The internet is so integral to the functioning of society that, in 2021, the United Nations declared internet access to be a basic human right. But despite, or perhaps because of their power, speed, reach and complexity, the digital systems on which we have come to depend are also increasingly vulnerable to disruption.

Some of these weaknesses are due to what conservators call inherent vice—fundamental instability, whether due to data degradation (aka bit rot) or the decay of storage media. The rapid rate of technological evolution may render even stable data unreadable by future hardware and software. And even good, readable data may become unfindable: a 2024 study found that two thirds of links in websites created in the last nine years are already dead (a phenomenon dubbed, of course, link rot). Also in 2024, the Pew Research Center found that a quarter of all web pages that existed between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible.

Sometimes data is “lost” on purpose, as when 25 years of music journalism disappeared after Paramount took the MTV News archive offline last June. Sometimes it goes missing by accident, as in 2019 when MySpace erased almost everything uploaded before 2016 in a data migration gone horribly wrong. Sometimes data is a victim of precarious business models: when Vice went bankrupt in 2024, journalists scrambled to download their articles and save links to public archives before the publication’s website went dark. With increasing frequency, data loss is malicious: cybersecurity firm Black Kite reported an 81 percent increase in ransomware attacks between 2023 and 2024, translating to nearly 5,000 incidents worldwide, which in the US resulted in significant disruptions to universities, hospitals, and government agencies.

Because our digital systems are massively integrated, such damage can be widespread. In July 2024, 8.5 million devices running Microsoft Windows were crippled by a faulty software update distributed by the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. The crash grounded over 5,000 commercial flights and led hospitals to postpone procedures and cancel non-emergency services. As scholar Nassim Taleb points out, such outages are an inherent property of fragile, complex systems that accumulate hidden risk. These risks are amplified by the fact that digital infrastructure is inextricably intertwined with another aging, underfunded system—the US power grid—that with increasing frequency suffers local collapse during extreme weather.

The fragility of digital data and digital systems poses a threat not only to our day-to-day functioning but to our heritage and history. The National Archives cares for over 13.5 billion pieces of paper, 41 million photographs, and more than 450 million feet of film. Yet the size of these holdings is dwarfed by the 402 terabytes of digital data that 8.2 billion humans generate every day. That amounted to 147 zettabytes in 2024 alone, with a zettabyte consisting of 2 to the 70th power bytes (bytes being the basic unit of digital storage). For scale: one zettabyte has been compared to “as much information as there are grains of sand on all the world’s beaches.” Previously, much of the information humanity generated was never captured at all, and of the information embodied in physical form, only a portion survived. But as internet pioneer Vint Cerf has pointed out, with so much information—correspondence, images, business records—going straight to digital, a massive failure in shared systems could lead to what he has dubbed a “digital dark age.”

What This Means for Museums

The vulnerabilities outlined are critically important for museums—organizations that often center preservation in their missions and increasingly depend on digital to maximize reach, impact, and income.

Conservators and collections management staff have spent countless hours learning how to stabilize physical objects and mitigate physical risks. Even with that knowledge, our sector has long faced severe limitations (time, money, training) in applying what we know. In 2005, the Heritage Health index reported that of the 4.8 billion objects collectively cared for by cultural institutions, up to half were in need of conservation, and 40 percent were in “unknown condition.” As of 2024, only 69 percent of museums reported having emergency response plans—and those plans largely address historic, analog risks such as earthquakes, floods, and fire. (The true figure is probably even lower, as small museums tend to be underrepresented in such survey data.)

Yet museums are just as susceptible to digital risk as airlines, banks, and hospitals. A growing number of museums have fallen prey to successful cyberattacks either directly or through their service providers. In January 2024, a Russian cyber group launched a ransomware attack on Gallery Systems, shutting down the eMuseum platform used by hundreds of museums to provide access to online collections and in some cases the TMS program used for collections management. Many museums were impacted by the CrowdStrike outage, particularly those in government or university systems. Some delayed opening, as they scrambled to put together paper-based systems for ticketing and sales; others decided to let visitors in for free. In one case, the HVAC system for a museum data storage center was affected, leading temperatures to soar and putting that data at risk.

In addition to the overt hazards of cybercrime and fragile systems, many museums are exposed to a subtler risk: that of overdependence on “free” digital platforms and services. Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube give even tiny organizations the ability to cultivate an international following, and they have become critical marketing and PR strategies tools for museums large and small. But the corporations that control these platforms can and do change their terms of service, tweak their algorithms, or alter their content moderation in ways that minimize museums’ audience or block their content. After making huge investments in experimental services, big tech companies may abandon whole systems if they don’t pay off. (Some pundits warn that generative AI, having sucked up over $1 trillion in development costs so far, may be just such a bubble waiting to pop.) Entire countries may lose access to platforms as governments crack down on social media to suppress free speech or control espionage and foreign manipulation.

If “free” access to commercial social media platforms is a fragile strategy, what are the alternatives? A small but growing number of nonprofit, collaborative, open-access systems replicate the general structure of for-profit systems, though they often don’t (yet) offer the same reach and scale. One option is to create and share content via a common protocol like ActivityPub, which ensures creators (individuals or organizations) own and control their data. That data can then be channeled into “federated” apps like Mastodon (an X alternative), Pixelfed (like Instagram), PeerTube, and Friendica (with the obvious equivalents). Even Meta is getting in the game, integrating its recently launched Instagram microblogging feature, Threads, into the “fediverse” of apps that use common protocols.

In addition to the digital concerns faced by any type of organization, many museums have additional challenges tied to their mission of preservation. Where a collections catalogue record might once have consisted of an entry in a logbook, a card in a drawer, a file (however fat) of paper documentation, and maybe some prints and negatives, digital records may include all that information plus 3-D scans, links to related records in other museums’ databases, multiple versions of edited files, and digital copies of stories, images, and annotations contributed by the public. Increasingly, museums are collecting born-digital content as well, including emails, manuscripts, works of art, scientific data, computer programs, and games, as core to their collections.

As SFO Museum’s Aaron Straub Cope has pointed out, nearly every museum, large or small, relies on one of the big three cloud providers (Amazon, Microsoft, or Google) for storage and retention of these digital assets. While any one of these companies may be “too big to fail,” and by extension a “safe bet,” the sector is nonetheless dependent on external vendors to fulfill its mandate.

Being good digital stewards requires staff who can help the museum create resilient, “antifragile” systems in addition to planning for risk management and emergency response; training staff in good digital hygiene; and funds for digital preservation, including monitoring the condition of digital data and migrating as needed to new platforms and formats. (See the “Digital Depreciation” sidebar at left.) AAM’s historic data shows that, as of 2009, museums were devoting a median 8 percent of their operating expenses to collections care. Per the quote from Natalie Ceeny that opened this article, digital data is inherently more ephemeral than paper … or wood, stone, ceramic, or metal. In the future, the costs of digital preservation could easily outstrip the traditional costs for archival materials, HVAC, and security needed to stabilize physical collections.

If Vint Cerf is right, and the world does face a digital dark age, how can museums help preserve culture and heritage? As collecting institutions, they will play a role in choosing what gets preserved. Being all too aware of how past choices marginalized and silenced some histories, museums will hopefully take a broad-minded and equitable approach to the preservation of shared digital heritage. Whatever they deem worthy of saving, museums will have to be as mindful of how they store data, detect and repair errors, protect it from accidental or malicious destruction, and ensure it remains readable in decades or centuries to come.

Sidebars

Museums Might …

• Maintain an inventory of all digital platforms the museum uses, along with a record of login credentials and passwords, to ensure that access, and data, are not lost due to staff turnover. Many platforms are tied to individual accounts, so museums will need to include steps for adding and deleting account managers in their offboarding procedures.
• Per scholar Nassim Taleb’s recommendations, create “antifragile” digital systems by avoiding overuse of a single platform, decentralizing systems, building in excess capacity and redundancy, and engaging in continuous learning around failures and weakness. And, of course, institute regular data backups!
• Provide mandatory staff training on cybersecurity.
• Create an emergency response plan for coping with successful cyberattacks, including policy decisions (e.g., paying ransom), communications, pre-identified contractors to use in recovering data or systems, and procedures for operating in absence of digital systems.
• Rethink the common “everywhere at once” marketing mentality, and focus on critical, stable platforms that achieve the museum’s goals for marketing and communications. Resist the temptation to be on every free platform and use every new free tool.
• Cultivate a healthy digital skepticism. New digital tools often get a lot of press because of the marketing dollars invested in their launch. Hot new things may not last, or may quickly convert to a fee-for-service model the museum cannot afford.
• Review or create policies and procedures for archiving museum data that is of lasting interest or value.
• Create a realistic definition of digital preservation that reflects an institution’s resources and capabilities. Approach preservation with a “something is better than nothing” mind-set. What materials are being collected and preserved by other organizations, and what is your museum uniquely positioned to care for?

Digital Depreciation

Depreciation (dih-pree-shee-ey-shuhn), noun: any decrease in the value of property (as machinery) for the purpose of taxation that cannot be offset by current repairs and is carried on company books as a yearly charge amortizing the original cost over the useful life of the property. Source: Merriam-Webster.

When a company makes a big investment in a tangible, physical asset—like a roof, an HVAC system, or a vehicle—it books these expenses in a way that spreads out the cost over the useful life of that asset. Setting aside the tax advantages (which may be irrelevant to nonprofit museums), this accounting practice, known as depreciation, helps ensure that a museum sets aside the funds needed to replace these assets at the end of their projected life span.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), which issues the standards that guide the audits of all companies, including nonprofits, considers the physical equipment that captures and stores data—computers, hard drives, scanners—depreciable, but not the data itself. However, this author (that is, Elizabeth Merritt, Director of CFM) would like to argue for a parallel approach to projecting and planning for the costs of preserving digital data over time.

Museum digitization projects are often made possible by funders who like the idea of using new technology to make museum content “digitally accessible to the world.” Funding the maintenance of data sets is, frankly, less appealing and may well hinge on proof that the resulting digital data is actually used. The iDigBio project, based at the Florida Museum of Natural History, has amassed ~143 million specimen records and ~57 million images from about 350 US institutions. The National Science Foundation has invested over $100 million in iDigBio and its partners, a success fueled in large part by extensive training efforts (including webinars, workshops and symposia) that help the project reach over 25,000 users per month.

This project, huge as it is, represents only a fraction of the digitized collections data US museums hold. In coming decades, how much will it cost to detect and repair bit rot? Monitor and archive orphaned websites and data sets? Migrate millions of digital files into formats and storage media that continue to be accessible as technology evolves? In the future, calculating and budgeting for such costs will be just as critical as planning to replace the museum’s roof, the HVAC system, or the bus that carries traveling exhibitions across the state.

So here is a new entry for the museum lexicon:

Digital depreciation: the process of calculating and budgeting for future costs of maintaining a museum’s digital records (including digital collections and digital documentation of analog collections) in a stable, readable, accessible format over the long term.

Museum Examples

In 2023, the Pérez Art Museum Miami launched its own free streaming service, PAMMTV, presenting works from the museum’s collection of art and video films. By creating its own platform, rather than using a commercial site such as YouTube, the museum insulates itself from the policies and control of such platforms. It also means the museum can assure artists they will have control over their content, as well as ensure that users’ data is not harvested for use by third parties.

The Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG) has developed a “defense in layers” approach to mitigate IT and digital environment risks, increase operational efficiency, and enhance access to collections. The museum deploys a balance of on-site systems and cloud services to support its mission while managing risk and safeguarding the collections. This strategy uses people, policy, and systems to strengthen disaster recovery along with comprehensive protocols that ensure digital preparedness, information security, and digital incident response. CMoG’s Information Security Awareness Program reinforces best practices, training, and vigilance for its most vital resource: the museum workforce. A steady rhythm of annual training, phishing simulations, and information fosters a culture of awareness among staff that reinforces everyone’s role in protecting digital resources. With this awareness, and thorough guidance for identifying and remediating digital incidents that arise, the museum is confident that it can effectively manage disaster recovery, safeguard collections, and foster trust in an unpredictable world.

In 2024, the SFO Museum at the San Francisco International Airport joined the fediverse by creating a series of automated “bot” accounts that are published (broadcast) using the ActivityPub protocols and can be subscribed to from any client that supports those standards (including Meta’s Threads application). The project launched with three “groups” of accounts: things that have happened recently involving the SFO Museum aviation collection, things that have happened in the terminals (new and old), and things from the collection that are related to flights in and out of SFO. Staff have also set up accounts for the individual SFO terminals, past and present, that will publish installation photos of the over 40 years’ worth of exhibitions they have housed. This project establishes a social media presence that the museum controls, capitalizing on the reach of commercial social media while inuring itself against corporate decisions that may adversely affect the museum’s ability to reach its audiences, or may be at odds with the goals and values of the airport or the city of San Francisco.

Resources

Cyber Essentials Toolkit, America’s Cyber Defense Agency, 2020
This toolkit consists of modules designed to break down the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s cyber essentials into bite-sized actions for IT and C-suite leadership. It includes recommended actions to build an organizational culture of cyber readiness.
cisa.gov/resources-tools/resources/cyber-essentials-toolkits

Wendy Pryor, “Safety First: How Museums Can Embrace Cyber-Security Opportunities and Risks with Open Arms,” Museum, May/June 2018
aam-us.org/2018/05/01/safety-first-how-museums-can-embrace-cyber-security-opportunities-and-risks-with-open-arms

IndieWeb
This people-focused alternative to the “corporate web” provides step-by-step instructions for implementing a Post (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere (POSSE) approach to social media. This practice consists of posting content on your own site first, then publishing copies or sharing links to third parties (like social media silos) with original post links to provide viewers a path to directly interacting with your content.
indieweb.org/POSSE

A brief guide to terms that may be popping up in your newsfeeds.

This article originally appeared in Museum magazine’s January/February 2025 issue, a benefit of AAM membership. 

Managed retreat: the proactive relocation of people and infrastructure in the face of climate change. Between 1989 and 2019, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency funded managed retreat in over 1,100 counties in 49 states. As A.R. Siders, a professor at the University of Delaware, has pointed out, climate change is likely to require managed retreat at much larger scales going forward. The effect of sea-level rise on coastal areas is ominous: real estate worth $1.4 trillion is already located within 700 feet of the US coast, and sea-level rise is projected to affect 4–13 million Americans in the continental US. Over a third (34.6 percent) of US museums sit within 100 kilometers of the coast, and a quarter of those are in areas that score very high on the US Geological Survey’s coastal vulnerability index, meaning they face high risk from rising sea levels and increasingly severe storms. As Hurricane Helene demonstrated in 2024, inland “climate havens,” such as Ashville, North Carolina, are at risk as well. In the future, communities across the country may need to retreat from areas at risk from heat, fire, extreme precipitation, and inland flooding.

Targeted universalism: an approach to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that seeks to be effective while minimizing backlash. “Universal” policies (such as social security) that lift all boats can garner broad appeal but may be costly. Also, some universal benefits may inadvertently increase inequality by helping some more than others. For example, when Massachusetts implemented universal health insurance in 2006, that reform actually widened the gap between well-resourced areas and those with inadequate access to health care providers: insurance alone was not enough to address the barriers to health care in poor, and predominantly BIPOC communities. Targeted interventions (such as affirmative action) can decrease inequity but may spark resentment about special treatment. Targeted universalism seeks to combine the strengths of each approach by implementing universal goals via interventions designed to be effective for specific groups. For example, the first step toward reaching a universal goal of “95 percent of all students graduate from high school” might be identifying and addressing impediments for specific groups of teens. Tailored interventions might include after-school tutoring, reducing absenteeism by providing transportation and meals, or creating positive peer interactions through social and sports activities.

Volunteering creates a national character in which the community and the nation take on a spirit of compassion, comradeship, and confidence.

— Brian O’Connell, past President, Independent Sector

This article originally appeared in Museum magazine’s January/February 2025 issue, a benefit of AAM membership. 

How can museums create equitable, accessible, and effective volunteer programs?

By giving their time, volunteers help knit together communities and plug the gaps in government and for-profit systems of support. This generosity benefits the giver as well: volunteering provides a meaningful source of social connection and contributes to health and wellbeing. But the who, how, and why of volunteerism is increasingly being questioned both by volunteers and the organizations to which they give their time.

What is the best future we can envision for volunteering in our society and in museums? How can museums address issues of equity and accessibility while valuing the work of people who donate their time, and recruiting the volunteers they need to do their work?

The Challenge

When Alexis de Tocqueville toured the United States in 1831, he was impressed by the vital role voluntary associations played in the new republic. “America’s strength,” he wrote, “is in its groups.” As the US matured, volunteer associations of all sorts, from fire brigades to mutual aid societies, formed an essential part of the country’s infrastructure. Fast forward 250 years, and roles that were once filled by volunteers have become increasingly professionalized. At the same time, society has become more aware of the inequities that shape and are shaped by who can afford to donate their time.

Volunteer participation has ebbed and flowed in recent decades—surging in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, then declining over the next 15 years, and bottoming out in 2015 when slightly less than a quarter of American adults engaged in “formal” volunteerism (donating their time through an organization). This rate ticked up to over 30 percent by 2018 but cratered to a new low of 23 percent in the midst of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. During that crisis, intent to volunteer soared, with 69 percent of millennials saying they were more likely to volunteer than pre-pandemic, but it has yet to be seen if those good intentions will translate into behavior. Long-term cultural and economic shifts may mean fewer people will have the time or inclination to volunteer: baby boomers are putting off retirement or choosing to work part time, college graduates are working long hours and often multiple jobs to pay off debt, parents spend more time supervising their children, and teens’ schedules are crammed with extracurricular activities.

A creeping decline in volunteerism might be driven by the increasing wealth inequality in the United States. The total dollars and hours donated to charity continue to be fairly robust but come from a smaller and smaller pool of affluent households. This could be a case of both cause and effect: people who are economically stressed are less able to volunteer, but volunteering itself is a way of amassing social capital. Spiraling inequality means that the benefits of volunteering (health, connections, knowledge) accrue primarily to people who are already financially secure.

This trend is troubling on multiple levels. Nonprofits that depend on volunteers to provide critical services to their communities—food, housing, legal aid, tutoring—are unable to meet the demand. Individuals miss out on the well-documented benefits of volunteering: improved mental and physical health, a sense of purpose, enhanced life satisfaction and self-esteem, and wider social connections. And some commentors worry that a decline in volunteering will contribute to already high levels of political and social polarization.

If this trend continues, what would a “post-volunteerism” America look like? What would we, as a culture, lose? Much of America’s infrastructure for emergency services, especially in rural areas, depends on volunteers. As volunteers become scarce, response times become longer, and local governments strain to create and fund fire departments and ambulance services. The US has long relied on volunteers to create a social safety net that in other countries is provided by the government. If that net of unpaid labor frays, how will the country meet the needs of people who are hungry or homeless? Who will tutor children, assist our elders, and provide relief during disasters?

Conversely, what would it take to reverse these trends and create a future in which volunteers play a bigger role? Many schools try to instill the habit of volunteering in teens by making public service a graduation requirement. However, evidence is mixed as to whether such “involuntary volunteering” has a positive or negative effect in the long term. Some have proposed removing the significant financial barriers to volunteering, noting that people who work long hours to meet their own basic needs have less time to share. How might that be done? To reduce wealth inequality, over 20 cities in the US are experimenting with providing a guaranteed basic income to low- and middle-income residents.

Evaluations of these pilot projects show that these stipends help families meet their essential needs, help recipients secure full-time work, and improve children’s health. In time, studies may also reveal whether basic income also increases volunteer engagement.

What This Means for Museums

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of volunteerism to the museum sector. As of 2009, museums overall reported a median of about six volunteers for every paid staff member. That ratio soared to 18:1 in museums with budgets under $250,000, but even in the largest museums, volunteers generally outnumbered paid, full-time staff two to one. An uncounted (but large) number of museums in the US have no paid staff at all and operate purely with contributed labor.

Museum volunteers fill a wide variety of roles: in education, research, collections preparation and care, and visitor services. While some people come to these tasks with only time and a willingness to learn, many bring specialized knowledge and skills that are essential to a museum’s understanding of its community and its collections. Volunteers are sometimes the most effective connections to a museum’s local community, serving as trusted ambassadors and essential interlocutors. They often donate money, as well as time, and take the lead in raising funds from others. In private nonprofit museums, the people who are ultimately responsible for the museum’s finances and operations—the trustees—are almost always volunteers. A museum’s volunteers are essential not only for the work they do but for the resources they unlock: trust, knowledge, access, connections, and credibility.

Given the health, social, and educational benefits that come with volunteering, the opportunity to volunteer is in a very real sense a service museums provide to their communities. Volunteering gives citizen scientists, historians, and artists opportunities to do meaningful work, enabling those fields of endeavor to benefit from the wisdom and work of amateurs. Volunteering is a pathway for teens into professions they might otherwise never have been exposed to.

But a national shortage of volunteers is threatening to disrupt this complex ecology of mutual care. During the pandemic, many museums paused their volunteer programs, even after they reopened to the public, to protect vulnerable individuals. As of 2024, even as staffing and attendance have begun to rebound, volunteering continues to lag, with one-third of directors reporting their museums are unable to find the volunteers they need.

And the challenge is often more complex than rebuilding the volunteer programs museums had in 2019. The pandemic amplified growing concerns about low pay and precarious work, and the potential impact of volunteering on paid staff. The US has tried to untangle the relationship between paid and unpaid labor for over a century with mixed success.

When the Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted in 1938, it tried to ensure that volunteers weren’t misused at the expense of paid labor. It has proved difficult, however, to map these good-faith guidelines onto actual practice. When a historic house has three paid staff and 20 volunteers, how can one determine whether those volunteers “perform work that would otherwise be performed by paid employees?” What about an all-volunteer organization, where unpaid staff have to engage in “commercial activities” if the museum wants to sell postcards, books, or t-shirts? Or some natural history museums where whole collections may be created and maintained by volunteer curators and caretakers?

Treating volunteers as unpaid equivalents to paid staff has been normalized in operational practice, as well. The Association for Volunteer Administration offered the first certificates of training in the 1980s. In museums, volunteer management began to take on a mainstream role in the following decade, often mirroring the practices applied to paid employees: mandating, for example, background checks, position descriptions, goals, and performance evaluations. These procedures addressed some real needs: clarity around expectations, accountability, and alignment with the organization’s plans and priorities. But they also created some unintended barriers to accessibility of volunteering (see “Steps Toward Equity in Volunteer Engagement” sidebar on p. 18) and further blurred the purpose and nature of volunteerism. Both law and practice tend to obscure a critically important point: volunteerism is not simply a way to recruit unpaid labor. The relationship between volunteers and the organizations to which they give their time is complex and multifaceted. Successful, mutually beneficial volunteer programs are designed to support those connections.

Museums have been reshaping their operations to foster diversity and accessibility, bringing those values to bear on volunteer programs as well. Many are increasingly aware that volunteers are often, quite literally, the public face of the museum and are figuring out how to recruit volunteers who reflect the audience the museum wants to serve. Given growing awareness of the benefits conferred by volunteering, museums are also asking not only “How do we get the people we need” but also “How do we make volunteer opportunities accessible to all?”

For all these reasons, and more, many museums are pausing to evaluate how relationships with volunteers are working or not working, and how volunteer programs can create mutually beneficial relationships that meet the needs of the organization, individuals in the community, and the community as a whole. These experiments are many and varied, and not without bumps. Some museums have terminated existing volunteer programs, replacing them with new initiatives focused on recruiting people who are more representative of particular audiences with regard to age, race, culture, or gender, hoping this approach will strengthen ties to and engagement with the community. Some museums are hiring staff to do work formerly accomplished by volunteers. Some staff may feel this gives the museum more control over process and outcomes. In some cases, because of both historic and current harms done to marginalized communities, it may seem inappropriate to expect people from those communities to provide their labor for free.

Change may be necessary, even inevitable, but change is often hard. In some instances, the restructuring process for volunteer programs has made people who have given substantial time and money to the museum feel marginalized or disrespected. Even when the intent is to increase diversity overall, certain actions may smack of ageism, when, for example, the volunteers being “laid off” are older adults.

Several trends might shape museum volunteerism in the future, one way or another. Museum unionization has accelerated in recent years, and while unionization does not preclude volunteerism, union contracts may address the use of volunteer labor. More museums are committing to paying a fair wage/living wage with concomitant increases in staff salaries. Absent a corresponding increase in funding, this may lead to fewer, better paid positions and a greater need for volunteers. Many museum tasks (stuffing envelopes, staffing information booths, even leading tours) often performed by volunteers have been replaced or disrupted by technology. How might emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, reduce the number of people needed to perform this work? These and other forces of change will determine whether we build a future in which volunteerism revitalizes our communities, or one in which volunteerism is an artifact of the past.

Sidebars

Museums Might …

• Create a culture that mindfully values the contributions of volunteers and respects the experience and knowledge they bring to their work.
• Value their volunteer program as a good in and of itself, for the benefits it provides to volunteers and the community, and not just for what it can do for the museum.
• Evaluate the current organizational culture for both staff and volunteers. Are there tensions arising from the power, status, and respect that goes with paid versus unpaid work, amateur versus professional standing, young versus old? How might those tensions be defused?
• Embed the volunteer program, its goals and activities, into the strategic and operational plans.
• Include volunteers/volunteer representatives from the beginning in key processes that set the direction and tone of the museum, including visioning and planning. This may include creating leadership roles for volunteers to give them a formal “voice” in decision-making.
• Evaluate institutional needs and how they do or do not align with the current cadre of volunteers. If major realignments are needed, include current volunteers, and representatives of groups that may be future volunteers, in the process of planning for change.
• Consider the needs and expectations of prospective and existing volunteers: what kinds of experiences would make them feel valued? What might the museum do to make volunteering accessible to people who cannot currently participate (e.g., evening hours, shorter time commitments, assistance with transportation)?

Steps Toward Equity in Volunteer Engagement

Adapted from Co-Creating Racial Equity in Volunteer Engagement: Learning from Listening Sessions with Black, Indigenous and People of Color, Minnesota Alliance for Volunteer Advancement, 2021

In 2020 and 2021, the Minnesota Alliance for Volunteer Advancement held eight virtual listening sessions with a total of 40 participants who identified as Black, Indigenous, or a person of color. These individuals were invited to contribute their perspective on the nature of volunteerism, motivations, barriers, and recommendations for building equitable volunteer opportunities.

Participants identified a wide-ranging variety of barriers arising from current assumptions about how volunteer programs should be run. These included schedules that didn’t accommodate the needs of busy working adults; expectations around the minimum number of hours required on a regular basis; and burdensome paperwork and procedures. Background checks, they pointed out, may not be necessary for all kinds of work performed by volunteers, and disproportionately exclude BIPOC people because of inequities in the justice system.

They also offered practical recommendations for increasing equity in volunteer engagement, including:

Remove Barriers: offer flexible schedules and support small time commitments. Most of all, be flexible: one approach may not work for all communities.

Prioritize BIPOC Leadership: if volunteers don’t see BIPOC leaders on staff, they may find the organization less appealing as a place to give their time.

Build Trust: organizations are more credible if they are already working with BIPOC communities and have built authentic relationships with other community organizations.

Foster A Welcoming Environment and Culture: participants noted “being accepted in these volunteer spaces is critical.”

And finally, consider when work should be compensated, rather than unpaid.

Museum examples

Thoughtful Restructuring

Over the past four years, the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) has reimagined its volunteer program as an all-encompassing set of experiences that provide consistent and sustainable opportunities for mutual engagement for OMCA’s community and the museum. Building on the strength of a 50-plus-year program, OMCA develops a variety of long- and short-term opportunities that match a range of volunteer interests and capacity and are aligned with the museum’s current needs. As part of the reimagining process, museum staff engaged volunteer leadership in a process of co-creation to adapt to the changing landscape of volunteerism and to embed equity into all facets of operations. With the launch of the new volunteer program in 2022, OMCA articulated new volunteer program core values, created roles that accommodate a range of interests and time availability, implemented evaluation and provided required cultural competency training.

All Volunteer

The Harrison Township Historical Society (HTHS) is an all-volunteer, private-public venture in Mullica Hill, New Jersey. The society was established in 1971 by a group of volunteers appointed by township officials to repurpose the community’s 1871 Town Hall as a local history museum. The society’s operations rely on over 100 volunteers who handle collections management, exhibition curation and installation, public programs, school tours, research requests, special events management and staffing, marketing, grant writing, and fundraising. HTHS has expanded its volunteer base beyond its membership through collaborations with local schools, civic and religious organizations, and nearby Rowan University. The result of this deep engagement and diverse volunteer base is a high-functioning organization that serves the needs of its community. The society’s high-quality content and experiences include an exhibit recognized by the American Association for State and Local History with the 2022 Albert B. Corey Award.

No Volunteers

Since its opening in 2014, Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana, has opted not to use unpaid labor. The museum does not have a volunteer program, nor does it offer unpaid internships. This decision is based on the site’s history of exploitative labor practices as a plantation from 1752–1975. Many generations of workers at this site were paid nothing when they were enslaved. Later generations worked during the repressive Jim Crow era in which wages were kept artificially low and workers stayed in debt to the company store. Because of this legacy, the museum has chosen not to allow any unpaid labor on the site. The museum has a variety of approaches to volunteer-type labor. Internships may be supported by grants or partner institutions that pay wages on the museum’s behalf. People who want to volunteer their time may receive honoraria rather than wages. This ethos extends to the gift shop as well, where museum staff have a preference for union-made and fair-trade goods.

Resources

Designing a Museum Volunteer Program, 2nd edition, AAM, 2024
This toolkit contains eight case studies from museums, and resources and information on DEAI, evaluation, and volunteer management systems. It provides guidance on how to differentiate the roles of paid staff and volunteers, and on having “tough conversations.”
aam-us.org/programs/publications/toolkits/designing-a-museum-volunteer-program/

Denver Art Museum Volunteer Engagement Strategic Plan 2019 – 2022
This plan focuses on three critical areas: nurturing a collaborative and unified workforce of volunteers and staff; broadening the diversity of volunteers and improving the museum’s ability to leverage their skills, talents, and uniqueness; and empowering volunteers and staff for maximum effectiveness.
bit.ly/3CgZwBl

American Association for Museum Volunteers (AAMV)
AAMV provides a forum for the discussion and distribution of best practices in the field of museum volunteering and internships, expands opportunities for networking, and advocates for volunteers in museums.
aamv.org

Numbers can tell stories just as effectively as (and sometimes more honestly than) words. A museum’s mission statement articulates aspirations—its financial statement shows those priorities in action, or illuminates disconnects. The Internal Revenue Service serves as a de facto StoryCorp for these numerical narratives. The vast majority of museums in the US are 501(c)3, tax-exempt, private, nonprofit organizations that submit an annual Form 990 (or, if they are very small, a 900-EZ) to the IRS. What stories might these forms be telling in the year 2035?

Remember that foresight doesn’t make predictions; it envisions the many ways that things might be different in the future. In that spirit, here is an annotated Form 990 from 2035, highlighting places where income and expenditures may change significantly in the coming decade.

f990 2024

Call outs on the form

The museum sector has experienced several waves of institutional renaming, as some organizations rebrand to avoid what they perceive as negative connotations of the word “museum.” This practice might gain steam, or some organizations may reclaim “museum” as a noun signaling trustworthiness and community service.

Some museums may relocate due to climate disruptions, either moving to safer ground in their community or to areas of lower climate risk. (See page 38 for “managed retreat” definition.)

As part of their DEI strategy, some museums may increase the size of their boards in order to retain the old advantages of including historically engaged, wealthy supporters, while adding a new cadre of more diverse individuals, recruited without regard to their ability to support the museum financially.

Fewer people overall may be willing and available to volunteer.

Some museums may expand their volunteer programs to enable more people to enjoy the benefits of volunteering.

Museums may experience:

• An increase in individual giving if the non-itemizer charitable deduction is continued (see “Charitable Deduction Decisions to Come” sidebar at right).
• A decrease in individual giving if the current trend of fewer individual donors continues, and large donations from fewer individuals do not fill the gap.

As part of their efforts to diversify their boards of trustees, and the equity issues raised by asking BIPOC individuals to donate their labor, some museums may decide to compensate members of their board.

Some factors influencing whether the inflation-adjusted compensation of directors increases or decreases:

• Currently, nonprofit directors are experiencing high rates of burnout and
  turnover. A decreasing number of staff want to take leadership positions due to stress and high expectations regarding fundraising. If these trends continue, even smaller museums may have to raise director salaries to attract and retain the candidates they want.
• Some director salaries may decrease as individual museums decide to cap the ratio between highest and lowest paid employees as part of their DEI efforts.

Charitable Deduction Decisions to Come

Congress is expected to debate a major tax package in 2025 as the 2017 Trump tax cuts are set to expire. Museums could see increased revenue and public support if a non-itemizer charitable deduction, such as the one in the Charitable Act (S. 566, H.R. 3435), is included in the package. AAM has been a long-time advocate of the non-itemizer charitable deduction and is a member of the Charitable Giving Coalition, a broad coalition of charitable nonprofits working to boost charitable giving. AAM also will be working to oppose harmful polices some think tanks are currently proposing, such as the Tax Foundation’s disastrous proposal to require nonprofits, including museums, to pay the regular corporate income tax rate on any earned income. Additionally, Congress previously has shown interest in establishing rules for private foundation museums to ensure they are adequately accessible by the general public, which might require answers to related questions on the Form 990.

Readers can use AAM’s template (at bit.ly/4fFWfds) to encourage members of Congress to support efforts to extend and expand incentives for charitable giving.