​At the Museum Trustee Association, we know that museums are essential to the educational and economic success of our communities. Once a year, through the American Alliance of Museums’ Museums Advocacy Day, museums speak with one voice on Capitol Hill to our elected officials, and MTA staff and board members once again were a vital part of AAM’s Museums Advocacy Day, highlighting museums trustees’ role in making the case for museums.
 
The results of AAM’s 2017 Public Opinion Survey demonstrate overwhelming support for museums:

•  97% of Americans believe that museums are educational assets for their communities
• 96% would think positively of their elected officials taking legislative action to support museums

We encourage you to attend Museums Advocacy Day in person, but there is also a lot you can do to be an effective advocate locally: schedule a visit with your officials when they are home for recess, or better yet, invite them on a tour of your museum.  Ongoing and consistent efforts in advocacy can happen throughout the year when you identify a board committee to be accountable for planning and leading periodic visits with elected officials. Designate a member of your board to follow your representatives on social media, and foster an ongoing relationship with them. Click these links to identify your Senators and Congressional Representatives.
 
In preparing for meetings with your legislators, take note of the recently released Museums as Economic Engines report (easily downloaded from the AAM website). The report shows the incredible economic impact made by museums: $50 billion per year to the national economy; 726,000 jobs; 850 million visitors annually. Also, check out the economic impact of museums in your state so that you can share specific data with your state and local representatives.
 
Museums are considered by their communities to be invaluable assets and U.S. citizens invest over one million hours of volunteer time in museums each year. This statistic alone demonstrates the passion we have for museums, and the recent compelling data from AAM lends strength to our requests for support from government representatives.
 
Guiding points for your meetings can include encouraging reauthorization of the Institute of Museums and Library Services’ Office of Museum Services and advocating for a universal charitable deduction. We encourage you to share poignant and personal stories that demonstrate the value of museums to you and in your community.

We are delighted to share that MTA’s Membership Committee Chair Margaret Benjamin was honored with a 5-year advocacy award. Congratulations, Margaret!

As you may recall, in 2016 I worked with Robyn Peterson, now Director of the Riverside Metropolitan Museum, in creating an “ideal” Board Orientation Handbook. Two years later, I decided to revisit this topic.

One of the key components of a successful onboarding for new board members is an orientation day on which the “new class” is introduced to all aspects of the museum. In the past, we have emphasized the importance of the Board Orientation Handbook, given to each new board member at the beginning of their term.

While the Board Orientation Handbook is a useful tool, it does not need to be restricted to a static physical document anymore. There have been a number of changes in the way that boards process information. Board portals and cloud based resources are becoming more and more prevalent, and as a result, the Board Orientation Handbook can be a dynamic document used long into a board member’s career. As you prepare to launch into your new board year, I would encourage you to evaluate how your staff disseminates information to your board.

A number of the documents listed in the sample table of contents below can exist as fluid documents with periodic updates. Sharing these documents with your entire board in a digital format, such as a portal or shared drive, allows for easy updates and eliminates the confusion of conflicting duplicate documents.

Have you used any interesting techniques in building your board orientation handbooks? Let us know in the comments below.

The Cultural Property Policy Environment

Over the past several years, the debate over how best to protect the World’s cultural heritage has taken a turn.  Although no evidence of any significant problem has been found, fear of terrorist funding from trade in cultural objects has replaced genuine concern for cultural heritage preservation as the driving force for new regulations.  [1] [2]  Unsupported claims that trade in objects of cultural heritage, mainly antiquities, is a major source of terrorist funding have prompted a politically driven rush toward legislative imposition of civil and criminal penalties and have encouraged aggressive enforcement.  In spite of numerous studies and policy recommendations to the contrary, dissenting voices are being scolded into silence for being soft on terrorism.  All methods of fighting terrorism should be considered, but we must not let fear or political agendas drive us to adopt measures that do more harm than good.  If policy making continues in the current direction the impact on museums, their staffs, donors, trustees and, ultimately, their ability to serve the public will be permanent and severely damaging.   It is time for Museums and their Boards to take action.
 
Initial claims of billions of dollars in terrorist funding from sales of artifacts have been discredited, but this has not prevented these claims from being used to justify stricter regulation and enforcement such as the new German law and the European Treaty of Nicosia.  However, recent evidence and studies [3] suggest revenue to ISIS may be no more than a few hundred thousand from sale of “excavation permits” within their now rapidly shrinking territory. Nevertheless, these exaggerated claims of terrorist funding[4] have now been repeated so often that they are accepted as fact [5], and are having a profound effect on policy making.   The US has passed into law new restrictions on Syrian artifacts and created a new investigatory committee.[6]  A new EU treaty [7]  (Nicosia, May 2017), justified largely by these discredited claims that antiquities sales are providing funding for terrorists, recognizes the laws of source countries as the exclusive means of determining an object’s legal status.  The treaty provides for enforcement and criminal penalties based on these foreign laws regardless of whether they have been shown to be valid or constitutional within the EU or whether they are even enforced in the source country.  Once codified into law it will create substantial legal risks for museums, their staffs and the trade. 
 
Germany has enacted a controversial law[8] [9] requiring export licenses and proof of legal source country exportation and declares anything without proper documentation to be presumptively illegal.  The Terrorism Art and Antiquity Revenue Prevention Act of 2016 (S.3449, TAAR Act) introduced in the US Senate, but now tabled, would classify as stolen any cultural property removed in violation of the local laws of the source country and would empower the Dept. of Homeland Security to create a database and labeling system for Syrian and Iraqi artifacts. [10]  Trump’s Presidential Memos and Executive Orders targeting ISIS and terrorism[11] [12] [13] have encouraged proposals for more regulation, new enforcement initiatives and more criminal prosecutions.  
 
Recent testimony before Congress and Homeland Security[14] [15] also continues to cite sale of artifacts as a major source of terrorist funding claiming that individual objects sell for, “…as much as $1 Million…” and implying that terrorists are directly participating at the highest levels of the antiquities market despite a complete lack of evidence.  Since 2015 the US Department of State has offered a $5 million reward for information that disrupts these alleged activities . [16] No one has yet claimed the reward.[17]

 
Museum’s Ability To Serve The Public: At Risk?
 
Museums should be an essential part of any international effort to protect the world’s cultural heritage.  But, as the focus of regulators has turned almost solely to defeating terrorism, museums have been marginalized and the goal of actually preserving world cultural heritage for future generations seems to be receding into the background.
 
The risks are real.  By imposing retroactive requirements for source country export documentation, the new EU Treaty and German laws instantly create millions of orphaned objects already in the EU which, after implementation, cannot be legally exported, sold, gifted or, in Germany, owned.  What will happen to all those objects?  How will museums or families feel about suddenly being deemed criminals simply for owning them?  Should the US revive the TAAR Act, the same thing could happen here.
 
Criminal penalties mandated by the EU Treaty probably sound good to voters worried about terrorism or concerned about cultural heritage preservation but does it really make sense to threaten museum staffers with jail time if they made a mistake in their provenance research?  The new EU Treaty requires laws that say it’s a crime to make a mistake if you “should have known”. [18] Will museums decide to make no accessions at all rather than that take that kind of risk?  And, who will be willing to serve as a Trustee when it exposes them to the possibility of criminal prosecution?
 
In the absence of strong voices from the museum community we are permitting the creation of a world with less transparency, more cultural property abuses, millions of refugee objects and enormous risks for museum staff, trustees and collectors.  We are in real danger of permanently damaging the ability of the museum system to serve the public and eliminating the opportunity for our society to view, understand and appreciate the World’s many diverse artistic traditions. 
 
In such an environment, no set of internal policies will completely protect an institution from cultural property disputes or accusations.  We can, however, operate transparently with clear ethical guidelines that support both the protection of cultural heritage and our ability to pursue our public mission.  We must also fight for a seat at the policy making table and become an integral part of the process rather than being victimized by it.

About the Author

Matthew Polk is a trustee of the Walters Art Museum and a former trustee of the Baltimore Museum of Art.  He currently serves on the Collections and Finance Committees of the Walters and on the AAAPI Accessions committee of the BMA. He is also a board member of the Committee for Cultural Policy and a co-founder of the Global Heritage Alliance, organizations dedicated to formulation of cultural property policies which serve both the need for preservation and the public interest. In 2009 he and his wife, Amy Gould FAIA, established the Historic Textile Research Foundation (HTRF), a 501 c(3) dedicated to radiocarbon dating of historically significant textiles for research purposes.

Mr. Polk is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy (’71) and serves on the department’s advisory board and executive committee. In 1971 he co-founded Polk Audio and served as Chairman and head of product development until 2006. In 2009 he began developing a new method for high intensity acoustic vibration testing of spacecraft and in 2016 co- founded MSI DFAT Services, LLC, the leading provider of direct field acoustic testing services for aerospace. 

Note: The Museum Trustee Association views its mission of enhancing the effectiveness of museum trustees as educational and collaborative. As a group of past and current museum board members, we do not see ourselves as a policy-setting organization but rather as a source of information to equip Museum Trustees as they implement field-wide best practices in all of their governance affairs. The article above is intended to provide an opportunity for open dialogue.
 

Footnotes
[1] “Legislators seem to be very busy with drafting laws to combat cultural property crimes, combat IS and specifically the ways IS earns money. Legislators seem to be more occupied with the topic than law enforcement, but no unequivocal proof of huge revenues of the illegal trade in cultural property is found that could support such an active legislative role – besides political reasons. Large amounts of plundered items have not surfaced on Western (art) markets”  Dutch Survey on Cultural Property War Crimes, Sept. 2016, section 14.2.3 page 65, http://iadaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Cultural-Property-War-crimes-and-Islamic-State-2016.pdf
[2]  Excellent discussion in the New Yorker, Dec. 2015 , https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-real-value-of-the-isis-antiquities-trade
[3] Dutch study most comprehensive yet. “Based on this study it can be concluded that the topic is ‘hyped’. It is a strategic political topic that is presented bigger than it is in reality.” Pg. 6,http://iadaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Cultural-Property-War-crimes-and-Islamic-State-2016.pdf  See page 63-65 for summary and conclusions.
[4] Inside ISIS’ Looted Antiquities Trade: “…why $7 billion fell to $4 million in public discussions about the ISIS antiquities trade.”  https://theconversation.com/inside-isis-looted-antiquities-trade-59287
[5] Q&A on proposed EU regulations, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-17-1954_en.htm “Another study [reference not provided] suggests that the total financial value of the illegal antiquities and art trade is larger than any other area of international crime except arms trafficking and narcotics and has been estimated at €2.5 - €5 billion yearly.” For comparison, the 2014 TEFAF market report estimated the entire world-wide antiquities market at $150M to $200M.
[6] H.R.1493 - Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act  https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1493
[7] 127th Session of the Committee of Ministers
(Nicosia, 19 May 2017) Council of Europe Convention on Offences relating to Cultural Propertyhttps://search.coe.int/cm/Page/result_details.aspx?ObjectId=0900001680704b30
[8]http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/germany-act-to-protect-cultural-property-passed/
[9] Note that as of 2008 exports of nearly all cultural property to non-EU countries already require licenses,http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:039:0001:0007:en:PDF
[10] TAAR Act  https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/3449/text
[11] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/plan-defeat-islamic-state-iraq
[12] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13773
[13] Comprehensive Strategy to Destroy ISIS Act of 2017 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1785/text
[14] Hearing: “The Exploitation of Cultural Property: Examining Illicit Activity in the Antiquities and Art Trade” http://docs.house.gov/committee/calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=106166
[15]FOLLOWING THE MONEY: EXAMINING CURRENT TERRORIST FINANCING TRENDS AND THE THREAT TO THE HOMELAND  https://homeland.house.gov/hearing/following-money-examining-current-terrorist-financing-trends-threat-homeland/
[16] http://thehill.com/policy/defense/255442-us-offers-5-million-reward-to-stop-isis-from-plundering-antiquities
[17] In spite of a lack of credible evidence of any significant terrorist funding from cultural objects reaching the US, organisations like the “Antiquities Coalition” continue to argue for the elimination of all trade in antiquities as an effective means of fighting terrorism. https://theantiquitiescoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/rsz_1rsz_1rsz_conflictantiquities_170713-01-1.png ,  As the Dutch study on Cultural Property War Crimes concluded, “It would contribute to effective investigations if  “UNESCO, media agencies and other agencies [would] stop ‘hyping’ cultural property crimes……” section 15.1, page 65, http://iadaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Cultural-Property-War-crimes-and-Islamic-State-2016.pdf
[18] See Chapter II, Article 7-2 and Article 8-2, http://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/rms/0900001680710435

Our August blog post on deaccessioning from collections engendered strong opinions on all sides of the issue. Thank you to those of you who weighed in via phone call, blog comment, LinkedIn, Facebook, or email for being a part of the discussion. It was especially reassuring that several of our readers expressed an interest in participating in a Fiscal SWAT Team with MTA. These conversations were especially fruitful, and we look forward to implementing this program in the future.

Regardless of your stance on the volatile issue of deaccessioning, it can be agreed that good governance requires both the careful collections stewardship and the execution of fiduciary responsibility. An effective board sees and responds to the first signs of financial trouble within their institution and promptly deals with those problems long before the controversial issue of deaccessioning arises. Are you beginning to see red ink on your balance sheet? Is your audience declining? Does your museum routinely defer maintenance for “just one more year”? Is your staff anxiously waiting for a single big check to keep the lights on? If you answered yes to any of these questions, the time to act is now. Don’t wait until it is too late to seek help. MTA’s Board and Staff are available to assist and to connect you to the resources that your museum needs.

As an organization with an educational mission, we rely on our semi-annual Forums to be our most significant arena for discussion. Deaccessioning and Fiscal Responsibility will be a topic at one or more of our 2018 Forums. Mark your calendar- next year’s event schedule is available now!

Can’t make it to San Diego or Hartford? Our Tips for Trustees blog has become a valuable resource to the field. In November, we will be working with our partners to develop a series of Tips that take a closer look at the early warning signs preceding fiscal crisis, and create ways to address them effectively. We look forward to your continued enthusiastic discussion.

We have occupied a front-row seat for seeing the gap between boards that are well run and led and are boons to the organizations they serve, and those that are far less so. We have seen how public agencies and governance activists have sought to close that gap by insisting on tougher rules and tighter regulations. We believe, however, that much of the variance stems instead from a very different source: the human dynamics, social architecture, and leadership of the board itself.
 
We seek as a result to focus attention on building more engaged leadership in the boardroom, not just the executive suite. Governing boards should take more active leadership of the organization, whether a corporation, hospital, or museum, not just monitor its management. We expand the working concept of governance from one of arms-length oversight to trustee leadership of the most strategic decisions.
 
Rather than being concerned with whether trustees should serve staggered or limited terms, we worry more about whether the chair can help direct the board in guiding strategy, setting the ethical tone, and gauging risk in concert with the chief executive, and whether the trustees’ talent and collective chemistry make the board a substantive player at the table. This calls for a different kind of vigilance in the boardroom, a deeper kind of relationship between trustees and executives, and a new kind of leadership from both.
 
The emerging governance model is a result of forces not of its own making. In the private sector, increased regulation, ownership pressures, and governance reforms over the past decade have been intended to strengthen the board’s oversight function. Yet as boards have become better monitors, they have also become better leaders, delving into a host of other areas that had been delegated to top management in earlier times.
 
We believe that directors in the private sector and trustees in the non-profit community can and will more actively lead in the years ahead, and on balance we anticipate that this should fortify their organization’s success and performance. But that is not a given. Poorly handled, this new enablement can cause serious damage, resulting in fractured authority and dangerous meddling.
 
A New Model of Collaborative Leadership
 
In a 2002 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Warren Buffett lamented his multiple derelictions of duty as a director of some forty corporations over nearly two decades: “Too often I was silent when management made proposals that I judged to be counter to the interest of shareholders,” Buffett wrote. “In those cases, collegiality trumped independence [and a] certain social atmosphere presides in boardrooms where it becomes impolitic to challenge the chief executive.”
 
A decade later, biopharmaceutical Amgen Inc. CEO Kevin Sharer painted an almost opposite picture of the relationship between the governing body and corner office: “You’re a lion tamer and they’re the lions. Respect them, but if you let them eat you, they will. Working with the board is vital, complex, and beyond your prior experience—unlike anything you’ve done before. It is among the most complex human relationships, especially if you’re the chair, when you’re their boss, and they’re your boss. Get the relationship right, or it will hurt you.”
 
Allow for a little hyperbole on both sides—Warren Buffett was never that neglectful, and Kevin Sharer carried neither whip nor chair to keep his directors at bay. Still, the difference between the two observations illustrates a striking reconfiguration taking place in how boards operate and how directors and trustees work with top management: the emergence, in an extraordinarily short time, of the potential for boards to be a vital partner and new force in governance.
 
But note the qualifier—potential. This leadership capacity has yet to be fully exploited or even realized at many firms. Too often, directors and trustees remain one of the most valuable but least utilized of an organization’s assets. Smart, experienced, and dedicated men and women are ready to serve. They are sworn to protect and advance the enterprise, to ensure that it does what is best for customers, investors, donors, and visitors. Yet their wisdom and guidance are still too often closeted in the boardroom.
 
But the prevailing model is changing, and quickly. At organization after organization, boards and management have been embracing new practices that help define a more directive, more collaborative leadership of the enterprise. They are jointly taking charge of strategic choices, merger decisions, risk tolerance, ethical climate, and other functions that have traditionally been the province of management.

Boards That Monitor, Partner and Take Charge

A company, hospital, or museum’s executives are no less in the driver’s seat. But the way that they steer many organization is now markedly different—a shared or distributed leadership model that is better suited, in our view, for guiding enterprises that are facing more uncertain, more changing, and more complex markets.
 
Each board will want to fashion its own unique blend of the components of direct and collaborative leadership. “Boards should sit down” annually, urged Ford Motor Company’s lead director Irvine Hockaday, “and say, OK, what are we really doing here, what really is our role given the situation of this company at this time, what are we doing to incarnate that role, how are we going to function with the lead director, and what are our priorities?”
 
Finding the right balance among the board’s leadership components—knowing when to lead, when to partner, and when to stay out of the way—has become one of the premier tasks of the board’s leadership of any enterprise.

NOTE (October 12, 2017):
The Museum Trustee Association views its mission of enhancing the effectiveness of museum trustees as educational and collaborative. As a group of past and current museum board members, we do not see ourselves as a policy-setting organization but rather as a source of information to equip Museum Trustees as they implement field-wide best practices in all of their governance affairs. While the article above is intended to provide an opportunity for open dialogue, MTA firmly believes that in all matters of deaccessioning, the guidelines of the American Alliance of Museums set the industry-wide standard. For more information on field-wide best practices, we invite you to read “Questions and Answers about Selling Objects from the Collection”, published by AAM on September 23, 2017, and AAM’s 2016 White Paper entitled “Direct Care of Collections”.

Your board has committed hours to creating the ideal vision for your museum. Your leaders are bursting with new and exciting ideas for programs and initiatives. But then the inevitable question arises- how are you going to pay for it?

Fundraising is increasingly a major source of revenue for museums, and museum administrators are working hard to put the philanthropy of their communities to good use. Unfortunately, even with the best intentions, sometimes gifts fall through the cracks. No museum is immune to the occasional mistake while fundraising, but getting it right can make a tremendous difference in your year-end results.

Many museums have just closed their fiscal-year-end books, so MTA thought this would be a good opportunity to provide strategies to avoid traps as 2018 budgets begin.

In the article below, learn about common faux pas made by even the most successful museums, and discover strategies for recovering from these errors as well as tips for avoiding them altogether.

In a perfect world, every staff member would have the training, resources and time they need to independently and accurately solicit, record and acknowledge each gift to your museum. In reality, administrators are human and can make mistakes. As frustrating as these errors may be, misspelled names, solicitations to donors who have passed and acknowledgements to the wrong giving entity will all happen at some point. Gracious and expedient corrections can help to reassure donors that mistakes will not be repeated.

It is, however, better to avoid these administrative errors altogether. Development committee oversight and personalized solicitations from museum leaders can help. While institutional databases are now charged with the challenge of keeping track of donors, members of the Board can use their connections to keep records up-to-date. Nonetheless, it is important to invest in good donor management software to ensure that giving entities are kept distinct: individuals, donor-advised funds, corporations and foundations can be linked when merited. Good software enables easy access to records. Additionally, providing thorough staff training can ensure administrators are well versed in the proper acknowledgment protocols for each type of gift.

One more tip: I have found that reviewing each solicitation before signing it is a good way to keep track of the giving trends of my high-level donors. Reviewing these appeals can be an opportunity to catch changes that my staff may not know about before mailings are sent, and sometimes are a way for me to keep up-to-date too. Finally, I often add a personal handwritten message to each donor.

Maintaining positive relationships with your donors is one of the most rewarding ways to secure gifts for the future. Building and sustaining relationships with individuals and foundations can mean a great deal of hard work, but alienating these donors through inaction often comes at a heavy cost. That personal connection should start from the first solicitation and continue long after the first gift.

With the increase and improvement of databases and communication methods, donors receive hundreds of requests every year. Do your research; does the donor have a history of giving to arts & cultural organizations? (Click HERE to read more about prospect research). Many of these asks are unsolicited, meaning that a successful request must stand out from the crowd. It is better to cold-call someone than to inundate them with impersonal mailings and emails. Better yet, ask a board member with or without a connection to a giving entity to pick up the phone. In either scenario, invite the prospect to your museum to see programs first hand before making the ask.

Once the initial gift is secured, fundraisers cannot become complacent. The development staff and committee may wrongfully assume that a major donor will give their standard annual gift without a personal solicitation, which can risk alienating a supporter. It is important to consistently demonstrate to donors how much you value their relationship. Invite them on a behind the scenes tour of the museum or to a lecture. Again, personalize these annual appeals and pick-up the phone and say THANK YOU.

So the gift is secured. Your donor is excited about the museum’s mission and has made a multi-year pledge to support your latest project.

Then, the unthinkable happens. Maybe there is a leadership change, or a maintenance emergency. Maybe the program just wasn’t working. For whatever reason, the project is inevitably cancelled, and your relationship with that donor is put at risk.

It is often tempting to silence communications in times of uncertainty or crisis, but keeping quiet makes it increasingly likely that the donor will hear about the change from another source. A face-to-face meeting with the donor is the best approach here, and can provide reassurance at the solidity of the museum. No matter the cause of the change, appearing confident that the museum made the right decision, soliciting advice and feedback from the donor and being prepared with new ideas for use of their gift can reinforce faith in the museum leadership’s ability to achieve its mission.

A donor has offered your museum a part of their collection. Your curator supports the gift, but your conservator realizes that there will be significant expense to prepare the objects for display. Meanwhile, the donor is used to seeing the objects in their home, and sees his or her gift as ready for installation. Months pass, and the donor is disappointed not to see their collection on view. Rather than leave the donor feeling like their gift was inadequate or underappreciated, the museum could have been honest in creating a reasonable timetable for display within the Conservation Department’s existing budget, or asked for additional monetary support to conserve these objects.

We have all heard the maxim before: It isn’t definite until it’s in writing. I have heard from many museums with the following experience: the museum receives a verbal pledge from the donor, but fails to create a contract in writing. The donor passes away in the interim and the children have no record of the gift. Naturally, the best way to keep these situations from happening is to have the supporting data on hand. Unfortunately there isn’t much to be done without that signed agreement, though your museum may have an opportunity to build a relationship with a new generation of potential donors. Instead of mourning the loss of the gift, turn lemons into lemonade by showing the children their parent’s vision and passion.

The same rules apply when cultivating a new board member. Financial expectations need to be specifically addressed upfront during the cultivation process. Many successful museums share their Board Contract that enumerates these expectations with board candidates, so there is no misunderstanding down the road. With clear giving expectations, boards can avoid alienating their newest members at that crucial time.

Each new fiscal year presents new opportunities and challenges for museums across the Americas. Do you have any strategies for avoiding or recovering from Fundraising Faux Pas? Share them in the comment section below!

At your last board meeting, did you find yourself looking more at your cell phone than listening to the Executive Director? Did the Executive Committee report on the decisions made in advance of the meeting and leave no time for trustee conversation and questions? Did you feel like you could have just read the board packet and skipped the meeting?

Did you ask yourself, “Why am I on this Board?”

At MTA, one of our most frequently asked questions from both Directors and Board Members is “How can I successfully keep my Board Members engaged?” A well-run board meeting is the best chance to prove that you’re not wasting your board members time.
​
Here are 10 Tips culled from MTA members & forum panelists to help you hold successful board meetings that motivate members to come back again and again.

​Once a month can be too often to meet, wasting staff time and resources. However, meeting quarterly can be too little, leaving Board Members overwhelmed and forcing attendees to set aside sufficient hours to allow for necessary business as well as robust discussion and interaction. Your meeting schedule should suit the needs of your museum while still respecting the time of your volunteer Board.

​Board Packets should be sent to allow sufficient pre-read time. Consider purchasing board portal software for meeting notices, agendas & supporting corporate documents. Having the archived material at your fingertips allows for the meeting narrative to come alive.

 “Creating a diverse board is hard work,” according to David Ellis, former Director of the Museum of Science-Boston. Using a board matrix like the one created by The Museum Trustee Association helps boards manage this process. (Find MTA Templates Here)

Board members often have busy travel schedules and may not always be in town for your meeting. Ensure that your trustees have the option to attend via conference call at a minimum. Even better, try a video conferencing service for presentations so that participants are both seen and heard.

A Consent Agenda can be used for routine business such as committee reports, minutes and financial data. Doing so can save time and energy, giving you an opportunity to hold robust discussions.

One of the many reasons that people join boards is to meet, interact and make new friends.  “The Walters Art Museum has a social event following every board meeting. Some are board and staff oriented while others allow the board to interact with museum members and donors,” says trustee Peter Stockman. “These events have helped forge trusting relationships among board members and created a positive image of the board as conscientious stewards among our donors”

​Do you feel like you are spending too much time in the same conference room? A great way to shake things and bring Mission into your meeting is by holding the meeting at community partner’s headquarters.

Curators, Conservators, Educators, and Docents can share a Mission-related story. Budget time for a fundraising training session or conduct a pre- meeting survey to find a topic that suits your Board. Trustees today are doers and action-oriented. Allow plenty of time for goal setting and problem solving.

According to Boards that Lead, “Chief executives must run the corporation, but directors must also lead the corporation on the most crucial issues. Monitoring is still important. Governance matters. But the time has come for boards to rebalance their responsibilities. Directors need to know when to take charge, when to partner, and when to stay out of the way.”

​Micah Parzen, CEO of The Museum of Man in San Diego writes his board a weekly e-mail. “Mission Moment Mondays help to regularly remind the board of the Museum’s Why. They are a critical part of our process of creating an indelible through-line between our mission and the business of the institution.”

​There are many more strategies for keeping your museum Board Engaged. Have a success story? We want to hear from you! Please comment below.

How did you become involved in MTA?
 
"Andrew Camden, MTA Chairman Emeritus is one of my oldest friends and he introduced me to MTA. At that time I was just a collector of American Illustration who had a natural affinity for museums. I began as a Patron member and as Andrew had predicted, found I enjoyed the people involved and was especially impressed by the “behind the scenes” looks at both museums and private collections. By coming to MTA conferences I was getting opportunities that I could have never gotten any other way. Later, as I became a trustee myself, first on the Federal Reserve Fine Arts Advisory Panel and then on the board of the Norman Rockwell Museum I was invited to serve on the MTA Board."
 
Tell Us About Your Museum Board Service.
 
"I’ve been on the Fine Arts Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve for almost 20 years now. My biggest challenge there came during my tenure as Panel Chair, when we were transitioning from our founding director to her successor. There was widespread concern about the future of the program, and it was all I could do to keep the board intact until the situation became clear. The program not only continued, but a successful search led to our finding Stephen Phillips who has led us to even greater heights.
For the last 6 or so years I’ve been on the Board of the Norman Rockwell Museum. I began there as a member of the National Advisory Council and was then asked to be on their Board. As a result of my collecting knowledge I serve as the Chair of the Museum’s Collection Committee."
 
What are some key responsibilities of a trustee?
 
"The key responsibilities of a trustee are to ensure the financial stability of the institution, and to put in place the right Director and policies to ensure that the mission of the Museum is successfully carried out. It is up to the Trustees to ensure that the museum is well-funded and run on a fiscally responsible basis and that strategic plans are in place to ensure the future well-being of the institution. Policies must be in place to protect the collections, staff and facilities. The Board Chair must work closely with the Director on all major decisions that affect the health and reputation of the Museum both now and into the future. And last but not least, the trustee must be a cheerleader for his/her museum, spreading the good word and garnering support whenever and wherever they can."
 
What are your goals for MTA as Board Chairman?
 
"My goals as MTA Chairman are to expand our membership and to continue to develop content to give our Museums the “best practices” governance information they need to have the most effective Board of Trustees possible. I would also like to see us continue to develop our relationship with the AAM until we become universally recognized throughout the field as the source of the most effective museum Trusteeship, which of course we are!"
 
Share an MTA Memory.
 
"I remember at one of the early conferences I attended in Washington DC I found myself at a dinner at the National Gallery of Art and Carter Brown, the then Director, was giving us a talk. Our group was the only one there, and I remember looking around thinking to myself what a very special opportunity this was. And this was simply the highlight of a day where we had viewed session after valuable session on the practical information that Museum trustees need to do their job effectively. That tradition of combining useful insights and special locations continues as we meet at both the New Orleans Museum of Art and the National World War II Museum this spring  and look forward to a reception at the relocated Barnes Museum in Philadelphia this fall."
 
What are some challenges currently facing the museum field?
 
"One of the biggest challenges museums face these days is the quickly evolving way people get their information. As more people live their lives through their screens, museums need to find a way to reach these people, first to bring them into the museum, and secondly to connect with them once they come through the door. We must stay up to date on social media, interactive exhibits and long distance learning opportunities. While nothing will ever surpass the firsthand experience of viewing a great work of art (or historic house or aquarium etc.)  up-close and personal, our new challenge will be convincing current generations of that fact, and finding alternative methods of information delivery when schedules or lifestyles won’t permit onsite visits."

Why should a museum leader attend the NOLA Forum (or any MTA Forum)? 
 
"The reason to attend an MTA forum is to hear from experienced long-time trustees on how to successfully navigate the difficulties museum boards face every single day. It is where Trustees from across the country come to discuss the problems they have faced and the solutions they have found while running our most important cultural institutions. This spring in New Orleans (besides our Board Chair/Director workshop) we are covering such topics as Investing, Capital Campaigns and Trustee Recruitment and training among other timely subjects. Then we tour some of the host city’s finest museums—in this case The New Orleans Museum of art and the National World War II Museum. And finally our Patrons round out their days sampling the finest cuisine the city has to offer and going behind the scenes into many of the privately held collections located in the area. There is not a more fulfilling way a dedicated museum trustee can spend his/her weekend."