[BCMA] To charge or not to charge?

Sat Aug 11 08:12:59 PDT 2018

Hi,

The Kimberley Heritage Museum has monitoring the comments on this issue. 
We too were a by donation museum until 2 years ago. we found that people 
were not carrying cash, so donations dropped off considerably. We 
started to charge $3 per adult and $2 per student and under 10 free. We 
changed this to $4 per adult and $3 per student and added a family rate 
of $12 and kept under 10 free. There are still those who do not want to 
pay, but the ones who do give us great comments and we still get money 
in the donation box. We seem to have a similar situation as Creston, 
where getting the word out that we are "worth the money" is a problem we 
haven't seem to crack. Thaks to Tammy for stating the situation so well.

Marie Stang

Administrator

On 10/08/2018 3:54 PM, Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv. wrote:
>
> I meant to chime in on this last week, and it slipped my mind. Creston 
> Museum is a small museum in a small community, and we charge admission 
> in summer - $4 for adults, $3 youth, and $10 for a family (we’re 
> pretty flexible on what constitutes a family). In winter, we switch to 
> an admission by donation system, because it’s cold so visits tend to 
> be shorter, and we almost always have part of it torn up while we 
> change an exhibit or repaint a room or something.
>
> In summer, most people pay the admission without questions, though we 
> occasionally get people who refuse to pay admission, or who walk in 
> with no money in any form because they expect it will be free; and on 
> days when we do go with admission by donation (event days, for 
> example), our per person revenues drop to less than $2. On the other 
> hand, we also get a lot of comments that “it’s worth much more than we 
> charge,” but if we tried charging more, I know we would lose visitors. 
> But in winter, we regularly get people handing us $20 donations and 
> more. The difference is that in winter, people hand us the donation 
> after they’ve visited and in summer, they’re asked for admission when 
> they arrive. So, if we could figure out a way to show people how 
> fantastic we are before they’ve seen it, we could probably go to an 
> admission-by-donation format and considerably increase our admission 
> revenues.
>
> Tammy
>
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> Tammy Bradford, Manager
>
> Creston Museum
>
> 219 Devon Street, Creston BC V0B 1G3
>
> 250-428-9262
>
> *From:*bcma-bounces at lists.vifa.ca <bcma-bounces at lists.vifa.ca> *On 
> Behalf Of *Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.
> *Sent:* Thursday, August 09, 2018 5:02 PM
> *To:* bcma at lists.vifa.ca
> *Subject:* Re: [BCMA] To charge or not to charge?
>
> Dear Museum Friends,
>
> Thank you for the generous response to this query around admissions 
> policies.  Responses continue to trickle in, so let’s continue to 
> share our experience.  Later on, I will do my best to summarize and 
> report back with some takeaways from this critical conversation.
>
> Regards,
>
> Linda
>
> Linda Digby_email tags-small
>
> *From:*bcma-bounces at lists.vifa.ca <mailto:bcma-bounces at lists.vifa.ca> 
> [mailto:bcma-bounces at lists.vifa.ca] *On Behalf Of *Moderated BCMA 
> subscriber listserv.
> *Sent:* August-01-18 3:21 PM
> *To:* bcma at lists.vifa.ca <mailto:bcma at lists.vifa.ca>
> *Subject:* [BCMA] To charge or not to charge?
>
> Dear Friends,
>
> We operate three museums in downtown Kelowna, with admission by 
> donation. Our admissions  policy is under review, and we would like to 
> know what other museums have learned about admission policy.  What are 
> museums of various size categories handling admission? Does charging 
> admission, rather than asking for a donation, increase or decrease 
> revenues?  How does it impact visitation?  What else has been learned?
>
> Here is our experience:  Kelowna Museums Society sees just under 
> 40,000 visitors a year at our three museums.  We have a long history 
> of offering admission by donation.  Last year, we posted small signs 
> on the donation boxes stating the suggested donation is $5 per person. 
> This worked for us, and we noticed an increase in donation box 
> revenues. Based on recent performance, our budget reflects anticipated 
> donation box revenues from our three facilities of $34,000.  Our 
> average donation per person is about half of our suggested donation, 
> or around $2.50 (some of our visitors pay program fees that are not 
> reflected in the donation box revenue line, so this average refers to 
> casual drop-in visitors).
>
> The board would like to know if revenues would increase if we 
> instituted an admission fee. Alternatively, they wonder if it would be 
> beneficial to make our suggested donation signage more prominent and 
> detailed, with suggested donations for individuals,  families, 
> seniors, students, etc.
>
> General comments may be shared with the entire listserv community.  
> Anyone who would like to engage in a more detailed exchange may 
> contact me directly at:
>
> ldigby at kelownamuseums.ca <mailto:ldigby at kelownamuseums.ca>, or 
> 778-478-0346
>
> Best,
>
> Linda
>
> Linda Digby_email tags-small
>
>
> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient> 
> 	Virus-free. www.avg.com 
> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient> 
>
>
> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.vifa.ca/pipermail/bcma/attachments/20180811/c297f398/attachment.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 25521 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.vifa.ca/pipermail/bcma/attachments/20180811/c297f398/attachment.png 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.png
Type: image/png
Size: 25525 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.vifa.ca/pipermail/bcma/attachments/20180811/c297f398/attachment-0001.png 