Should Museums and Galleries be free?

This isn’t a new challenge, but it’s one and made the news again this morning.   
Should Museums and Galleries be free? 

Few receive central government funding, many are funded local authorities. But should people have to pay to see the nations treasures? Is, say, £10 too much to spend a day with millions of pounds worth of art or artefacts? I might be happy to do it, but should our collections be restricted to only those that can afford to pay?

What do you think, would you visit less if you had to pay each time, or would you buy an annual pass? Should Aberdeen Art Gallery be free to all always, or should we consider charging visitors to the city, or charging for special events?

Or do we need to be more creative and look at “freemium” business models or similar?

Seeking Fundraising Success? Be more attractive….

A recent study claims that “Men donate more to online fundraising pages where the fundraiser is an attractive female, and donate competitively with others”. If like me, you find the idea that men might donate competitively to be hardly revolutionary – i.e. you’ve attended a fundraising auction too – you might wonder what can be gained from this research.

There are some helpful hints for professional fundraiser there, again, perhaps nothing you don’t already know.  If you’re community fundraiser, encourage your challenge event participants to use good photos of themselves smiling. Encourage people to seek donations from those who are likely to give more early on, nudge nudge.  Whether this is actually competitiveness at play, or ‘anchoring’ in effect, I don’t know.

I’m obviously highly sceptical about the merits of solely recruiting attractive people to your team, (I’m looking at you, certain former face to face recruiters in my area) but I would encourage all fundraisers to remember the importance of a genuine smile.