Stores, members and donors: the same people
A Seattle news nonprofit’s beanie, a public radio tumbler and what store filings show: why a cultural institution’s store, membership and development reach the same people.
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Art museums and public galleries | Botanical gardens and nature centers | For development | For the store | Performing arts organizations
The four calendars
Fifteen cultural institutions whose public filings we examined close their fiscal years in five different months. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA and the Seattle Art Museum close theirs in June. Mount Vernon, Crystal Bridges and the Corning Museum of Glass close in December. Longwood Gardens and Desert Botanical Garden close in September, the Oregon…
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The second order
A quote describes one order. For an institution that will need merchandise again next year, and the year after, the more useful thing to evaluate is what working together will look like by the second order and the fifth. That shows up early: in the first conversation, before any price is on the table. Addiss…
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Does donor recognition actually work?
More than half of the people who gave to a US nonprofit in 2024 did not give again in 2025. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project, run by the AFP Foundation for Philanthropy and GivingTuesday, put full-year donor retention for 2025 at 43.3 percent, up slightly from 43.1 percent. Repeat donors held on a little better. Retention…
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Sending one thing to one person
Send a ground parcel to a home in one of the ZIP codes UPS designates as a delivery area, and two surcharges apply before the base rate: $6.50 for delivering to a residence and $6.55 for the delivery area. That is about $13 before the shipping itself is priced and before anything goes in the…
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Why the date you were given is not the date
Museums have been raising prices, and some of them name tariffs as part of the reason. The American Alliance of Museums’ 2025 National Snapshot of United States Museums surveyed 511 museum directors in July and August 2025. It found that 58 percent of museums had raised prices in at least one category over the previous…
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The tiered donor gift
Most regional symphony orchestras offer something at the $250 or $500 annual giving level that is some version of a branded tote bag, a travel mug, or a scarf with the organization’s name on it. The item is usually fine. It is often reasonably well-made. It is also, in most cases, almost completely interchangeable with…
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What subscribers recognize
Performing arts subscription programs have been in structural decline for years, and the pandemic accelerated a pattern that was already underway. The research on audience behavior in the 2024-25 season shows ticket revenue still running below 2018-19 levels in real terms, once inflation is accounted for. Subscriptions specifically, the multi-concert packages that were once the…