*This session will be a hands-on workshop. Attendance is limited to thirty (30) people. The content covered in this workshop is specifically intended for museum professionals. Workshop attendees must be registered for the 2025 Building Museums Symposium. Interested attendees should RSVP in the conference app.
This workshop focuses on the importance of strategy and strategic planning when initiating a capital project. Sometimes seen as a tick-box exercise to satisfy donors or “nice-to-have,” a well-executed strategic planning process and a solid strategic plan provides institutions with a roadmap for navigating their way through major change initiatives, helping them stay on course at every turn and unexpected crossroads. Most importantly, a participatory planning process engages an institution’s most important stakeholders in crafting a shared future vision that will inform every stage of potential building projects.
Using case studies from small to mid-sized museums and from professional experience as strategic planners and architects, workshop facilitators will walk participants through all stages of a capital project strategic planning process, from initial feasibility and ideation through deep stakeholder engagement to identify key decision-points around concepts and key assets that will lead to a compelling vision and successful case for support and generate momentum toward funding and ultimately realizing a new building project.
The workshop will model a strategic planning process for the Mummers Museum to demonstrate the different directions a comprehensive and inclusive approach to planning can take an institution. At the same time, workshop participants will be asked to reflect on their own institutions and will come away with a sketch of a strategic planning process targeted toward their unique situation.
Learning Objectives
- Define strategic institutional goals; identify key personnel; discuss listening and visioning processes with stakeholders; establish initiatives to meet institutional goals
- Understand current funds and income available; identify additional sources of funds, consider market analysis; plan to accurately estimate future capacity; plan and implement a capital campaign
- Connect with potential users to identify program functions of the new facilities necessary to achieve institutional goals; plan for space needs of program function; evaluate what scale of capital project can meet program and budget.
- Identify additional expertise needed; define roles of strategic planner, architect, exhibit designer, other specialty consultants; plan scenarios for different sequences and combinations of consultants
