Historical Commission Agenda and Packet 2016 05 04

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• Whether it makes sense for the Louisville Historical Museum to start to charge an admission fee for visitors to access some buildings on the Museum campus after the hoped -for campus changes are made, or what the admission fee would be, is a decision for the City to make in the future. Up to this point, staff had envisioned continuing the practice of not charging an admission fee so as to welcome and encourage as much participation by the public in the Museum as possible, particularly with respect to 1) the desire to strengthen downtown and 2) the recommendation by the Needs Assessment consultant that the Museum encourage visitors to come to the Museum to share their stories. In fact, the Interpretive Theme Statement in the Interpretive Plan draft that the Commission and Foundation have reviewed was written to state: "The Louisville Historical Museum brings together people to share stories about Louisville." The City may decide that there are compelling reasons for our public Museum, like the Public Library that is the other division in the Department of Library & Museum Services, to not charge an admission fee. • Similarly, no decision has been made with respect to whether the Museum should charge for either school tours of the Museum or Museum outreach into local schools. At this time, the Museum does not charge schools a fee for either activity because of the educational mission being an important foundation of the Museum's activities. • The Business Plan includes a recommendation to generate funding of about $5000 per year by having a museum store, as many museums have. Reasons why this may not be the best course of action for our Museum include 1) the lack of adequate space to have a store that would generate significant funding (and the necessity of giving up something else that is greatly needed at the Museum, such as meeting space, exhibit space, or staff /volunteer work space, in order to create such an area of a minimum of about 400 square feet) and 2) the possible desire to avoid the appearance of competition with nearby downtown businesses selling similar items. • The Business Plan envisions a much larger role for the Foundation and recommends that the Foundation not only raise funds to assist with the specific capital project outlined in the Museum Needs Assessment Report, which the Foundation directors have already anticipated working on, but also that the Foundation would be heavily involved in significant fundraising to help the City pay for ongoing Museum operational costs for the foreseeable future. The Business Plan is relatively conservative with respect to the levels of operational funding that would be provided by the City. Whether (and if so, to what extent) the City would want to rely on a 501c3 to become heavily involved in fundraising for City operational costs has not been decided. It does seem necessary for the Foundation role in fundraising to become larger. How can the City ensure that private citizens will want to and be able to grow the Foundation's role in fundraising as well as sustain a level of increased fundraising for operations? If it can't be sustained, what does that mean for the City -owned Museum's operations and the communities it serves? 2