| The Matagorda
County Museum tells the story of early settlements, industry,
and the cultural history of the county. In addition to serving
as a repository for historical artifacts, documents, and
photographs, the museum features outstanding permanent and
changing exhibitions in art, history, natural history, and
science. The Matagorda County Museum also hosts the widely-popular
“Our Town,” a fully recreated Texas town at
the turn of the nineteenth century designed just for children.
Year 1 | Year
2 | Year 3| Year 4
Click image for slideshow
Year
1:
Rags to Riches: Handcrafted
Rugs
Goals:
Using a focus on volunteerism, the Matagorda County Museum
developed several goals. First, they aimed to devise a plan
to encourage volunteers to become more involved in the program
and events sponsored by the museum. Further, using volunteer
expertise, the museum hoped to develop public relations
materials to promote the exhibition (and to use as a model
for future PR campaigns). Finally, the museum sought to
develop curriculum materials to supplement the school tour
experience and to recruit a core group of school tour guides.
Accomplishments:
A volunteer appreciation luncheon was hosted by the museum,
and the museum’s director applauded her volunteers
for their past service and introduced her plans for projects
that needed volunteer involvement. The museum also sponsored
a trip for volunteers to the Houston Museum of Natural Science,
thereby building a sense of camaraderie among the group.
In addition, as part of a volunteer preview event, a rug-hooking
expert did a demonstration; the preview and demonstration
were so successful that this program will become part of
the museum’s ongoing events in the future.
The director recruited members of a local quilting guild
to act as docents for Rags to Riches and sent flyers about
the exhibition to various special interest groups. A retired
schoolteacher volunteer developed pre- and post-visit materials
for school groups. The director utilized local newspapers
and school newsletters to recruit new volunteers for school
tour guides. A display of eight rugs handcrafted by local
rugmakers augmented the exhibition.
Improvements:
-
Articulation of specific volunteer job positions
-
New volunteer orientation materials
-
Revised recruitment and retention activities for museum
volunteers
-
Hosting volunteer appreciation events such as luncheons,
day trips, and preview events
Goals for Year 2: This Contest Is for
Real Hands: Rodeo Photographs of the 1930s
With its technical assistance emphasis on marketing, the
Matagorda County Museum has set forth several goals for
Year Two of HELP. They hope to create a Web page for the
museum that is in-depth and has some interactive features.
They are focusing their marketing efforts on targeting specific
groups for specific exhibitions or activities, and they
are working on specifically targeting the Houston metropolitan
area in regard to advertising their Children’s Museum.
Finally, they will reorganize their membership drive to
occur on an annual basis and follow up with all museum visitors
to solicit for memberships.
Year 2:
This Contest Is for
Real Hands: Rodeo Photographs of the 1930s
Goals:
Sarah Higgins took over the director position at
the Matagorda County Museum at the beginning of the second
year of HELP. At this time they were preparing for the opening
of the La Belle exhibition, as the museum was chosen to
be one of seven museums to exhibit the “La Salle Odyssey.”
Their marketing and PR goals were drafted mainly with this
exhibition in mind. Some of the museum’s goals were
to create and always have on hand a press kit on the La
Belle exhibition, to expand their audience and attract visitors
from Houston by purchasing a highway billboard, to update
their Web site, and to create new brochures for the museum
building and children’s museum. They also tried, for
the first time, joint marketing with the Texas Settlement
Region, the area’s regional tourism marketing council.
By better promoting their permanent exhibits, the museum
hopes to bring some of the parents of the children’s
museum visitors upstairs into the county history museum.
Accomplishments:
Sarah has been very proactive about making positive
changes to the museum under her tenure. She was able to
meet a number of her goals, and the museum’s marketing
strategies were so effective that they even attracted the
attention of the Los Angeles Times. They were also featured
in the Texas Historical Commission’s archaeology month
brochure. In an attempt to increase visitation to the museum,
they purchased on-screen advertising in local movie theatres
and in those in nearby communities. This so impressed their
Gulf Coast peer museums that some of them have decided to
try this type of advertising for themselves.
Improvements:
Hosted an opening reception attended by over 400
people Produced three new brochures for the museum Increased museum membership by 40 people
Goals for Year 3: Apron Strings: Ties to the
Past
In year three of HELP, the Matagorda County
Museum will focus on exhibition design with Kit Neumann.
Concerned about the flow of traffic from the front door
through the museum, as well as outdated exhibitions, the
museum plans to redirect traffic and redesign the space
around their front desk and lobby areas. They also plan
to update older exhibitions by adding color and using new
display techniques. Other goals for year three are to create
small, offsite exhibits and host an opening brunch.
Year 3:
Apron Strings: Ties to the Past
Goals:
As the Matagorda County Museum entered the third year
of Texas HELP, they worked with consultant Kit Neumann
on their next area of training, exhibition design. They
came up with solid design goals and several means of achieving
them. Director Sarah Higgins wanted to focus on creating
a dynamic display of the Apron Strings exhibition. She
made a list of the ways in which this would be possible
including creating small vignettes, enhancing the exhibition
with community related objects, including three dimensional
artifacts from the museum’s collection, and improving
lighting in the gallery. Their second goal was to improve
traffic flow into the museum and to redirect visitors once
they walk through the front doors. Also on their list is
updating old permanent exhibitions.
Accomplishments:
To create visual interest in a large space, Sarah set
up vignettes of different ways in which aprons are used.
She used items from their permanent collection to set up
scenes of wash day, a back yard bbq, sewing, ironing and
a kitchen scene, just to name a few. She displayed the
aprons on silhouettes cut from a 1950’s dress form.
The vignettes were then separated from each other by hanging
fabric from the ceiling behind each scene. The black plastic
used to cut the dress forms from was sold to the museum
at cost by a local business.
Improvements:
Hosted an opening brunch, attended by 75 people Collected 150 aprons from the community to add to the exhibition Advertised
the exhibition at local banks, the library and chamber of
commerce by displaying aprons on dress forms -
Increased average
September attendance
Goals for Year 4: El Caballo: The Horse in Mexican
Folk Art
In the final year of Texas HELP, the Matagorda County Museum
will shift its training focus to fundraising and development
with consultant Scott Cooksey. They have set very ambitious
fundraising goals that will hopefully begin correcting
the environmental issues with their building. They would
like to raise $250,000 for window and roof replacement
and will approach local community foundations for help.
They also intend to develop a master fundraising plan for
the museum including a capital campaign to build an addition
onto the existing building. Also on their list is increasing
their endowment through planned giving and holding one
or two annual fundraisers to increase their annual operating
funds.
Year 4
El Caballo: The Horse in Mexican Folk Art
Goals:
In the last year of Texas HELP, the Matagorda County Museum
focused their attention on fundraising and development.
Director Sarah Higgins set ambitious, yet measurable
goals, for the museum. Her number one goal was to kickoff
the museum’s capital campaign. Her hope was to raise
$500,000 for capital improvements to their building. They
devised a number strategies to meet this goal including
encouraging 100% board participation in the campaign, asking
the Matagorda
County Commissioners for matching funds, writing grant
proposals totaling $500,000 and holding a dinner party
for potential large donors. They also made plans to begin
holding two fundraisers per year to help cover the museum’s
annual operating expenses. The final goal was to increase
their endowment by ten percent each year.
Accomplishments:
The museum was enormously successful in its fundraising
endeavors. They borrowed an idea from the Wharton County
Museum and started their first "Gourmet Guys" fundraising
event. Local men volunteered their time to cook and serve
a dinner at the museum and they exceeded their goal, raising
$12,000.
They made great progress on their capital campaign
as well. Through a major donor and a matching fund campaign
that was negotiated with the Economic Development Board,
they’ve raised $250,000 to date. Sarah plans to increase
this amount by approaching a few select couples to host
fundraisers in their homes.
They also tried out a new fundraising
idea, the "phantom ball." Sarah sent out invitations
asking people to donate what they would have spent on a
tux, tickets, dinner, etc. for a fancy night out, in lieu
of actually hosting the event The "event" met
with some success as $3,000 was raised without much staff
effort.
The museum hosted the exhibition El Caballo in
early May, and they were able to celebrate Cinco de Mayo
in conjunction
with the opening.
Improvements
Raised $12,000 through the “Gourmet Guys” fundraiser
Hosted a “phantom ball,” raising an additional
$3,000
Hosted the exhibition El Caballo: the Horse in Mexican
Folk Art and used the exhibition to springboard a Cinco
de Mayo celebration
Attracted people from the community who were not usually
involved with the museum, through their HELP exhibition
100% of board members contributed to the museum’s
capital campaign
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