The theme of this year’s conference is “innovation”.  This week’s article covers an important area of innovation for JMM in the coming year:  marketing.  We are providing excerpts from a new marketing plan recently presented to the Board’s marketing committee.

Make sure to mark your calendars for Sunday June 9^th at 4pm for our Annual Meeting! This year’s feature speaker will be Dr. Philip M. Katz from the American Alliance of Museums. Dr. Katz is the Assistant Director of Research and will be speaking about the future of Museums. We will also elect a new President of the Board. This event is free and open to all; we hope to see you there!

Marketing and the JMM Mission and Vision

In the 2012 Futures Committee Report the rationale for the JMM mission is described in part as:

Strengthening Jewish identity by connecting visitors and members to the shared memories of our people, giving them a framework in which to better understand and expand their own connections to Jewish life.

Enhancing connections between the Jewish community and members of the general community by telling the story of Jewish life in Baltimore and Maryland in an accessible and compelling way, with special emphasis on the Jewish dimensions of, and involvement with, broader issues of the day and events of the past.

This rationale forms the basis of the first plank of our marketing plan:

1. It is our goal to attract both the Jewish community and the non-Jewish community to the exhibits, programs and events of the Jewish Museum of Maryland.  Our target is to increase our market share in three critical populations:  school visits, Baltimore tourism, and repeat visits from local audiences.

The report later defines four key elements of our future vision for the museum.  The first among these elements is a commitment to make our downtown campus a public destination.  This leads to the second plank of our marketing plan.

2. It is our goal to increase attendance at the Herbert Bearman Campus and through increased attendance, grow our membership.  Our target is to double attendance in three years and produce 50% growth in membership in that same span.

The report also speaks to the need for greater “visibility”, not only because of its impact on attendance but due as well to its positive effect on fundraising.  Media presence provides direct benefits to donors in terms of recognition and indirect benefits in terms of association with a high profile institution.  This leads to the third plank of our plan.

3. It is our goal to make JMM more visible – in our neighborhood, in traditional media and in social media.  Our target is to enter the “awareness set” of segments of the population that have not heard of the Museum and to increase our presence in sectors of the media important to our supporters.

These three planks are the basis for choices we need to make about marketing priorities.  Those priorities are further shaped by demographic changes and financial constraints.

Initial Marketing Strategies

We are promoting two core products under the common brand of the Jewish Museum of Maryland:

- a daytime experience that is family-friendly, discovery-centered, and easily identified as appealing to a diverse audience;

- an evening experience that is oriented towards millennials and boomers, is positioned as hip, cool and thoroughly Baltimore.

We will maximize the use of free media in promoting both products.  We will concentrate limited program resources on innovative events (e.g. Gefiltefest, Clark Kent’s Bar Mitvah Party) that are likely to generate press.

For the daytime experience – our promotion to the tourist audience will put greater emphasis on our iconic synagogues and the “only in Baltimore” aspect of what we offer; the message directed at the local market will put greater emphasis on the current temporary exhibit and the “see it now” aspect of our offerings.

We will increase the frequency of our online communication, shorter messages – more often.  We will add links to our blog posts and newsletters to try to get higher return on the materials we already prepare.

We will focus on models of school partnership and relationship building.  Continue to seek financial support for busses.  Long-term relationships involving multiple classes in the same school are the most effective over time.

We will continue the effort to make JMM physically visible through the use of street signs and banners – continue to reach out to Little Italy, the neighboring delis and the Lewis Museum to generate more street traffic among our sites.

We are confident that our new efforts will sustain and accelerate our recent success in growing participation in JMM.  We will keep you posted on our progress.

Date run in Baltimore Jewish Times:  March 1, 2013

PastPerfect Accession #:  1992.108.017

Status:  Partially identified! Do you know any of these Isaac Davidson folks? Back Row Left to Right: 1. Unidentified 2. Thomas Lipnick 3. Unidentified Front Row Left to Right: 1. Unidentified 2.Louis Klein 3. Benjamin Bloom

In honor of Mother’s Day, I decided to take a trip through our collections to see what kinds of things I could find that related to the topic of mothers. I started by typing in the word “mother” into our collections database. 1,087 records appeared. And with that I was off and running as I pulled up record after record of objects, photographs, and archival documents that captured an array of fascinating stories.

So what wonderful treasurers did I unearth? Many letters written from family members (usually sons) documenting travels and other important news such as engagements and births. I found one letter from “Mosie” (Moses Rosenfeld) to his mother written in July 26, 1899 (1968.22.13) and postcards from artist Reuben Kramer sent to his mother while he was traveling in Greece (1994.84.224). Some letters document sadder occasions reflected in one (1963.43.3) sent to Jacob Moses in October 1921 from the Keren Hayosod Committee offering condolences on the loss of his mother.

Mothers also show up in our art collection as the artist’s subject including works by noted Baltimore artist, Herman Maril. One painting, “My Mother’s Bread” (1955) (1989.125.1) depicts a glass of wine and loaf of challah. Another work, an ink drawing “Mistress of the House,” (1992.279.1) is of his mother Cecilia Maril Baker.  Clearly his mother was influential in his life!

[photo of lithograph – 1975.022.002 - My search also turned up a beautiful lithograph that was used as an advertisement for Vienna Yeast from around 1897 and shows a mother, father, and son gathered around the Shabbat table.]

Looking through the object records, I found many artifacts that paint a story of women’s domestic life in the early 20^th century including sewing machines, dishes, and silver. They also reflect the importance of objects owned by mothers as family heirlooms such as the silver Kiddush cup brought to the US that belonged to her mother by Rose Goldberg after World War II (1988.77.1). One of the more poignant items in our collection is a tombstone from Russia and dates to around 1910 that has this inscription, “In memory of dear mother, Mrs. Yutta, daughter of Reb Pinchas Kashan, passed away on the 18^th of Elul, 5667 (August 28, 1907). I’d love to learn more about the journey of this object from a western Russian cemetery to the JMM’s storage room!

Much of my time, of course, was spent looking through our photograph collection. Here are some of my favorites:

1985.046.003 – Two women standing in front of cherry blossoms in Druid Hill Park, 1953 with the inscription “mother and Irene”

1987.019.038 – Phil and Ralph Levin standing with their mother

1988.075.009 – the Katz Family – mother is on the far right

1988.12.9 – I love this photo – Miriam Rothschild her daughter Edith on a ship wearing pirate costumes

By the time I had finished (and I have to confess that I did not actually have the time to look through all 1,087 records), I felt as though I had come away with a crash course on the impact of women in the lives of Maryland Jews spanning a course of two centuries and running the gamut from birth to death. Plus a much better understanding of the breadth and variety of our collections!

To learn more about our collections, feel free to check out our free on-line database!

So to all the mothers out there, I hope you have a wonderful Mother’s Day!

The first step in improving performance is measuring progress.  In this month’s edition of Performance Counts, Abby and Ilene talk about the processes we use to keep and analyze data on both our general visitors and our school groups.

Audience Tracking

Abby Krolik, Visitor Services Coordinator

We are delighted to report that visitation to the JMM has increased by more than 38% in the past few months (in comparison of a 14 week span, January- mid-April, to the same time period last year). In an effort to learn more about our visitors, in the past few months we have made a concerted effort to gather specific data about each individual who walk through our doors. We track information about our visitors in several ways. For walk-in visitors, that process begins at the door, where our front desk receptionist records in the admission log how many adults, seniors, children, etc. come in and at what time of day. We also use that first interaction with visitors at the front desk to ask them where they are from and how they heard about the museum. At the end of each month, I go through the daily attendance logs and tally how many visitors we had in total, and how the attendance statistics break down (member vs. non-member / senior vs. adult vs. child vs. student / how many guest passes were used for admission, etc.) I also am able to report where our visitors are from by tallying up zip codes and states as well as the many different factors that influenced their decision to visit the JMM.

It has been fascinating learning about the reasons why people visit the JMM. Comments include “relative of someone who worshipped at Lloyd St. Synagogue or B’nai Israel Synagogue,” or “Lives/used to live in the neighborhood and always wanted to visit the museum.” Mostly, however, the responses to “How did you hear about the JMM?” involve more expected sources, such as Google searches, listings and ads in local publications or information provided to tourists, and the Groupon and Living Social promotions we recently offered. Collecting this information is important for several reasons, especially in terms of helping us figure out which marketing strategies are the most effective. This data also helps inform program development as it helps us learn about what types of audiences we are already reaching and which groups require new marketing strategies.

Gathering and calculating visitor information for scheduled groups works a little differently. Generally, we have an idea of how many people to expect from because the groups’ organizers give us a headcount in advance. However, inevitably, the actual number of people who arrive on the day of the tour is somewhat different from the expected number. For that reason, we make sure to count how many are actually present on the tour and write it down in the admission log. We also distribute a brief evaluation form to teachers to fill out while they are at the museum with their school groups, so that we can collect accurate information about the group (are they a Title I school? Which school district are they from?), as well as receive immediate feedback on our own performance. All of this information is also totaled at the end of each month, along with the information about our walk-in visitors, program attendance, and outreach numbers. Gathering accurate information about our visitors and analyzing this data to discern specific trends about visitation to the JMM enables our staff to measure our success in fulfilling our mission. This information also helps us in our efforts to secure grant funding that, in turn, provides us with the necessary support to implement programs and exhibits that continue to draw in new audiences.

Tracking Success Through Our Educational Programs

Ilene Dackman-Alon, Director of Education

The JMM’s educational enrichment programs offer students and teachers the chance to participate in hands-on active discovery and experiential learning activities that they would otherwise not be exposed to in their classrooms.  The Museum’s education programs align with the Maryland State’s curriculum in social studies and English language arts goals and standards for students and teachers in grades K-12. The Museum closely tracks the annual attendance of students, parents and teachers taking part in our education programs both on and off-site.  Our staff compiles reports that break down the visitation by grade level and school district.  These reports serve as useful tools for learning the extent to which our educational resources are utilized.  We also monitor which schools schedule repeat visits from year to year, another indicator of the positive impact of our school services.

The Museum performs evaluation based on outcome. The evaluation process is critical for Museum professionals and educators in order to evaluate the value of the Museum environment as a place of productive learning. We are specifically concerned that our school visitors gain a basic knowledge of fundamental Jewish traditions and values, a grounding in how Jewish history has evolved in the State of Maryland, and an appreciation of a minority experience within a multicultural context.

Systematic evaluation – a key component of all Museum programs, ensures that these outcomes are achieved.  JMM staff solicits evaluation forms from all teachers who participate in on- and off-site programs.  These evaluation forms provide critical feedback about the quality of the program, how well they align with curricular standards, and whether or not the programs meet intended objectives.  The JMM staff also observes programs to evaluate their effectiveness.   Programs are regularly refined based on the content of these evaluations and observations.

We are fortunate to receive grant support for many of our educational initiatives and we are committed to providing all donors with timely reports that summarize our progress on specific projects as well as evaluation data that we have gathered from surveys and meetings with teachers. We are proud to report on each year’s accomplishments as well as the lessons we have learned while implementing each initiative and how we plan on using evaluation results to improve our performance in the upcoming year.

We are pleased to report on just a few measures of success from this past year:

• We have served 600 more students and teachers through on-site school visits in comparison to a similar time period from last year (July 1-April 30).
• Our education staff has developed new educational resources and activities in connection with the exhibits, Zap, Pow Bam and The Synagogue Speaks!
• Our partnership initiative with Baltimore City schools continues to grow – we have added two new schools this year: Patterson Park Charter School and City Springs Elementary/Middle School.
• We have also developed a partnership with the Reginald F. Lewis Museum to provide joint field trip opportunities for visiting school groups.

We look forward to continue our efforts at tracking and reporting on future success of our educational programs.

Date run in Baltimore Jewish Times:  Fabruary 23, 2013

PastPerfect Accession #:  1991.065.046

Status:  Unidentified – do you know them?