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  • 1.  What museum CRM, membership, donation software do you use?

    Posted 03-13-2018 12:02 PM

    I'm with the Museum of Art and Design @ Miami Dade College in Miami. We are reopening soon after more than a year of renovations and will emerge with a new identity, mission, etc.

    We are looking for a software package to manage:

    -- a brand new membership system (never had memberships available before)
    -- ticketing RSVPs and sales (online and in our lobby)
    -- donations (and the ability to direct funds to two separate accounts, charitable and revenue)
    -- integration with email system (MailChimp)
    -- CRM

    What system(s) does your museum use and what has your experience been? We want to make the correct choice now before we get too tangled up in a system. Any suggestions or advice are welcome.

    Thank you!



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    Bruce Williams
    Miami FL
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    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more


  • 2.  RE: What museum CRM, membership, donation software do you use?

    Posted 03-14-2018 09:04 AM
    Hi Bruce, 

    Congratulations on your re-opening! 

    Here at HistoryMiami, we use Altru, a sister-system of Raiser's Edge. It's cloud based, very easy to navigate, and covers all of the needs you mentioned below. We really like it!

    At my past gig, Miami City Ballet, we used Tessitura. That is a much larger, more complex system, but it is excellent for ticketing and fundraising processing. 

    It all comes down to your budget and staff size with regard to managing the system. I hope this helps, and maybe we will run into each other soon!

    Best, 
    Melissa

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    Melissa Rosko
    Grant writer
    HistoryMiami
    Miami FL
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    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more


  • 3.  RE: What museum CRM, membership, donation software do you use?

    Posted 03-14-2018 12:28 PM
    Hola Melissa! Yes, would love to meet sometime. Once the dust settles here I'd like to start up a Meetup group of local museum peeps so we can all exchange ideas and help each other out.

    Thanks for the Altru info ... We use a Raiser's Edge license through MDC but it's not suited for what we need. Looks like Altru (same company) and some add-ons are where we're headed. We've hard great things about it.

    Full disclosure, this is Scott T. Smith, marketing and membership coordinator for MOAD. Bruce loaned me his AAM login so I could ask about SAAS options for us. 

    Thanks for the reply!
    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more


  • 4.  RE: What museum CRM, membership, donation software do you use?

    Posted 03-15-2018 04:54 PM
    Hi Bruce, 

    I second Altru! We use it here at the Missouri Historical Society and will be even running our gift shop sales through the system later this year. It is pricey, but I would also say I'd worth it. Being able to accessibility for offsite programs is priceless. My only qualm is that online sales aren't automatically tagged with an appeal code and that makes it hard to report on those sales.

    Best, 
    Nicole

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    Nicole Smith
    Missouri History Museum
    Membership Coordinator
    nicole.m.smith.1985@gmail.com
    (314) 746-4599
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    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more


  • 5.  RE: What museum CRM, membership, donation software do you use?

    Posted 03-16-2018 11:01 AM
    Does anyone use Salesforce for this?


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    Sally Yerkovich PhD
    Director of Special Projects
    The American-Scandinavian Foundation
    New York NYDirector of Special Projects
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    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more


  • 6.  RE: What museum CRM, membership, donation software do you use?

    Posted 03-19-2018 11:34 AM
    Perhaps it's a tangent as retail doesn't seem the main focus of thread, tho initiator did have ticket sales in the original ask, but here's a link to a very good piece describing an online shop redesign at a moving image museum that used off-the-shelf Shopify for their tickets and merch sales. The related Museums and the Web presentation was excellent. Maybe some useful lessons here?

    How to build a museum online shop in four weeks - ACMI LABS
    ACMI LABS remove preview
    How to build a museum online shop in four weeks - ACMI LABS
    1. Choose a platform After initial high level discussions, we eliminated building an online shop ourselves and compared two major ecommerce platforms to assess suitability for use across ACMI retail both now and in the future -  Shopify and Big Commerce.
    View this on ACMI LABS >

    for what it's worth,
    joseph

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    Joseph N. Newland
    Director of Publishing
    The Menil Collection
    Houston TX
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    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more


  • 7.  RE: What museum CRM, membership, donation software do you use?

    Posted 03-20-2018 08:26 AM
    Two years ago, we went through a selction process for CRM software. We'd had separate ticketing, membership and donation, education, and retail systems. There was a lengthy process of developing criteria, coming up with "use cases" where we asked the sales reps how the system would handle different scenarios, and involving end users from each area. It was a great process. We considered Salesforce, but they did not have a ticketing option robust enough for our sales at multiple sites. We ended up with Tessitura, ehich has been a good solution for membership, development, and ticket sales. We haven't integrated retail yet, and our one education sales office that used Salesforce still uses it. But overall, it is amstep in the right direction.

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    Jill Rudnitski
    Chief Development Officer
    Minnesota Historical Society
    Saint Paul MN
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    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more


  • 8.  RE: What museum CRM, membership, donation software do you use?

    Posted 03-21-2018 10:46 AM
    ​Hi Bruce,

    I work at Vizcaya where we use Altru. I only started here a few months ago, coming from a museum where our visitation was about 85,000/yr and we used Tessitura. I could never recommend Altru to anyone, because of the issues I've had to deal with at Vizcaya. I realize it may be a better POS system for smaller institutions, and our Advancement department loves it- but every other department (finance, membership, collections, and admissions, etc) has had major problems and complications with it. If you want to integrate Altru into other areas of your museum, I would strongly recommend against it. We talked to PAMM who expressed very similar complaints. Let me know if you'd like to talk over the phone or email to go into more detail about it.

    Katie

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    Kathryn Kapczynski
    Visitor Services Manager
    Vizcaya Museum & Gardens
    Washington DC
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    AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, Baltimore, May 16-19, 2024, click to learn more