Sandy Spring Museum

The Sandy Spring Museum will pilot The Barter Economy: A New Museum Membership program based on the concept that there are professional services of value to museums that can be bartered in exchange for membership benefits. Small museums, in particular, often have limited resources to access professional services in their community. This project will test a new membership model with the potential to build a greater sense of ownership within a museum's community while building deeper relationships between the museum and its constituents. The program will be designed to create a win-win scenario wherein the museum benefits from professional services or goods and the barterers receive something that is of value to them but results in no direct cost to the museum. The structure, tools, and lessons learned from piloting this membership model will be shared widely within the museum community.