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Promotional Ideas
Using the North American Reciprocal Museum (NARM) as a starting point, the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) created opportunities to expand access and highlight how membership can be a GATEWAY to exploring cultural horizons on a national scale!
The Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) in San Diego launched the "Pay What You Wish" admission program in 2015. Launching "Pay What You Wish" MOPA increased the number of visitors to MOPA, however, with the new admission platform they wanted to be sure to continue providing members with valuable benefits. Maryam Anbariwe, Development and Events Coordinator at MOPA, states:
"We asked ourselves, how do we continue to provide meaningful benefits without relying on the “free member admission” perk?
CULTURE treks – Experience-driven
With every challenge comes a chance to make something better, and with that mentality, MOPA’s development team created periodic CULTURE treks! These are low to no-cost excursions to neighboring institutions, cities, and beyond that provide experiences for members of every level and keep them actively engaged in MOPA all year round. By having the NARM reciprocal program as a key to our travel program we have transformed our membership into an all- access ticket to experiencing culture beyond our museum’s walls! CULTURE treks have become a standard membership perk for us.
FACEBOOK group – Communication-driven
We understand that communication is essential to creating and strengthening relationships. Recently we created a platform for continuing the conversation in between NARM reciprocal CULTURE treks with our MOPA Member Facebook Group. This way we can encourage real dialogue that not only reinforces friendships but builds real-time communication around events and activities which serves to identify what our member’s value throughout the year. We encourage our members to post their favorite photos of their excursions, let us know which NARM reciprocal museum they want to visit next, and encourage our members to discuss our own exhibitions. The MOPA members only FACEBOOK group is an amazing tool that gives our local to non-local members a wide platform to communicate with us and one other.
Highlighting NARM benefits to increase the popularity of our CULTURE treks and engaging our members with continued communication on our FACEBOOK group has given MOPA the ability to enhance the spirit of our membership program by providing diverse cultural enrichment opportunities with a new network of friends on a national scale."
Photo by Kevin Linde, Adult Programs, MOPA Manager