Getting to grips with economic impact

05/07/2018 Devon McHugh

We know that many museums are having to measure their economic impact to report to their stakeholders. If this isn’t something you have done before it can be a daunting prospect. Luckily, there’s no need to worry, MGS can help!

Heather, Batman, and Robin are speeding along to save the day, with awesome guidance on measuring economic impact.

We have an economic impact toolkit on our website available for museums to download for free. The toolkit has been available for a while, but we have just added some additional guidance information to help make using the toolkit as straightforward as possible. You can access all of this on the Measuring Economic Impact page of our website.

We’ve also got support material on raising your profile and how to use the sort of information you get from completing the toolkit. Take a look at our Advocacy pages for tips and ideas.

It’s really not necessary to be an expert in economic impact to use the toolkit. We commissioned Wavehill to work with museums to produce case studies of their experiences of using the ALMA UK economic impact toolkit and to provide support, where appropriate, for case study museums in using the toolkit. East Lothian Council and ANGUSAlive’s Kirriemuir Gateway to the Glens took up this opportunity. Below is a taster of their experiences; you can find the full (short!) case studies on the Measuring Economic Impact page of our website..

Mr & Mrs Barry are having a good time: after you gather some of your figures for measuring impact, explore the East Lothian image collection…

Sheila Sim, a part-time Visitor Services Officer at East Lothian Council, got in touch with Wavehill in the summer of 2017 with a view to using the economic impact toolkit to measure the economic value of activity within the six museums operated by the authority through their Museums Service. When first accessing the toolkit, Sheila described the system as ‘not particularly off-putting or complex.’ This, Sheila stated, was because ‘the challenge was more about sourcing and disaggregating our own data on organisational costs’; otherwise, she felt that the toolkit looked ‘as user-friendly as possible’.

For those about to measure your economic impact: we salute you. (Bon Scott was born in Kirriemuir)

In June 2017, museum officer Rachel Jackson first expressed interest in using the using the economic impact toolkit to measure the economic value of activity at the Kirriemuir Gateway to the Glens Museum. It was the intention that ANGUSAlive would trial using the economic toolkit at this specific site before adopting it at its other four museums.

For Rachel, ‘the guidance itself was really helpful and clear once you got going… the elements which focused our staff on understanding the different areas and looking further afield were really good and interesting to think about.’

So… have we convinced you to give it a try yet?

You can download the full case studies and all the material you need to get started from our website.

We hope this blog post has encouraged you to take the plunge and check out our economic impact resources. Watch this space for more support materials on impact coming soon! If you want to chat this over, or to know more about how you can measure the impact of your museum in order to advocate more effectively, please get in touch with Heather or Devon.