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In prehistoric times, i.e., 1978, a dozen San Francisco Bay Area
planetariums involuntarily ran an experiment and found out what happened
when we started charging fees for previously no-cost programs.  Our
findings supported Kathy Patterson's observation.

The instigation of the experiment was the passage of Proposition 13 in
1978.  That caused the beginning of a drastic decline in property tax
revenues, and local governments throughout the state reacted by
immediately cutting "optional" services.  At the time there were over a
dozen planetariums in the San Francisco Bay area, and we were a collegial
group with a shared PR service.  Most of us charged no admission until
Prop 13, at which time essentially all of us had to begin charging
admission.  We tracked attendance throughout this period.

The results:  attendance stayed about the same or went up, and stayed that
way for years.  We came to the same conclusion Kathy did:  many people
decide that if something is being given away "free" (even knowing in the
back of the mind that they paid for that service in their taxes), it must
not be very valuable.  Charging a reasonable fee demonstrated that the
planetariums throught their services were worth something, and so they
must be worth more than if they had been free.

But please note Elaine Heumann Gurian's analysis and plea in her famous
2005 Museum News essay, "Free at Last."  Not everybody can afford to pay
market rates, and many bad things happen when cultural institutions charge
ever higher admissions.  Not only are many people unable to pay that
admission, but the relationship between the institution and the public is
changed in deep ways.  There are reasons, Elaine argues, why most public
libraries are held in higher regard than most public museums, and the
tradition of free admission to libraries is one of those reasons.

________________________________________
Alan J. Friedman, Ph.D.
Consultant for Museum Development and Science Communication
29 West 10th Street
New York, New York 10011 USA
T  +1 917 882-6671
E   [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
W www.FriedmanConsults.com <http://www.friedmanconsults.com/>
 
a member of The Museum Group
www.museumgroup.com <http://www.museumgroup.com/>






On 12/21/12 12:00 AM, "ISEN-ASTC-L automatic digest system"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Date:    Thu, 20 Dec 2012 08:58:09 -0500
>From:    Giftshop <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: charging fees for previously no-cost programs
>
>ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
>Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
>institutions.
>**************************************************************************
>***
>
>I have found that sometimes free programs are not respected as much and
>charging a nominal fee give the program "value" and reduces no shows.
>
>Kathy Patterson
>Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
>
>***********************************************************************

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