Santa Cruz Children’s Museum of Discovery
Board meeting minutes 7/16/13
4450 Capitola Rd., Capitola, CA
Attending: Cynthia Sloane, Patrice Keet, Bonnie Keet, Paula Suzuki, Matt
McDowell, Jennalee Dahlen, Quinn Jemison
Guests: Eric Schmidt
Angelo DeBernardo
Julie DeBernardo
Bob Keet
Staff: Lauren Bryant
Meeting commenced at 6:00 PM
Introductions
Update on Board Composition:
Patrice discussed board development and the evolution process by which a
Board changes. We talked about our founder board members who have
moved to different roles within the museum or in life. We are in the active
recruitment process, looking for the best fit and making a matrix of what
skills are needed. We will send out the board recruitment matrix.
Feasibility Study:
MSP – Suzuki/Dahlen :to hire a Feasibility consultant.
A robust discussion was held including the value and necessity of moving to
the next level of planning for our fundraising efforts and general museum
planning. And where the money for the study will come from. The Board
was reminded that we have pledges from our Board of nearly 80K. we will
also be looking for grants to fund the study and possibly creating a matching
grant of our own. The process is generally as follows: Hire a consultant, give
them names, they have names, they interview them and get a one-personremoved idea of how the community likes the idea, how supportive they will
be of the idea. They come up with an idea of how much money we can raise
for the project. This will legitimize us, give us a seal of endorsement.
Our consultant, Paul Orselli, suggests we do a feasibility study
The feasibility study will be a maximum of 40K.
MSP- Suzuki/Sloan to make a determination on which consultant we will
use for the study within a month.
Questions on feasibility study:
Feasibility Study Committee: Eric Schmidt, Patrice Keet will investigate
consultants and report back to the Board most likely by email.
We introduced Lauren Bryant, our intern from Johns Hopkins. 20 to 30
hours a week on the museum. Majored in creative writing, museum
history. Welcome to this great asset.
A discussion was held regarding our strategic plan around the timing of
money, feasibility study. Are we ready to present ourselves to the
community.? We are confident that our feasibility consultant will help us
answer some of these important questions.
Bonnie updated the committee on marketing/PR/outreach:
We had a presence at the Wed. SC Farmer’s Market on June 12 and it was a
success. Thank you to Bonnie and Cari Chadwick for their efforts on this.
Press Releases were put out regarding:
a) Receiving our non-profit status
b) Our consultant, Paul Orselli’s visit.
c) Community Survey
Jennnalee Dahlen described our Children’s Advisory Board and the
successful event that brought together 28 children and their parents for an
introductory event at the Hotel Paradox. Children’s Advisory Board is a
board of children where we can test exhibits/ components, ask
questions of children ages 6-14. Committee has been meeting
regularly. They did three different activities: clay, pipecleaners, writing
(what’s fun in a museum?)The children loved the experience and the
parents are supporters of MOD. It was suggested that we ask those parents
to go to our website and sign up as supporters so we capture their talents.
Jennalee will keep us posted on the next activity with this group.
Marketing: Bonnie talked about the need for us to develop a “Pitch
packet” to take to possible funders and supporters. Our Marketing
Committee will be working on this with Patrice to capture our past work
on this and create an engaging product.
Lauren updated us on a project she has been working on to identify PR
opportunities where we can hand out museum information and also give
the community some hands-on experiences of our future offerings. She
will be working with Cari and Jennalee on this.
Jennallee reported that Editor of Santa Cruz Weekly reached
out and he wants to write an article or feature us in his publication.
She will research this further.
Facilities Search: Quinn shared ideas she gained from her meetings with
Paul Orselli including the idea that our first place may not be our last
place and we discussed how challenging it is to know when to look at
facilities and how we night be able to go into contract with the
contingency of raising money if we found a good lease option. Patrice is
researching additional lease spaces. Thank you to Angelo for his great
lead on a property in Harvey West Park. The necessity of having
adequate parking was reiterated.
Debriefing of our consultation with Paul Orselli:
All agreed that time with him was well spent and worth our investment.
We received 100 percent positive and enthusiastic response from those
who attended events with him.
Some take-aways:
- Stay focused
- The need for prototyping of exhibits
- The need to keep the horse before the cart
- Practical factors about location
- The matrix of time, money and space in thinking about how to
develop exhibits
- The importance of “story” in creating engaging and compelling
exhibits
Matt: One big thing I got from Paul is that a great museum isn’t
always in a great location. You can be successful in a lot of places.
Patrice: Paul also cautioned us from committing to high ceilings.
Eric: There could be some cool synergy between Harvey West Park
and us – kids have baseball practice and their little brother comes to
us.
Angelo: maybe we could display signs in empty windows of landlord’s
other properties (does this cost? Could we get it donated?). Louie is
his contact.
Bob: We should keep looking for free buildings. Maybe we could
sneak into the new Scotts Valley Safeway and Aptos Safeway.
Quinn: Beware of second story because of the difficulty of bringing in
exhibit materials.
Exhibit Steering Committee: Patrice presented the content areas the
Committee has proposed:
1) Ocean/marine/harbor
2) Forest/redwoods
3) Boardwalk/recreation
4) Agriculture/Health
5) Innovation/technology
Included in each exhibit will be the crosscutting elements of:
a) Science
b) Visual Arts
c) Gross motor activities
d) Technology (if appropriate)
Pop-up museum: We are working on developing 4 – 6 prototyped exhibits
that we can take around to the community to give a preview of coming
attractions and garner support for MOD.
The following dates were proposed for upcoming Board meetings:
Tues. Aug. 20
Tues. Sept. 17
Tues. Oct. 22
Tues. Nov. 12
The meeting was adjourned at 8:05 to go into closed session.