Effectively managing people, facilities, and partnerships can make or break an institution. In this book, we look at managing those paid or unpaid staff who contribute daily to the museum, provide tools for operations, address maintenance and safety issues, and discuss collaboration with outside organizations.

Effectively managing people, facilities, and partnerships can make or break an institution. Museum operations encompasses responsibility for the maintenance of your structure, the safety of your visitors, and the security of your staff and collections. This behind-the-scenes administrative effort is rarely what calls people to work in museums, but good organizational management keeps your institution functioning smoothly. This book examines how to find and work well with all the people who can contribute daily to the museum: paid staff, volunteers, and interns. It also provides many organizational resources such as an outline for an operations policy manual, sample job descriptions, and a sample partnership agreement.