The Textile Museum of Canada is having an exciting year. With two new endowment funds being established, a thriving volunteer community, and exhibit after exhibit earning rave reviews, Executive Director Emma Quin sees no sign of the museum slowing down. We sat down during the Textile Museum’s Beads, they’re sewn so tight exhibit to talk about fundraising and the importance of having a close-knit community.
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| A quote adorns the wall of the Textile Museum's collection space. "Who is worthy of memory?" -Desmond Miller. Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers. |
Ultimately we’re here to create an understanding of the human experience through textiles. We’re looking to ignite creativity and to spark wonder, conversation, and learning through textiles.
How does fundraising fit into this picture?
It’s significant, as it would be with any cultural institution or museum. We have a development department, and fundraising is one of the key places that we generate revenue to support the programming that we do. We’re looking to bring in revenue through membership, donations, patron relations, individual giving, and corporate and foundation sponsorships. It’s quite a wide spectrum, and it’s about one third of our budget that we’re bringing in through fundraising. So I’d say it’s pretty important.
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| Jean Marshall, Ring of Fire (2015), 2015. Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers. |
Sure. An ideal model is to have one third - one third - one third; one third through earned revenues, one third through the private sector, and one third through the public sector. We’re close to that. Membership, admissions, our retail store, and ticketed events are on the earned revenue side. Publicly we are funded by three levels of government - municipal, provincial and federal. On the private side, in addition to the way we fundraise that I mentioned before, we also have a volunteer committee and the volunteers actively fundraise for us. They do a textile bazaar and a number of sales through the year, and we’re really fortunate that they drive a lot of activity and funding to us. They bring $40-$45 000 a year into the operations of the museum.
That’s impressive.
It’s very impressive. We run an annual campaign from the fall to the winter, an appeal to support the mandate and the mission of the museum. When we’re doing something like that we try to make it as personal as possible; we want the ask to come from somebody who has passion for the institution. Our membership is generous, people donate on top of their annual membership on an ongoing basis, so there’s a consistent stream of ongoing donations.
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| Katie Longboat, Kokum's Flowers, 2018. Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers. |
Once someone is a member or has donated, how do you keep them involved in the museum?
I think engagement is really critical. For membership we’re sitting in the realm of 800 members. There are different levels of membership, so there are slightly different levels of engagement across all those areas. They’re supposed to be well-connected to us and therefore we want to keep them apprised with what’s going on. We open approximately five exhibitions per year and each are layered with public programs. Independent of those exhibitions, our education department programs numerous activities monthly. Making sure the membership is invited to all of those [is important]. We are actually actively working to improve how we communicate and connect with our membership. We’re thinking quite deeply on how we can make our connection much more meaningful. I think that’s an ongoing commitment, because how people want to engage changes and evolves, and we have to change with it.
What do you look for in a corporate partnership?
Our largest corporate sponsor is BMO Financial Group. I think we align to their philanthropic goals and what they’re looking to support. They’re advocates of our programs, and they’re advocates of the mandate and mission of the organization. In this past fiscal year they have been our [primary] exhibition sponsor. I think the most important thing is aligning with their philanthropic goal and their organizational beliefs. The primary piece that we’re looking for is how do we tell a story about what it is that we’re doing that really aligns with the mandate of that corporate institution.
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| Bev Koski, (from left to right), Toronto #1 (2013), Banff #4 (2012), Toronto #2 (2015). Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers. |
Can I say two things?
Absolutely.
One that’s just quite recent is we’ve established the curatorial endowment fund. One of our senior curators retired, and to celebrate her accomplishments along with our long standing commitment to curatorial excellence we launched this new fund. The fund will inspire ongoing and future curatorial excellence at the museum, providing our curators with dedicated resources to realize their curatorial visions, support their research on our collections, and provide essential funding for the development of special exhibitions that further advance the museum’s curatorial reputation.
We were delighted that one of our long-standing supporters, Shirley Beatty, decided to make a leading gift that started the fund off with a $50,000 donation, and we look forward to continuing to grow it. We also established a Future Fund for the museum, recognizing that we have to think about innovative ways to move the museum forward and require access to a pocket of money to do that as those decisions come about. We were able to establish that Future Fund with another leading donation that we received from Kathy Paterson, one of our volunteers, for $100 000. I think with having those two pieces it just helps us think strategically toward the future and what we can do.
It must be so exciting to play such a big role in this institution that so many people care about.
There is a deep passion for this institution. The museum gets called a “hidden” gem, and it is a gem, it’s really beautiful. The people that walk through our doors leave with a deep emotional connection to it. We see that over and over and over again.
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| Olivia Whetung, #35, 2015. Photo courtesy of Samantha Summers. |
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
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