The Children’s Museum of Tacoma
History and Life Cycle Examination
The Children’s Museum of Tacoma, founded in 1985, has been a Tacoma icon for twenty-five years. Over the subsequent ten years, the Museum experienced successes in membership, attendance and funding. During its first ten years in existence, the Children’s Museum experienced an increased attendance, finally leading to the Fire Marshall enforcing capacity limits causing patrons to form waiting lines for entrance.
In 1996, the Museum moved into early stage two of its life cycle with the first change in leadership (Male, N.D.). Tanya Andrews, the new Interim Executive Director hired to fill the vacancy left by the original ED, immediately led the Museum’s move into its’ new digs in 1997. With the move completed and business back to normal, the board promoted Andrews to its permanent fulltime ED, signaling the transition of the organization into the middle stages of its life cycle (Male, N.D.).
The move provided additional space and allowed the Museum to install rotating theme displays along side its kids approved permanent displays. By 2003, the Museum started to attendance at the Children’s Museum swelled to over 30,000 visitors per year. The Museum’s notoriety had increased, its programming and exhibits rotated on a yearly schedule, and funding partners were established. The Children’s Museum of Tacoma’s life cycle had entered the later phase of stage two (Male, N.D.)
The Museum began designing exhibits with the assistance of a Seattle based nonprofit research institute focused on early brain development and the Museum began to collaborate with other local institutions. An early collaboration was with the Tacoma Art Museum and their Eric Carl exhibit. The Chil...
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...the Museum forward to capitalize on the opportunities presented. As an organization in its institutional phase of its life cycle (Male, N.D.), the Children’s Museum of Tacoma has the community support, a history of successful annual campaigns with a large donor base, and the funding capacity to move forward with their development campaign.
References
Children's Museum of Tacoma, . (2007). Learn. Retrieved from http://www.childrensmuseumoftacoma.org/learn
Male, R. (2003). Religious funding in America. Grassroots Fundraising Journal, Sep/Oct. Retrieved May 8, 2008, from http://www.grassrootsfundraising.org/magazine/feature22_5.html.
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Weinstein, S. (2002). The complete guide to fund-raising management (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
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“Civilian Conservation Corps Museum.” www.sos.state.mi.us/history/museum/museccc/index.html. Michigan Historical Center, Michigan Department of State. 26 April 2000
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Winthrop, J. (2008). A Model for Christian Charity. In N. Baym (Ed.), The Norton Anthology of American Literature Volume 1 (pp. 82). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
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Worts, D. (1996). Visitors Make Their Own Meaning. In G. Durbin (Ed.), Developing Museum Exhibitions for Lifelong Learning (p123-130). London: The Stationery Office for the Group for Education in Museums.
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