Business Development

A Business Diagnostic Case Study

Bakewell Old House Museum by Anita Spencer, Manager

‘I have to confess a groan ensued when the Business Diagnostic information and spread sheet popped into the email box.

The conversation between Anita Spencer (manager) and volunteer in charge of collections, Marian went something like, “hang on, we are in the middle of accreditation!  How are we going to fit this in too?”

We took a deep breath and started working our way through the details.  The process started fairly slowly and we had to dig deep into our honesty box when answering the questions.  The ten categories, leadership, developing visitors, innovation, collections care and management etc, really helped us focus on developing an action plan and a gave us a clearer vision of our future.  The diagnostic actually helped us with our accreditation forward plan.  We altogether feel more confident of the direction the museum is now traveling.

The good thing about process was involving other members of the committee and gaining opinions of others volunteers.

Once we had submitted the diagnostic, we were very quickly, contacted, by Heather Lomas.  We discussed the diagnostic and both found that we had perhaps been a little too hard on ourselves in some of the categories.

What this diagnostic did for us was to pinpoint our areas of weakness that grant funding from MDEM could help with.

I have to say it is worth the effort as I now have a clear idea of the funding available and a achievable action plan to take us forward.’

Click here to learn more about the Business Diagnostic

To see more Business Development Case Studies click on the below links:

Abbey Pumpin Station Case Study: Building Museum Resilience