As community-serving institutions as well as nonprofit organizations, science centers and museums experience unique business challenges. These range from mundane and everyday issues (How can we keep all the sand in the sandbox, and out of the exhibit hall?) to fundamental questions underlying organizational purpose and operations.
At the second annual Voya National Days of Service ScopeAthon, hosted in partnership with Taproot Foundation, eight ASTC member museums partnered with volunteer consultants from Voya Financial® for a one-day, virtual problem-solving sprint focused on addressing organizational challenges in finance, fundraising, marketing, and community engagement. Each museum brought a discrete challenge, then, paired with relevant subject-matter experts from Voya Financial, spent four hours scoping the problem and creating a plan of work to address it. In a short period of time, teams developed action plans for a range of organizational questions, including:
- How can we use data to inform marketing efforts and track their impact?
- How can we strategically engage younger donors as the next generation of philanthropists?
- How can we enhance volunteer engagement and training to align with our museum’s evolving mission?
For Voya Financial, a leading health, wealth and investment company with a strong corporate culture of volunteerism and a philanthropic commitment to STEM learning, the ScopeAthon was a strategic effort to leverage employees’ extensive skillsets, ranging from development to data analysis, to strengthen science centers and museums nationwide.
“The team involved seemed like they truly cared about us reaching our goals with our project and had good insight into how we could go about getting there and then also using our data in other ways, giving us ideas on how to do more with what we have.” – ASTC-member representative
In addition to partnering with museums for ScopeAthon, Voya Foundation is also the sponsor of ASTC’s long-running Voya STEM Futures program which, since 2017, has distributed over $500,000 of funding to support 49 projects in 38 different ASTC member museums to engage youth in career-oriented STEM learning. Taproot Foundation, too, offers ongoing opportunities for museums and nonprofits, including Taproot Plus—a free online platform where professionals can engage with pro-bono consultations and projects year-round.
For more information about Voya-funded programs with ASTC, including future opportunities with ScopeAthon and Voya STEM Futures, contact programs@astc.org.