Museum Finance: Issues, Challenges, and Successes looks at why museum finance is inherently challenging and how difficult it is to balance the need to generate adequate funding while providing accessible, meaningful mission-based services. The book's purpose is to help museum leaders at all levels recognize and avoid certain financial minefields and realize that while there are financial hurdles in the museum world, they are solvable.
The book is filled with numerous examples illustrating the range of challenges faced by museums and how institutions met these challenges along with advice on how institutions can be successful in the face of financial difficulty.
Brian Alexander has worked in museums for over forty years. Among other positions he has been the president & CEO of the National World War I Museum, president & CEO of the Historic Annapolis Foundation, executive vice-president & director of the Shelburne Museum and director of the museum program for the State Historical Society of North Dakota. Currently he is visiting professor of museum administration at the Cooperstown Graduate Program of the State University of New York.
Brian Alexander's invaluable book is a must read for anyone responsible for constructing budgets, managing finances, or planning for a museum's future--in other words every member of a museum's professional staff. Offering both cautionary tales and entrepreneurial successes, it illuminates financial pitfalls to avoid, as well as offering positive ways that museums have overcome financial challenges to successfully blend money and mission and sustain healthy institutions.