Visitors become one with a Marc Chagall painting at Amazement Square, a children’s museum in Lynchburg, Va., that participates in Museums for All. (Photograph by Luke Kelley, courtesy of Amazement Square)
For millions of lowincome Americans, electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards offer a convenient way to obtain food and other goods from retailers through federal assistance programs. Now, thanks to an initiative of the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, EBT cards are also improving access to a wide range of cultural experiences across the United States.
The idea behind Museums for All is simple. Individuals or families can show an EBT card at a participating museum’s admissions desk during normal operating hours and qualify for free or greatly reduced admission.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a federal agency, has provided $126,445 for the program’s initial development. But unlike other programs that use EBT cards, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the actual benefits under Museums for All—namely, free or reduced admissions—aren’t government subsidized. Instead, the participating institutions bear the costs and use EBT cards simply to identify qualified participants.
Still, in the same way that SNAP gives recipients autonomy in how they use their benefits, Museums for All empowers individual cardholders to decide when they want to visit a museum. Traditionally, museums have tried to broaden access through once-a-month free days. “But this approach is not really serving the demographic it’s intended to serve,” says Laura Huerta Migas, the Association of Children’s Museums’ executive director. Low-income museumgoers often lack flexible work schedules and good transportation options that would enable them to attend free days. The consequences aren’t trivial: The IMLS has found that children who miss out on museum visits lag behind their peers in reading, math, and science.
In 2013, looking to reduce these inequalities, Huerta Migas and her colleagues noted that some of ACM’s member organizations, including the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh and the Zimmer Children’s Museum in Los Angeles, were offering anytime access to EBT cardholders—who now represent 5 to 6 percent of those museums’ visitors. With support from the IMLS, ACM decided to introduce a national version of this system.
Museums for All formally launched in August 2015. As of March 2016, 65 institutions in 27 states were participating. Approximately 70 percent are children’s museums, but science, art, and history museums, botanic gardens, and historic houses have also signed up. Admission under the program ranges from free to $3 for up to four people on one EBT card.
Chicago Children’s Museum implemented Museums for All in November 2015, after an eight-month planning period in which it gathered feedback from EBT cardholders and local social services organizations.
“Museums for All fits in with our menu of services because it encourages routine independent family visits,” says Saleem Hue Penny, Chicago Children’s Museum’s associate vice president of community and educational partnerships. “What lowincome families have told us is they don’t want to feel like, ‘Oh, I can only go Thursdays between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.’ They want to go at times that are convenient for their families, that work with their work schedules and children’s school schedules.”
Certain museums, especially small ones, may be hesitant to join Museums for All because they worry that subsidizing admissions could cost them revenue, says Paula Gangopadhyay, IMLS’s deputy director for museum services. But as Huerta Migas notes, some early adopters of the program have found that it leads to new funding opportunities. “They’ve been able to leverage more philanthropic dollars because they have a standing commitment to serving all of their community,” she says.
The use of EBT cards also allows museums to develop partnerships with other organizations.
“It was designed as an access program, but it’s also been a great form of community engagement for us,” says Hue Penny. “We’ve been able to connect with all these different groups you might not traditionally think of collaborating with a children’s museum.” These include food banks, the US Department of Agriculture, and different levels of state government, all of which have opportunities to promote Museums for All among the low-income families their own programs target. “It’s been a great opportunity to sit at all these different tables,” Hue Penny says.
Read more stories by Greg Beato.