Participation and Nonprofit Management: Toward Inclusive Governance
By Eleonora Redaelli and Dyana P. Mason
The literature in nonprofit management can help sharpen museum visitors’ understanding of issues around governance, specifically by reconciling management practices with participation and inclusion. Participation in the art museum is a complex issue that includes community involvement in educational programs, content creation, and artistic practices. In this chapter, we argue that participation needs to also include the involvement of the public in the decision-making process of the institution. We develop our argument by providing an overview of how the literature has articulated the connection between museums and participation, describing how museums have been impacted by managerialization and explaining the role of nonprofit governance. We highlight how the literature in nonprofit management has presented strategies to broaden participation by aiming at a more inclusive governance. Recent advances in board recruitment, board training, board retention, and programming may reshape the relationships among the museum staff, board, and community, including traditionally underserved groups. The explanation of these changes is a way to show visitors how they can interact with the museum and become active agents of its mission.
About the Authors
Eleonora Redaelli is Associate Professor in the School of Planning, Public Policy and Management, at University of Oregon. Her research explores issues of cultural policy linked to the arts, humanities, and historic preservation. Her work appears in prestigious journals such as the Journal of American Planning Association, City, Culture and Society, Urban Affairs Review, Cultural Trends, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Urban Geography, Journal of Urban Affairs, and Cities. With Palgrave she has published two books: Arts Management and Cultural Policy Research (2016), co-authored with Jonathan Paquette, and Connecting Arts and Place. Cultural Policy and American Cities (2019).
Dyana P. Mason is an Associate Professor in the School of Planning Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon, where she also serves as the Director of the Master’s in Nonprofit Management degree program. Her research interests include nonprofit management and governance, the advocacy efforts of nonprofit organizations, and diversity and inclusion efforts in organizations. In 2022 she was recognized with the Best Paper Award by the Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs for her paper titled, “Diversity and Inclusion Practices in Nonprofit Associations: A Resource-Dependent and Institutional Analysis.” Before entering academia, Prof. Mason worked for nearly 15 years in the nonprofit sector in a variety of front-line and executive roles in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Virginia and Washington, DC.
“The spatial organization of the cultural and creative economy has been labeled as cultural clusters, quarters, and districts, often with limited distinction between the three terms. Specialized cultural firms and organizations with different geographic locations and within urban and regional areas of different sizes have been studied. Agglomeration economies are indeed recognized as sources of advantage for localization and clustering of specialization and complementarity in many industrial sectors, including the ones with high cultural content.”
Nuccio and Ponzini, 2023, p. 33