The Haines Sheldon Museum board of trustees’ plan to turn the museum into a nonprofit, completely separate from the Haines Borough, could have effects including reduced operating costs, reduced funding from the Haines Borough and reduced employee benefits. The assembly voted unanimously to support the restructuring effort at a meeting Tuesday.
The board has hired nonprofit consulting organization the Foraker Group to assess the viability of the plan and come up with a detailed proposal for separating from the borough.
At present, the museum is a quasi-governmental organization with attributes of both a borough department and nonprofit. The collection is owned by the nonprofit, which is responsible for running the museum and managing staff, according to borough code. Museum staff are borough employees with borough-funded salaries, and the building is borough owned.
Museum trustees and borough management agree that this model creates areas of confusion.
One of the major sticking points, highlighted by the recent dismissal of executive director Helen Alten, is who is in charge of employees. “The (borough) manager had certain thoughts about who was in charge. The code says we’re the boss. It wasn’t fair to the employees,” trustee Sue Chasen said.
Both Chasen and borough clerk and interim manager Alekka Fullerton said their issues with the museum’s structure are longstanding.
“I have been wanting (museum structure) to be addressed since I was the deputy clerk,” Fullerton said. “The whole point of having code is so people know what’s expected of them. It’s hard to enforce code that’s not clear, and it’s not fair to people to have different interpretations of code depending on who’s in charge.”
A number of factors came together at the right time to give momentum to the restructuring effort: Chasen rejoined the museum board this year, Fullerton became interim manager, and COVID-19 resulted in a partial closure of the museum and a reduction in borough funding.
Chasen said the details of restructuring will be based on recommendations from the Foraker Group and acknowledged that there are some potential concerns that she hopes the consulting group can help address.
“The biggest argument for not separating is the sense that funds are more secure if the museum remains part of the borough,” Chasen said, adding that a memorandum of understanding (MOU) could include a structured funding commitment from the borough.
There are instances when a museum separated from a municipality and retained funding, like in the case of Valdez’s museum, said Alaska State Museums curator of statewide services Anjuli Grantham, who has been looking into the structure of other museums in the state to assist with the Sheldon Museum’s reorganization. The Valdez museum was a city department that became a separate nonprofit. A formal agreement between the city and the museum helped maintain the city’s annual contribution to the museum.
However, in many cases, once a museum separates, municipal funding dwindles, Grantham said.
It’s unclear what the borough’s contribution to the museum will look like in future years, even if it remains a quasi-governmental organization. This year, the borough’s contribution was reduced by roughly one-third as the assembly sought to offset decreases in state support and sales tax revenue due to COVID-19.
Fullerton said she worries next year will be another difficult year for the borough fiscally as pandemic concerns will likely remain.
“Borough funding was drying up anyway,” Chasen said. She said she views increasing the museum’s donor and volunteer support as the truly sustainable way to fund the museum, as opposed to borough support or grants.
Although borough support could decrease as a result of the restructuring, museum costs will likely go down as well, Chasen said, referencing staff costs.
Full-time staff at government-run museums have access to union benefits including health insurance, retirement accounts and paid time off, Grantham said. However, the 2020 Alaska Museum Survey, the results of a questionnaire completed by 83 institutions statewide, suggests this is not always the case when staff are nonprofit employees.
Chasen said it’s possible the museum could provide at least some of the same benefits to non-union employees. “They may not be as good, but you try to do that,” she said, and there is potential for current museum employees to the grandfathered in.
Other concerns include what will happen to the borough-owned museum building. Fullerton said the Chilkoot Indian Association (CIA) may be interested in buying the building, but she worries CIA may not be interested in housing all the artifacts currently in the museum’s collection. CIA did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
“There are a lot of different ways that museums are organized,” Grantham said, referencing the museum survey. According to the survey, museums in Alaska are most often governed by nonprofits, which also tend to own the permanent collection and pay staff salaries. However, it’s most common for museum buildings to be owned by municipalities.
Grantham said there’s no silver-bullet structure, but in most cases, it’s beneficial to have clearly defined roles so the organization can run efficiently. She said it’s important to remember the primary responsibility of a museum is preservation of the collection, adding that staff and a facility are critical to this goal.
Chasen said she expects to have a detailed restructuring proposal in hand by the Sept. 1 Government Affairs and Services Committee meeting.