Leading with Confident Honesty with Jessica Aronoff

Transcript

Julie Lacouture:

Trent, I went to a board retreat about a month ago and everybody that looked at the agenda and everybody that helped plan it forgot one critical thing, which was the time it takes to move from room to room because we were so used to doing them all on Zoom.

Trent Stamp:

Oh wow. Yeah. I forgot that the logistics are now taking apart meetings left and right for people who thought they just had to turn their head to the left or to the right to move to a different room nowadays.

Julie Lacouture:

I know. I was like, I can’t just assign you all to a room and you just instantly appear in it. You have to walk there, it takes time.

Trent Stamp:

Oh, absolutely. And the funny thing about these virtual meetings is I’m a notorious sneaker-awayer in a regular in-person meeting, but in the virtual meetings it’s harder to sneak away because it’s so much more obvious. I’ve missed in-person meetings because I haven’t had the opportunity to sneak away from in-person meetings like-

Julie Lacouture:

A different perspective than most people. But an interesting take. Thank you.

Trent Stamp:

Yes. I’m here for you. I bring that unique funders’ perspective to this podcast.

Julie Lacouture:

What struck me about our guests today when you two spoke, and it was great to be a fly on the wall for this conversation because you both have worked as funders and you both have worked in the non-profit sector for a long time to hear you talk. But what struck me about what Jessica says when you talk to her is she says, Covid wasn’t the hard part. Coming back was.

Trent Stamp:

Yeah, I think Jessica brings such a unique perspective after having been on both sides of the aisle of the philanthropic situation and we all found ways to do things virtually. I was surprised that I was as effective a manager as I was during Covid. That was a testament to the fact that my staff was probably better than I gave them credit for being. I always thought you had to manage by being in the room, manage by walking around, and we all found a way to labor through.

But how do you labor through when you’re running a children’s museum? It is the ultimate in-person experience and from having kids in the facility and then try to just fold your staff back in in a scary time, in a precarious time and then go from zero to 60 in terms of kids back in the museum. Yeah, I was really interested in what she had to offer and I thought it was a good tale for other people because if she was able to have some level of success at the Cayton Children’s Museum after Covid, then the rest of us don’t have any excuses at all.

Julie Lacouture:

They have a really great mission and they also had just, when Covid had made a transition into a new building, they had only been in their new space for about eight months.

Trent Stamp:

It was all brand new. She was brand new and she was succeeding a longtime leader, and she was replacing a large percentage of her staff. You come in with a vision and a plan and then you get punched in the mouth by the biggest pandemic we’ve ever seen in our society. And then you have to hope you have a board that says, “We’re going to be there for you”. Not, “Hey, just keep going”. It seems like she had the support she needed and maybe that was a byproduct of her demanding the support she needed. I don’t know enough about the infrastructure of the organization, but she made a lot of big, bold changes in the middle of a difficult time and I was impressed with the fact that she was not content to just tread water in a tough time.

Julie Lacouture:

You and Jessica have a nice part in this conversation coming up where you talk about how as a nonprofit director you have to learn to talk to funders in a way that is understanding what they need. Can you shed some light on that?

Trent Stamp:

Yeah. I think that’s at the foundation that I have the privilege of running, I don’t hire anybody to serve on the philanthropic side who hasn’t been on the nonprofit side. You can’t give money away until you know what it’s like to be on the other side asking for the money and knowing what the reporting is like and knowing what the requirements are from that particular foundation. I think it’s imperative to be a good grant maker that you have been on the programmatic for development side of a nonprofit and now Jessica has the unique perspective of coming from the other direction, which was that she was a funder and now she’s running a nonprofit and she has I think, very good messaging to come to those of us on the foundation side of what exactly are you asking for and why? Is it just to wear me out or are you gathering something important from that information?

And I think all of us have an obligation to look in the mirror on the philanthropic side, on the funding side and saying, what are we asking of these non-profits? And is it bringing about a positive piece of information that will allow us make better, more just, more equitable decisions? Or are we jing them out because we can? And if that’s what we’re doing, I think that we violated the social compact here between non-profits and foundations and I think Jessica has a unique perspective having served on both sides to understand what’s necessary and what’s nice and what is just a giant pain in the butt that doesn’t serve anybody in any particular way.

Julie Lacouture:

All right. Let’s listen to your conversation with Jessica.

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Jessica Aronoff:

I’m Jessica Aronoff and I’m the CEO of the Cayton Children’s Museum in Santa Monica, and as is obvious from the name we’re a children’s museum, but we are a children’s museum that’s grounded in activating the power of play to enrich the lives of children and their families, build stronger and more connected communities and create a better world. So I like to refer to it as purposeful play, but we believe that all play is purpose.

Trent Stamp:

So Jessica, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is that you have made the very rare leap from working at a nonprofit to then working as a funder and then coming back to the nonprofit world. Can you talk a little bit about those moves?

Jessica Aronoff:

I started out my career in the nonprofit world working for a children’s advocacy organization, a policy organization, then went to law school and then worked in domestic violence prevention and intervention work with teens and young adults for 10 years. And when I left there I did a little bit of consulting and that’s when I made the leap to working at the wonderful company and running the philanthropy program there both for the company and the owners, Linda and Stewart Resnick. Once I was there and on the corporate side of things, I thought this is better. And I really did swear I was never going to come back to nonprofits. And it was only after I left the wonderful company, I did some consulting around leadership development and helping company build meaningful and impactful philanthropy programs and social responsibility programs.

But then this opportunity here at the Cayton just presented itself and I thought what could be more fun than working at a children’s museum? It just sounded this great mix of non-profit and purposeful work, mission driven work, which has always been essential to me, but also in a very business-like environment. We have a complex business and all of that needs to be run like a smart business. And so it felt like a nice marrying of all of my interests and I started here as Chief Operating Officer a little over two years ago and then was promoted to CEO about six months ago.

Trent Stamp:

When I hire people at the foundation level, I only want employees that have worked in the nonprofit sector. I think that you have to have worked for nonprofits to be good at the foundation side, to understand where they’re coming from, to understand the resources they’re working with, to understand the challenges they face. Going the other way, what kind of insights do you have as someone who used to run a foundation that helps you in your role running a nonprofit?

Jessica Aronoff:

So first I want to say I totally agree with you about hiring people who’ve worked in the nonprofit sector for a foundation. I felt the same way and also really felt that my experience running a nonprofit made me a much smarter, more strategic funder because there’s no shortage of good missions out there and good intentions. But really knowing whether a organization or a leader is going to be able to be successful and actually make happen what they are saying they intend to do. I think you need to have been on the side of doing the work in order to be able to detect that. What I think helps me on the non-profit side, having been on the funder side, is having more understanding of what it is funders need to hear in order to feel confident about the ability of the organization to do what it is that we’re saying we’re going to do.

I don’t mean faking it. I really mean speaking their language, that they just have different metrics and different measures for what’s going to satisfy their board, their stakeholders, their PR folks. There’s different motivators and I think it’s really important that nonprofits are able to speak that language, especially nowadays where so much of traditional funding is stretched thin and that we have to be very creative about where we can get our dollars, where we can get our support, including from corporate entities that really in all transparency are often not motivated by altruism. They have bottom lines that they need to meet. So I don’t think any of it’s really rocket science, but it’s just being able to look at the situation from a 360 degree angle and understand different ways of looking at it that aren’t so myopic. Yes, we have a great mission. Yes, we do good work, but we also need to be able to communicate how funders need to hear it.

Trent Stamp:

Absolutely. You’ve hit on one of my great pet peeves, which is they have a wonderful mission. I’ve been in the non-profit sector in some form for 30 years. There’s two groups that I’ve found that I didn’t like their mission. All the missions are good. It comes down to execution. It comes down to people. It comes down to delivery. It’s just not enough to say they have a good idea. I want to know what are they doing to make it happen. So now that you’re on the other side, what’s your advice for funders about our relationships to our non-profits? What should we know that we may have forgotten since we came over?

Jessica Aronoff:

I think one of the things that I would like funders to realize is that it’s not a good use of your resources. The money that you’re donating to ask for onerous reporting, onerous restrictions on what we’re doing. I feel very strongly and felt this way when I was on the funder side as well, is that once you identify a organization, a leader, because I do ultimately think that organizations, it’s about who’s leading the work. Once you find an organization and leadership that you trust and believe in, trust and believe in them. Give them the space to do their work and give them the flexibility. That does not mean no accountability. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think some restricted giving is reasonable. I think it’s very reasonable, but I think it’s about investing in the leadership and vision that you’ve decided to invest in and then giving them the space to do the

Trent Stamp:

Work. I agree a hundred percent. That’s obviously something we try very hard to do at the ICER Foundation. We wear you out on the front end. We fund about 6% of the people that ask for money, but then once I’ve given you money, it’s simply ridiculous for me to pretend that I now know how to run your organization better than you do. Come back and tell me how you spent the money and I’ll decide whether we want to invest in you again another year.

But trying to micromanage your day to day operations in any way whatsoever, it just seems counterproductive to your efforts. But it also just seems naively presumptuous that I would somehow or another know how to run a children’s Museum in Santa Monica. It’s better than the person who’s running the children’s Museum in Santa Monica. So I’m with you a hundred percent and I like to think that many other funders are on the same page and are getting to the point where they will give more general operating grants and then get out of the way because what you’re looking for is a partner and not a grantee.

Jessica Aronoff:

And by the way, I also would say that that same advice I would give to individual donors and board members. For board members, hire the right leadership and then trust them and support them.

Trent Stamp:

Do board things. Don’t do CEO things, do board things, just in the same way that you wouldn’t want the CEO showing up in trying to do board things. Stay a year late. We all have things that we’re good at and don’t try to do someone else’s job. I know that you’ve done a good deal of work at the Cayton on clarifying the mission, the vision, the values. Can you tell us a little bit about that and why it’s important to you?

Jessica Aronoff:

One of the blessings of being shut down for 17 months. 17 months of Covid was that we were able to step back and really reevaluate were we both articulating our mission, vision and values clearly, and were we actually living them out? And we went and spent a lot of time doing exercises around this and came up with new mission statements, clarity about our vision and a list of core values, which are in case you are wondering, play is essential. Kids come first. Diversity is powerful, collaboration is vital. Perfection is not our goal. That’s the one I struggle with the hardest. Hard conversations are necessary. I think that knowing what you’re about and why is absolutely essential to any organization, nonprofit, for profit or whatever for so many reasons. Not the least of which is so that your team knows what you’re working toward. I’m a big believer that employees are the most important thing to our success. And if they don’t know what success looks like, then we’re just all out there treading water out in the ocean.

Trent Stamp:

I love those value statements. I’m going to steal those from my own particular family. The name of this podcast is How We Run. So let’s talk for a second about how the Cayton Children’s Museum runs. What makes your organization run well?

Jessica Aronoff:

I think what makes us run well is a real commitment to communication. I’m not going to pretend that we always get it exactly right, but we’re committed to it. Every time we stumble, every time we struggle, I realize that it’s because of a glitch in communication. And one of the things I’m very proud of is that I’ve worked really hard to make sure that everyone feels valued and heard. That doesn’t mean we rule by consensus on everything. I think I came in at the right time. The Cayton had only been open in this location for about eight months before Covid. Prior to that, for 30 plus years, it was the Zimmer Children’s Museum in a different location, but a very different operation. Much smaller, much lower profile, much smaller space, lovely but very grassroots organization. And now where this complex operation and I was brought in right as the Museum was opening and one of the things I immediately did was build in more infrastructure and support to set our team up for success.

And I think that has made a huge difference in this time and it especially made a huge difference during Covid. Although of course like many organizations, we laid off a lot of people and we really cut down to bare bones operations to say the least. But we are back and as we grow back, our growing back with that same spirit of supporting our team, an inclusive environment and I try my best to set everyone up for success and to lead with transparency. That’s another thing. I have worked for some people over the course of my career who thought that their power was held in having all the information and hoarding it. Holding on tight to all the information, all the expertise, all the decision making. And I learned very quickly, at least for me, my power came in sharing that in transparency, in being honest and being real. Because what that did was build trust and having the trust of my team made me far more powerful than anything I could do on my own.

Trent Stamp:

Every time I talk to you, Jessica, it’s been way too long. I want to come work for you. I see hard conversations are necessary as your guiding principle. Nobody wants to have hard conversations, but you really do embody the hard conversations are necessary and it’s a remarkable thing for people to see. So one of the things that we like to do is we like to invite successful people on and then ask them to tell us about a mistake that they’ve made. So can you tell us about a mistake that you’ve made and then more importantly what you learned from it.

Jessica Aronoff:

Made a lot of mistakes.

Trent Stamp:

Yeah, we all have.

Jessica Aronoff:

I think some of my biggest mistakes have been not recognizing the writing on the wall quickly enough in various environments, whether it was when I was in a job that didn’t feel right anymore, but I wanted to fix it. I’m a fixer and I’m somebody who stubbornly believes that if I just put my mind to it and try hard enough and dig in deeper, I could fix just about anything. I am trying as I get older to recognize that’s not always my job. That sometimes things are the way they are and it’s not mine to fix that. Stubbornness is not necessarily a sign of strength and fortitude. Sometimes it’s just stubbornness and it’s not healthy for anyone. And I’ve had that experience with my own realization that I was not in the right place anymore. That a place that had been right was no longer.

And I’ve also very much had that with employees that I hired and I wanted so badly for it to be the right hire, recognizing sooner that it wasn’t the right fit probably would’ve been not only the right thing for the organization, but the kinder thing to the employee. Learning that there’s a distinction between being liked and being respected and that what I need to do as a leader is make sure that I am fair and earn the respect of my team. That doesn’t always mean they’re going to like what I’m doing or hopefully they like me as a person, but that’s not the goal. Sure. The goal is for them to respect my leadership and that was a long road it took me to really learn that.

Trent Stamp:

Like parenting, right?

Jessica Aronoff:

Oh my goodness, parent of a 16 year old. Yes. I can tell you for sure it is the same as parenting.

Trent Stamp:

The goal is not to be her best friend but to be her role model and the person that helps her get to where she needs to get. So what’s your big idea for moving forward and how are you going to get there?

Jessica Aronoff:

So my big idea for the Cayton came up during Covid, which was in the time of being closed and in recognizing that we were going to reopen to a really changed world, I didn’t actually realize how changed. I think it’s more changed than we knew and I could talk about that for hours, about how people are just behaving differently now. It’s a very strange time to be a public facing institution of any sort. But what became really clear was that especially young children really missed a critical part of their development during this time and play is a big part of that. And that it was essential that we be a place that plays a critical role in the healing of our community and the healing of families. Hopefully it’s not a crazy idea because we’re doing it, but this crazy idea that we needed to offer free admission to residents of LA County when we reopened.

And I got a lot of pushback with people saying you just lost all earned revenue for 17 months. Why on earth would you reopen and forego what was a big chunk of our revenue? And my answer was twofold. One was because I think it’s the right thing to do and I think that the right funders, whether its institutional funders or individual donors, will recognize that and want to join us in this. And so that whatever revenue we are losing in ticket sales, we will gain in the right kind of supporters joining us in our mission. When the Museum opened, partly because of our location and partly because we’re really a beautiful space, there’s a way in which people come here and don’t necessarily realize that we’re a nonprofit and a mission driven institution. And it was clear to me that we needed to speak more loudly about that and to make that more front and center about how we talk about ourselves.

And so we reopened offering a pay as you wish revenue model for admission for residents of LA County. We still are charging ticket price for tourists, but this was big, really big. And some people don’t get it, but those aren’t our people. The people who really understand our mission and are going to be with us for the long haul and going to ride this ride with us are going to understand why this commitment to play for all, to play equity and understanding that play is important for all children regardless of ability to pay, those people who understand that are people.

Trent Stamp:

I love it. That’s unbelievable. Did your board have any idea when they convinced you to be CEO that you were going to be leading the crusade for this type of movement?

Jessica Aronoff:

Well, I’m happy to say that when they decided to make me CEO, I had already convinced them or I’d convinced the ones who were convincible. It’s nervous making for everyone. Right now actually, it’s proving to be the smartest thing we could have done because we don’t panic every day counting the number of people walking in the door. We’re just not as worried about that. And so we’re able to just reopen with curiosity and because it is a curious time. Just some days we’re really crowded and some days nobody comes and it’s hard to know what’s going on with people. And

Trent Stamp:

I think there is another point there, which somewhere along the line, I think a lot of our arts institutions have forgot that they’re supposed to be providing a public benefit. And that’s not supposed to just be a free Wednesday for anybody over 50. You’re supposed to be providing equity and equality and access to culture and the arts for the masses, especially those who don’t necessarily have that opportunity. And you guys are walking the walk and I salute you completely. So what would be your number one tip for someone in your position?

Jessica Aronoff:

Tell the truth. I don’t mean bear your soul all the time, but I think it’s true with donors. I am not someone who believes in… Am I allowed to swear?

Trent Stamp:

Absolutely. Swear like crazy. Okay.

Jessica Aronoff:

But I’m not someone who believes in blowing smoke up the ass of funders. I think we should tell the truth about where our struggles are. I think that people want to help other people figure stuff out. Problem solving together is a really amazing bonding experience. And so whether it’s in fundraising or in management, being able to say to my team, I don’t know the answer to this. I don’t know. I’m struggling with this or I think this is what we should do, but it might be a mistake, that level of vulnerability and honesty, but with confidence. I was just saying to somebody recently, I will tell you when I don’t know something, but I’m going to say it was such confidence that it’s not going to scare you.

And I really think that level of confident honesty by so much trust, whether it’s from a donor or an employee, I think all of my employees would say that they know that I’m trying to do the right thing no matter what, even if they don’t like what I’m I’m doing. And so even with my board members with regard to this free admission, I didn’t say to them, “Oh we got it. No problem. This is going to be easy”. I said, “I don’t know if it’s going to work. But I think that it is critical to this institution at this time that we try”.

Trent Stamp:

And they decided to give it a run.

Jessica Aronoff:

They did. They’re watching closely though, they are watching closely for sure.

Trent Stamp:

As they should be, but now they don’t have to watch day to day ticket sales. They can watch overall public and private money and they can go figure out ways to help you get that while you serve a more diverse constituency. So I think it’s spectacular. Is there anything that I didn’t ask you about or anything that you wanted to talk about today?

Jessica Aronoff:

I think working in non-profits is really hard. I think there are a lot of people who think that this is heart driven work is therefore easier. One of the things having worked on both sides of the table so to speak, this is way harder. It’s hard to give away money strategically and it’s hard to give away money. Well and thoughtfully, but it’s not as hard as running a non-profit organization.

Trent Stamp:

If it was, we’d all be going back, but we came over to this side of the river and now we’re staying, the only one who dared to go back.

Jessica Aronoff:

It’s really hard work and it’s hard, especially right now in such a strange time in the employment world, in the job market, this whole great resignation that you’re hearing about, we’re experiencing a lot of weirdness in the employment market right now. And we don’t have unlimited resources to just throw at our employees to convince them to stay or to come. What we have is I think a fairly fun place to work. But of course it’s still work. It’s not going to be fun all the time. And we have a commitment to play and play for our team as well. But it’s hard. It’s a really hard job under the best of circumstances and right now it’s like strangely especially so. I thought the hard time was while we were closed, but it turned out reopen has been the really hard time.

Trent Stamp:

Whatever lies ahead will probably be even harder.

Jessica Aronoff:

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s a really long tunnel, like a really long tunnel.

Trent Stamp:

And the light is flickering every once in a while.

Jessica Aronoff:

And it might be a train coming.

Trent Stamp:

But if I know you, you’re going to wait out on the track and whatever happens. So I want thank you so much for being here today. I want to thank you for the thoughtful leadership you’re providing for the Cayton Children’s Museum, but I really enjoyed our conversation and I wish you the best.

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Julie Lacouture:

Hi listeners. We had a little delay between recording the interview for this episode and then putting it out. So we wanted to have Jessica back to talk about how some of the things she talked about in her interview went. We rarely get this opportunity. Jessica, thank you for coming back to us.

Jessica Aronoff:

I’m happy to be back.

Julie Lacouture:

You talk in your interview with Trent about making this big leap coming out of pandemic mode to make admission to the Museum free. How did that go?

Jessica Aronoff:

The answer to that is like the answer to many questions is nuanced and complicated. In most ways it went great. It did what we intended for it to do, which is bring more people to the Museum regardless of their ability to pay, help articulate and clarify our mission and the fact that play for all is essential, especially coming out of a global pandemic when kids were home and didn’t have socializing and didn’t have free purposeful play opportunities. And it made the Museum accessible to all children, all families, regardless of ability to pay. That said, and one other thing that it did that I should mention is it increased our foot traffic. And the fact is we were worried coming out of the pandemic that we’re a indoor space. We didn’t know how willing people were going to be to come back. And so lowering the barrier of cost was one way to incentivize returning to the Museum.

And so it worked in all of those ways. That said, it was very expensive to us. There was significant lost revenue because of it. As I mentioned, we implemented a pay as you wish model, which was donation-based and people did donate, but not everybody. And nowhere near at the level that it costs us. Our actual cost per person is higher than our ticket price ever was. And our hope that some generous, brilliant, insightful, wise philanthropists or two or 10 or 50 were going to get what we were doing and underwrite it fully just didn’t come through. Fundraising has not kept up. It’s a tough time for fundraising. We have done quite well. Thanks in large part of some of the Covid relief funding that was available and long time loyal donors and some people and foundations and corporations and institutions did come through for us, but just not enough to make it sustainable beyond the one year pilot time that we committed to.

Julie Lacouture:

So then what comes next?

Jessica Aronoff:

We actually are moving back to charging admission starting November 2nd. And so it will have been 15 months that we offered fully pay as you wish admission for LA County residents. Very proud of that. I still believe it was the right thing to do. I think it did all the things we wanted it to. It’s just that financially it’s not sustainable right now. And also cost of doing business has only increased in this time.

Julie Lacouture:

Do you think if it had more of a runway, if there was more time that would’ve made a difference in this kind of business model?

Jessica Aronoff:

Possibly. I think that if we had done this five years ago or even five years from now, we could generate the philanthropic support to make up the difference. I really do believe that. I think that the reason why this was so necessary at this point in time is also the reason why it was so challenging at this point in time, that the same forces that mean that people needed that financial support are the same forces that mean fundraising for something like this is challenging. Maybe we will be able to get back to it. In all of our communications around this we have said we have to go back to charging admission. But believe me, if anyone’s listening to this now and wants to call me and say I’ll underwrite it, it’s pretty expensive, but I would be happy to have that conversation. I would love to go back because I still believe that this is meaningful, significant and an important statement about what we are about as an institution. That hasn’t changed. It’s just that I always have to balance that with practical business realities about our long term financial sustainability.

Julie Lacouture:

Is there any halfway point between the model you’re returning to and it being totally free?

Jessica Aronoff:

Thank you for asking that question actually, because I do want to make the point that we are still offering free admission through something we’re calling the play for all pass for people who can demonstrate severe financial need. A number of museums do this where if you can demonstrate that your family is receiving public benefits, that then you can get free admission. The thing that we’re doing that I think takes us a step further is it’s basically going to be like a free annual membership so that a visitor only has to demonstrate financial need at the beginning of the year and then can come back, get the speedy entrance that all of our members do and get easy access without having to demonstrate poverty for lack of a better way of putting it every single time they come. Part of the reason why we had moved away from that model previously is that we didn’t want to create different classes of visitors.

We didn’t want to have to call out parent or guardians in front of their children that they had to demonstrate need, because we know that can be uncomfortable, but this way they only have to do that once and then they get an annual pass for their family to come to the Museum. And we are looking into and applying for funding opportunities to find ways to provide additional support to additional groups of families, whether that’s military families or families that are working class and can demonstrate a level of need, but not to the point of receiving medical or EBT benefits, that sort of thing.

Julie Lacouture:

Jessica, is there anything you would change in your approach?

Jessica Aronoff:

Sure. There’s always things that I would change. We resisted telling people a suggested donation amount because we didn’t want to put pressure on people who, for whom even what we would say was a suggested amount might make them uncomfortable, might be too much for them. But in retrospect, do think that saying pay as you wish without any guidance and we didn’t really do without any guidance, but we were saying to people, if you lived outside of the county, this would cost you $16. But it’s a lot of words. And I think that maybe there was a way to be able to say suggested donation is X and maybe that would’ve brought in more money, but I’ll be honest it, I just is seeing human behavior. But there’s a lot of interesting things. The first time people came, a lot of people donated, but we have a lot of, and I’m happy to say, a lot of repeat visitors and they were donating less and less each time that they came, understandably.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah, that’s so interesting. It makes sense. Was there anything else that was unexpected or surprising?

Jessica Aronoff:

Yeah, talk about something that I didn’t anticipate in any way is that a lot of families were bringing older children with them to the Museum that they hadn’t been when we were charging per person because if they’re free, why not bring the whole family? So we’re a Museum that’s primarily focused on zero to eight, zero to 10 is still a reasonable age, but we started seeing more 12, 13 year old kids being brought into the space and 12, 13 year old kids, you got to love them, but they’re not exactly great playing right next to a two, three, four year old. And so we were having smart issues with kids making it less safe and secure for the youngest children. It just goes to show that there’s always complicated, unexpected consequences to any decision you make. I don’t know what we could have done differently, but it just was one of those funny changes to behavior in our space that we didn’t expect.

Julie Lacouture:

Amazing. Wow. You’re blindsided by that one. So when did you first start to notice these older kids?

Jessica Aronoff:

It was pretty fast. It was pretty fast. We had a lot of challenges when we first opened. We experienced a lot of the same challenges that you heard and continued to hear restaurants, customer service oriented. We continue to struggle with all of those same challenges that all of those businesses do with people being rude, are staff feeling really burnt out, recruitment and retention challenges. All those same things that your retail stores and restaurants and all of those similar businesses have experienced. And we are trying to build up a mission driven organization and programming. So it was doubly challenging and trying to raise money to support. I may have said this when I spoke to Trent, but I really did think the challenging part was when we were shut down and that’s not true. Sure. That was a challenging part and it was a existential challenge for us, for humanity. But from a business standpoint, the time since reopen has been the most challenging. Getting better, but definitely the most challenging.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah. If you only knew then, right?

Jessica Aronoff:

Yeah. Although I’m really proud of the decisions that we made and even with this move to pay as you wish, we always knew it was a pilot. We knew it was an experiment. To me, bold leadership is about trying things out, not because you know they’re going to work, but to try them out when you don’t know if they’re going to work. And being able to be transparent and real and honest with my staff, with my board leadership, with the public about what worked, what we knew, what we know now, what we still don’t know. I’m really proud of this decision and again, I would absolutely go back to it under different economic circumstances.

Julie Lacouture:

I guess cheers to uphill battles. Thank you so much for coming back and sharing your story with us. I appreciate it.

Jessica Aronoff:

Thanks Julie. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Julie Lacouture:

We have a request for you, dear listeners.

Trent Stamp:

I’m hoping that if you enjoy How We Run that you’ll go and leave a review for us. Your review allows others to find us and that’s a good thing because the more people that listen, the more impact we can have on the sector and that we can bring about positive change for other non-profits that are out there. So if you like what you’re listening to, please leave us a review.