Museums for All is a nationwide initiative dedicated to removing financial barriers to cultural institution access. Across the US, over 1,500 institutions are currently participating in the initiative, which offers reduced admission to all visitors with a SNAP EBT card.

Knology was commissioned to evaluate the Museums for All program. In an earlier post, we shared the results of our review of previously collected program data. At the 2025 InterActivity conference hosted by the Association of Children’s Museums, we presented findings from the other aspects of our evaluation, which included a questionnaire administered to all participating museums (participants) and case studies of individual institutions.

A particular goal of our evaluation was to examine participants’ inviting and welcoming practices. Cognizant of how members of traditionally overlooked groups sometimes feel unwelcome in public institutions, we wanted to learn about what participants were doing both in terms of promoting their programs within the community and in terms of their interactions with visitors. Along with this, we also wanted to know how Museums for All fit into participants’ broader institutional goals and the extent to which the program was impacting perceptions of institutional trustworthiness.

What Did We Find?

Successes

First and foremost, our evaluation indicates that Museums for All is a highly regarded initiative. Calling it “an amazing program” they are “proud to be part of,” participants have been incredibly enthusiastic about Museums for All. Many have compared it favorably to other programs aimed at reducing financial entry barriers, and their feedback indicates that Museums for All is helping them increase attendance, attract new audiences, and serve a broader spectrum of individuals within their communities.

Perhaps most importantly, participants said that the program produced all of these benefits without straining their resources — both in terms of staff and physical capacities. Regardless of their size, location, or type, participating institutions have found Museums for All “very simple” to implement. Few have encountered any significant capacity challenges; as one participant said, Museums for All “has a lot of benefits and still doesn’t overtax the staff.” In our questionnaire, only 5% of respondents said that their programs were overutilized.

Feedback from participants indicates that those eligible for entry via Museums for All have been “very excited to use it,” and that the broader community response has been strongly positive; as one participant put it, most people are simply “glad to know it exists.” In addition to facilitating progress toward their broader institutional goals, participants have also found that Museums for All is helping “bring money in the door” and improving perceptions of trustworthiness. One participant wrote in to say that the program provided community members with “a very concrete example of how we’re trying to become accessible.” Participants have also reported that Museums for All is increasing perceptions of trustworthiness among other local cultural organizations. As one put it: “it helps our partners know that we have that sincerity, and helps us develop that trust.”

Challenges

Participants also identified a number of persistent challenges to implementing Museums for All. While successful in inviting and welcoming eligible visitors, accomplishing their institutional goals, and improving perceptions of trustworthiness, participants reported difficulties in establishing partnerships, raising awareness about Museums for All, and finding funders or sponsors to offset some of the costs associated with their programs. In terms of marketing and promotion, many participants said they had not yet taken their programs to their “full potential.” They agreed that raising awareness about Museums for All was their “biggest barrier” and felt that their promotional efforts sometimes fell short of their goals.

A Proposed Theory of Change

Our evaluation of Museums for All points to an emerging theory of change that participants can use to maximize the initiative’s beneficial impacts. The model pictured below highlights potential cause-and-effect relationships between individual elements of the initiative’s implementation, charting a path between actions and outcomes. As the arrows in this model indicate, the different elements of Museums for All are connected (either directly or indirectly).

Inviting and Welcoming

One key takeaway from our evaluation is that inviting and welcoming practices are both key to program success. In other words, those museums who achieved their broader institutional goals did so because they were both inviting and welcoming.

Respondents to our questionnaire indicated that they had made use of the following invitational practices:

• Listing their institution on the Museums for All website (88%);
• Posting information about the initiative on their own website (87%);
• Informing visitors about the initiative as part of the admission process (85%);
• Sharing information about Museums for All via digital communications (78%) and at their front desks (74%); and
• Attempting to establish relations with other organizations (65%) or to communicate directly with community members experiencing economic hardship (63%).

In our case studies, participants indicated that they had also promoted Museums for All through in-person outreach and by distributing printed materials (including flyers, brochures, bookmarks, and newsletters). Much of the in-person outreach participants conducted occurred at community events. Attending local fairs and festivals often gave them direct access to their target audience, and by setting up tables displaying information about Museums for All, they were able to create a stigma-free environment in which people could “come up and talk to us” about “alternative admission routes.”

In terms of welcoming, participants highlighted practices designed to destigmatize use of Museums for All. The goal of these efforts was to make eligible visitors feel “like everyone else.” To prevent visitors from feeling ashamed for making use of Museums for All, when speaking with visitors, interviewees incorporated information about the program into a conversation about all of their free or reduced-cost admission options. Instead of being stringent about their programs’ requirements and refusing entry to those unable to provide proof of their eligibility, they chose to take visitors at their word, opting for a flexible, trusting interpretation of the program’s established rules. They were also enthusiastic about offering entry through Museums for All, bringing an “energy” to their pitches so that visitors recognized that “we are happy to give that discount.”

Broader Outcomes

While participants reported difficulties cultivating partners and funders, success in achieving these broader outcomes can lead to new, improved welcoming and inviting practices — as can success in improving perceptions of institutional trustworthiness. As this relationship indicates, there is a cyclical nature to Museums for All’s implementation. Speaking to the feedback loop that Museums for All can generate, one participant shared how “We are connecting more with some of the other organizations in our community. “There’s conversation happening,” they added, noting that discussions have yielded ideas for “community projects” and “collective grant-writing.” Within their community, these conversations have allowed local Museums for All participants to discuss “how we together as a community of museums...[can] make a better world for the people living in our community.”

Let’s Put it to Work

In creating a holistic understanding of how the different parts of Museums for All fit together, our goal has been to offer cultural institutions ideas that can help them become more affordable to individuals and families in their communities. By considering the implications of our theory of change for the program, participating institutions can approach their implementation of the program more strategically, attending to the web of causal relationships rather than one element at a time. In this way, our theory of change can help participating institutions reap all possible benefits that Museums for All offers for the target audience and the institutions themselves.

If you’ve participated in Museums for All or engaged in other efforts to reduce financial access barriers, we’d love to hear from you! In particular, we’d be interested to know if the experiences and outcomes discussed here reflect those of your institution. What successes or challenges have you met with, and what would help you more effectively provide for the needs of those unable to attend your institution because of financial constraints? To share your institution’s story, you can write to info@museums4all.org.

Photo courtesy of Mark Chan @ Unsplash