DMA Friends & Partners
Learn About DMA Friends and Badges
Frequently Asked Questions
Partners Chart
View a message from Director Maxwell L. Anderson
The Dallas Museum of Art is changing the way that it engages with its visitors and donors. We recognize that the participation of visitors in and around our Museum forms a community that contributes to the experiences we can offer—experiences that teach us all how artworks from across 5,000 years of visual creativity can change the way we think about the world, how we feel about ourselves as individuals, and how we connect with each other in an increasingly global society. This community is an amazing asset and deserves to be cultivated and stewarded. In seeking to deepen existing relationships and form new ones, the DMA is making some important changes.
Beginning with a return to free general admission for everyone, which launched on January 2013, the Museum is also offering a new approach to membership and philanthropy called DMA Friends & Partners that will change the conversation in museums about what it means to “belong.” The Museum is a vital cultural asset in our city, and we believe that everyone belongs here. That's why the new DMA Friends program is free to anyone who wants to join us—because we believe that belonging is determined by participation. DMA Friends gain expanded access to Museum programming and are rewarded for their activity within the Museum and in the local cultural community.
The DMA Partners program engages and recognizes individuals, corporations, and foundations whose financial support sustains the Museum’s operations. Customized according to individual interests, this program fosters engaged philanthropy from a wide range of patrons, starting at $100/year.
We anticipate that visitors will participate in either one or both of these programs in ways that best reflect how they choose to engage with the Museum and our community. The DMA’s intent is to open the doors to our institution, valuing visitors as essential to the museum experience while showing appreciation for visitor participation and support in a variety of ways. We believe that this idea and the simple act of saying "thank you" can fundamentally change museums and the role they play in society. We would also like to extend a special thank you to those who have donated to support the transition to free general admission.
The DMA Friends Program
Visitor participation and recognition are the central tenets of the DMA Friends program. As visitors engage with and contribute to our Museum community, they earn credits as part of a personal rewards system. Coming to the Museum, viewing exhibitions, participating in programs, dialoguing with others, and sharing experiences online are all important ways that visitors can contribute to the DMA Friends community. DMA staff engages with Friends in the galleries and online to recognize, amplify, and reward their participation. The Museum has created, and will continue to add to, bundles of these experiences as “badges” in a new online engagement platform; as Friends earn badges for their activities in the Museum, they earn points that can be redeemed for a variety of rewards, such as free tickets to DMA exhibitions, discounts at the store and cafe, and access to exclusive experiences at the Museum. DMA Friends can choose from multiple categories of activities and rewards to best reflect how and why they participate in the Museum community.
Anyone who comes to the Museum—individuals, families, or groups—can join the DMA Friends program free of charge. New Friends receive personalized cards that serve as their gateway to activities on-site, off-site, and online. Through sophisticated software systems newly installed at the Museum, visitors can check their progress toward new badges, see credits earned for activities they've completed, and review rewards available to them. This information is readily available via self-serve kiosks along the Concourse and soon through a new DMA Friends web portal from the Museum’s website.
Through this program, the DMA staff is gaining valuable insights into connecting with visitors in our community, enabling the Museum to gauge which activities are successful in fostering deepened engagement and long-term relationships. With this new knowledge, the Museum can refine and adjust its programming and outreach in response to community needs and interests, literally positioning visitors at the center of the Museum’s activities. Over time, DMA Friends will be able to see a rich history of their engagement with the Museum and recognize the importance of their contribution to the larger DMA community in Dallas.
The DMA Partners Program
Transitioning from a traditional museum membership model may seem like a radical idea, but it’s really more a shift in perspective that exponentially increases the engagement value of a comprehensive development program. The Museum’s ability to offer free admission to everyone in the community will be made possible by gifts received through the DMA Partners program.
The DMA Partners program is modeled after the successful Donor Circle membership program, which has cultivated donations between $2,000 and $250,000 in exchange for a range of benefits tiered according to gift level. The new DMA Partners program will offer benefits to individual donors at eleven different levels, ranging from $100 to $25,000. The success of this model will hinge on the Museum’s ability to engage patrons along many points of the giving spectrum and customize their connections to the DMA according to their individual interests. At the same time, this approach will allow the DMA to build a robust major gifts program and develop highly personalized relationships with donors and prospects to secure leadership gifts that are tied to programmatic and institutional initiatives.
The Partner levels and benefits are responsive to donor research conducted in 2009 and 2010, where DMA members and donors consistently indicated that their involvement with the Museum was predicated on their interest in art and steadfast belief in supporting the arts. The DMA Partners program will retain the most preferred membership benefits (complimentary parking, exhibition previews, guided tours, etc.) and add new dimensions of access and experience with the DMA. Some of these benefits purposefully will overlap with benefits offered to engaged DMA Friends to potentially attract their interest in becoming a Partner and advance the notion that participation and support are mutually reinforcing.
Individuals identified as current and prospective major donors (contributors of $50,000 or more) will be given the opportunity to partner with the DMA in ways that are authentic, unique to their personal interests, and have significant impact for both patron and institution. They will be asked to support priority initiatives that fulfill the Museum’s strategic goals—for example, to build our collection and related scholarship, heighten our art conservation platform, originate and tour critically acclaimed special exhibitions, and enhance the breadth and scope of our lauded education program. They will be stewarded in ways that keep them closely connected to the DMA, making clear their valuable role within the Museum and the community. Intentionally designed to help build a comprehensive development program that strikes a balance between annual and major giving, the DMA Partners program will undergird the Museum's intent to increase endowment fundraising and planned giving efforts.
Corporate giving will be approached in a similar way, with benefits adjusted to elevate active corporate engagement and recognition. Simultaneously, there will be a continuing focus on sponsorship, seeking support of special exhibitions and other programs that offer civic-enhancement opportunities for businesses serving the greater Dallas region.
For both the Individual and Corporate Partners programs, the intention is the same: philanthropic support will make possible broad accessibility and “open the DMA’s doors to the community.”
When Did It Start?
The first phase of the DMA Friends & Partners program launched on January 21, 2013. In the coming months, we envision that guest artists and technologists will conceive of new ways to showcase the participation of our visitors. We will refine and improve our public programs, new mobile apps will begin to offer novel ways to engage with the DMA outside the Museum, and an enhanced list of rewards and recognition will be made available over time.
A program like this is uncharted territory and hasn't been attempted at this scale in any other museum. We look forward to building on the DMA's reputation as an innovative and ground-breaking institution that fundamentally values its community. In addition to great art and scholarship, we believe that a dedicated focus on the engagement of audiences with the Museum and the ways that we can embrace this participation will have a profound and positive impact on the field and the role of the DMA as a leading arts institution, not only here in Dallas but as an example to others around the world.