Friends of Nevada State Museum Las Vegas

Impact Report 2018

OUR MISSION AND VISION

The Friends of Nevada State Museum Las Vegas exists to encourage and assist with NSMLV programs and activities by volunteering, raising funds, and by promoting community interest in the museum.

Our vision is to have NSMLV recognized locally and nationally for the quality of its exhibits and programs, and to create a financial support system to ensure continued quality of the museum.

Community Outreach Highlights

People who join the Friends already love Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas. But not every Las Vegan even knows about the museum, so we came up with diverse ways to draw people who never, or rarely, visit it. To promote community awareness and interest in NSMLV, the Friends sponsored a photo contest, presentations, programs for elementary students, participated in community events, and updated our social media presence. Here are some highlights!

Gallery Gala

The Gallery Gala was a free evening event for adults attended by 61 people. Our goal was to familiarize non-Friends and people who aren’t museum members with its galleries’ wonderful content. The event’s main activities were a scavenger hunt for guests to encourage them to interact with the museum exhibits, and a talk about the Friend’s activities.

Dinosaur Discovery Family Night

One of our most successful outreach efforts for 2018 was the Dinosaur Discovery Family Night in July. The Friends collaborated with the Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG) program and a Boy Scout troop to create this event. High school students participating in the JAG program and the Boy Scouts managed carnival-style stations offering a range of experiences for kids and adults. Crafts, games, and science-based activities were offered. Special thanks to Dr. Linda Miller for donating incredible raffle baskets and door prizes.

Day of the Dead at Lorenzi Park

2018 marked our second year of participation in the city of Las Vegas’ free Day of the Dead festival at Lorenzi Park, with assistance from Western High School JAG volunteers. Our craft table allowed children to make butterfly masks and we created an ofrenda (an altar to honor the deceased) to honor four historic Las Vegans.

Virtual Tour

The Friends collaborated with NSMLV to produce a virtual tour of the museum. Staff members, volunteers, and visitors talk about their favorite exhibits and were video-recorded (one of them in Spanish). You can see the videos on your smartphone (download the free izi.travel app) or on the izi.travel web site (https://www.izi.travel/en/4642-nevada-state-museum-las-vegas/en).

Workshops

The Friends hosted four workshops in 2018. Topics included photography, how to mount herbarium specimens, ichthyosaurs (Nevada’s State fossil), and the geology of Lake Mead and the Colorado River.

Supporting NSMLV Events, Programs, and Activities

The museum staff asked the Friends to help with museum events throughout 2018. We participated in on-campus and offsite activities, volunteering to staff kids’ activities and giving information to adults. We provided refreshments for exhibit openings and Teacher Meetups. Many people donated snacks and bottled water for the Teacher Meetups in February and October. New Clark County school teachers came to the museum straight from school to learn about museum resources and they arrived hungry. The Friends helped curators with museum tours.

A new collaboration between the museum and the Friends is the Gallery Guide program. Serving as museum ambassadors, Gallery Guides welcome and engage with visitors by providing interactive tours of sections of the museum. We hope to expand this program in 2019.

Major efforts to support museum programs and activities undertaken by the Friends in 2018 include:

bringing WIFI to the museum
digitization of the butterfly/herbarium collections
continuation of a project to digitize a NSMLV card catalog
helping the museum prepare to translate permanent gallery labels into Spanish

Bringing Free WIFI to NSMLV

The Friends collaborated with Hyper Networks and the Nevada Board of Museums and History to provide WIFI in the public areas of NSMLV. Hyper Networks is a Las Vegas based company that designs and installs computer networks in large global businesses. Hyper Networks split the cost of the museum's WIFI system with the Friends and the Nevada Board of Museums and History and they installed the system for free. The WIFI went live in April 2018. It enables visitors to download virtual tours, make social media posts about the museum in real time, and for researchers and business guests to use the internet. Special thanks to Pat Thacker, Maggie Carlton, Robert Riemer, and Mary Savage for contributing significant funds to the WIFI project. The number of users and the amount of data downloaded over the NSMLV WIFI has consistently increased throughout the year.

Herbarium/Butterfly Project

NSMLV has a collection of dried plants, a herbarium, that dates back 50 years. This collection is important because the plants are associated with the life cycles of native butterflies. The goal of the Herbarium/Butterfly Project is to create a quality herbarium linked to the museum’s collection of native butterflies, including uploading photos to the web.

In 2018, the Friends invested in this project, donating a laptop, hard drive, software, and camera equipment needed to digitize the Herbarium and Butterfly collections. The museum developed a procedure to photograph plant and butterfly specimens using the equipment and has begun taking pictures.

Crowdsourcing to Digitize Card Catalog

NSMLV has a hand-written card catalog of approximately 240,000 cards, developed over a period of 20 years, to index early Las Vegas newspapers. The Friends worked with NSMLV curator Crystal Van Dee to set up a crowdsourcing project to digitize the cards. Dreamhost hosted the system for free for about two years. Due to high utilization of the site, the Friends moved it to a paid host to improve performance in August.

Volunteers transcribe cards from their computer or cell phone. In 2018, 26 volunteers transcribed 43,865 cards. Between June 2017 – December 2018, about 25% of the cards have been transcribed. Special thanks to Annie McDonald who transcribed 18,328 cards in 2018!

Spanish Translation of Permanent Gallery Exhibit Labels

The Friends are working with NSMLV to translate the permanent gallery exhibit labels into Spanish. We collated a complete and accurate computer file of all the existing English labels. This is the first step in the translation project which will be funded by the museum.

Information Technology

Friends members Ron and Diane Dizon donated a laptop and two printer/scanners to NSMLV which allowed more volunteers to work simultaneously. At the museum’s request, the Friends purchased and donated six monitors which will be installed with existing computers to increase the pool of equipment available to volunteers. However, volunteer schedules continue to be limited because there still aren’t enough computers to go around.

Bringing WIFI to the museum has improved the IT situation, but as in previous years, NSMLV continues to be underfunded for computers, printers, and networks; equipment and software are antiquated; and the IT department continues to be understaffed. It is difficult for NSMLV to get technical support in a timely fashion due to understaffing and limitations on travel for the IT staff.

The Friends social media presence includes Facebook and our web site. We monitor the number of people using specific keywords to search for the Friends. A consistent number of people search for us. We plan to adjust our keywords to increase our online exposure. An online store was added to our web site in 2018, featuring unique greeting cards and rental of our teacups and related items. We send a monthly newsletter to our subscribers covering events of the previous month and previews of upcoming events. In 2018, we had a 30% increase in subscriptions.

Fundraising

In 2018, we leapt into fundraising events on a larger scale than any previous efforts. Our three big initiatives were “Hats, Handbags, and History” in June, followed by “This Museum Rocks!” in November, and a Barnes and Noble Book Fair in December. Each event was carefully designed to showcase previously unseen items from the museum or to existing exhibits. Special thanks to the NSMLV team of Karan Feder, Sali Underwood, Pam Prim, Crystal Van Dee, and Caroline Kunioka for providing presentations. Thanks also to Sue D’Agostino and to Cam Camburn for facilitating handbag and jewelry donations, respectively. These events grossed a total of $4,568. We anticipate receiving about $700 from the bookfair in early 2019.

Thank You to Volunteers

Volunteering is part of the mission of the Friends of NSMLV and the services we provide are essential to the museum. We are grateful to all the people who volunteered their time to support activities at the museum. In 2018, 89 people volunteered at NSMLV, a 20% increase compared to 2017. For 2018, 42% of all the museum volunteers are members of the Friends of NSMLV, and we gave 44% of the total volunteer hours. The Friends gave 4076 hours in 2018 (a 37% increase compared to 2017) from a total of 9215 hours worked by all volunteers in 2018 (a 44% increase in total hours compared to 2017).

The Friends worked with education, exhibits, history, and natural history programs as well as the library. Volunteers no longer staff the museum reception desk. The largest number of hours were donated in the Miscellaneous category, followed by hours donated to help manage the History and Natural History collections. Miscellaneous support includes assisting the museum staff at exhibit openings.

2018 Financial Summary

In 2018, the Friends received $17,863 in cash donations, $7122 from fundraising/raffles/sales, $1,163 in membership dues, grant funds of $392, and $68 in interest for a total of $26,117. The largest single cash contribution was a generous $9,000 anonymous donation. This donation is restricted for education programs which will begin in 2019.

Our largest single expense was $3,650 to bring WIFI to the public areas of the museum, followed by community outreach ($2,054), and support for the museum’s herbarium ($1,286).

A summary of our cash income and expenses for calendar year 2018 is shown in the graphs below.

Thank You to Donors

Without membership dues and cash donations from our members, and corporate support, our programs would not be possible.

Corporate Sponsors

Thank you to everyone at Hyper Networks for their contribution towards WIFI equipment costs, installing the equipment at no charge, and administering the system.

Thank you to Alex Gao of Moment3D for continuing to provide 3-D printing services to support an interactive donation box for the musuem.

The Friends are grateful to Dreamhost which hosted our initial web site and the card catalog transcription project, for free, for about two years. We also want to thank Google for providing $4,561 of free search engine advertising to the Friends in 2018. Amazon Smile donated $31 to the Friends in 2018 and Paypal donated $2. The Nevada State Museum Board generously discounted family membership costs to $25 to allow the Friends to purchase memberships for low-income families.

We gratefully acknowledge cash donations of $100-$499 from:

Jeff Alpert

Nancy Brady

Sally Pera

Janice Sacramento

Gloria Sturman

Bob and Joan Whitely

We gratefully acknowledge cash donations of $500-$9000 from:

Anonymous

Maggie Carlton

Pat Thacker

Robert Riemer/Mary Savage

Anonymous

Sue D'Agostino

Jeff Alpert

Nancy Brady

Renee Diamond

Ron and Diane Dizon

Laura Eisenberg

Karan Feder

Carol Kirschman

Josie Kleinick

Donna Harper

Other cash donors include:

Renee Diamond

Chris Doss

Scott Dyer

S.J. Kim

Caroline Kunioka

Annie McDonald

Jaina Moan

Tick Segerblom

Mary Stutz

Sali Underwood

Crystal Van Dee

We gratefully acknowledge in-kind donations from:

Sarah Hulme

Betty Miller

Dr. Linda Miller

Dedee Nave

Robert Riemer/Mary Savage

Carol Swearingen

Bob and Joan Whitely

Dr. Dereck Yelton

Everyone who donated handbags for Hats, Handbags, and History

Everyone who donated jewelry for This Museum Rocks!

Everyone who donated water and snacks for the Teacher Meetups

Everyone who dated raffle prizes and refreshments for our meetings

Thank You to NSMLV Team

The enthusiasm and support of the NSMLV Staff have made the Friend’s 2018 accomplishments possible. Education Curator Stacy Irvin is the museum liaison with the Friends. Thank you Stacy for sitting through many hours of Friends board meetings after the end of your regular work hours.

Thanks also to Karan Feder, Caroline Kunioka, Pam Prim, Sali Underwood, and Crystal Van Dee for working with us on fundraising events. Without your presentations the events would not have taken place. Maureen McDonough reserved event and meeting space, while Brenda Isaacs and Dewayne Johnson set up for events. The exhibits staff, Tom Dyer and Wes Southerland provided boatloads of help with events, along with Lea Rosario and Ron McCoy.