One of my favorite things about the Michigan Museums Association is how generous everyone is. This week, we launched our campaign for scholarships to attend the fall conference. So, I’ve been looking at numbers and statistics and the names of past recipients. Did you know that MMA members have provided 71 scholarships over the past six years? That’s amazing to me!

I just looked back at the list of our first scholarship recipients in 2016. We created the program that year because we were worried that people would not be able to attend the more-expensive joint conference with the American Association for State and Local History. We were able to send 18 people to that conference and at least half would not have been able to attend at all without the scholarship.

Looking at the names made me smile. Quite a few recipients from that year are very engaged MMA members that I see regularly. One is now serving on the MMA Board of Directors, and another is currently helping plan this year’s conference. Clearly, that investment has paid off!

Another list that makes me smile, is the donor list. It is usually a wide range of people from all types and sizes of museums, and for many different amounts. One year a donor gave us $3.86. I have no idea what that was about, but I was thrilled to get it. Scholarship donations usually bring in more and different donors than what we typically see with the year-end appeal (the fundraiser that helps fund MMA operations), and I’m good with that. There is no better indication of the strength of the Michigan museum community than seeing the number of people who want to help a colleague or a total stranger!


Lisa Craig Brisson
Executive Director