Your Guide to Using the Love my Museum Calendar
As a museum professional, you’re probably familiar with the benefits of planning, whether it’s for exhibitions, events, or day-to-day operations. Planning well is essential to creating memorable experiences for your visitors and ensuring a smooth, well-supported workflow for your team. That’s why I’m thrilled to introduce this year’s Love my Museum Planning Calendar for Museums—an easy-to-use tool designed to make your museum's yearly planning more strategic and enjoyable.
This is the third year I’ve created the Love my Museum Planning Calendar, and it has become one of my most popular resources. In this post, I’ll share the inspiration behind it, some top tips on setting annual priorities, and a step-by-step guide to help you get the most out of this calendar.
Why This Calendar? The Power of Long-Term Planning
Planning is essential for any organization, and for museums, it’s the key to a vibrant, well-prepared year. Yet, common challenges like inconsistent follow-through on plans, lack of clarity around priorities, and staff burnout, can mean that your plans have been thrown out the window by February 1. That’s where this calendar can help! It’s designed to give you a “big-picture” roadmap for the year, allowing you to set museum-wide priorities, communicate clearly with your team, and make the most of your resources. I also don’t think it’s something that you need to wait until the new year to start doing—anytime of the year is a great time to start building new habits.
Setting Your Museum’s Priorities—And Sticking to Them
As you begin using this calendar, focus on aligning your goals and projects with your museum’s core mission. Museum-wide priorities should take precedence over department or individual tasks, especially during busy seasons when resources are stretched thin. For example, if you have a major exhibition launch that requires collaboration across departments, establishing this as a high-priority goal for the year ensures that everyone can rally around it. This way, resources are allocated where they’re needed most, and everyone understands the big picture.
The Story Behind the Calendar
In 2020, when my museum clients had to close their doors, I pivoted my work to support online business owners and noticed they approached planning in layers; breaking down annual plans into quarters, months, and weeks. When museums reopened, I taught these techniques to my museum clients, helping them develop more manageable, phased-out plans with more realistic and focused goals that they visited frequently throughout the year. The plans we put together weren’t something that we just looked at once, we came back to them again and again. This inspired me to create the Love my Museum Planning Calendar, which now helps museum teams plan beyond just exhibitions. We look for ways to support the community and that build your museum's brand identity.
Step-By-Step: Getting Started with the Planning Calendar
Ready to dive in? Here’s a quick start guide to make the most of this year’s calendar.
Download and Prepare the Love my Museum Calendar
First, download the calendar. You can click here or on the button at the bottom of this post. Once you fill out the form, you’ll receive the calendar in your email inbox. Open it on your computer. You can print it if you prefer a physical copy. Take a quick look at the calendar, notice that it includes a page for every month of the year.
Map Out Your Annual and Seasonal Priorities
Next spend a few moments jotting down all known dates for this year at your museum in the notes section on the bottom of the corresponding month. You might have things to add like signature events, exhibition openings, annual programs, holiday tours, fundraising galas. More than likely these things are your museum’s priorities. Noting these in advance lets you allocate resources wisely and plan for the busy times so you can avoid overbooking your team.
Explore Monthly Themes and Notable Dates
Each month lists the monthly themes at the top—such as Black History Month in February or Women’s History Month in March—that can guide your programming. There’s also a list of notable dates to help you brainstorm potential exhibits or social media highlights. Think about any artifacts or exhibits you can showcase that tie into these themes.
Break Down Planning by Quarters, Months, and Weeks
The calendar is the first step to a tiered planning approach. Starting at this “30,000-foot view,” use the calendar as a guide to then break things down into quarterly, monthly, and weekly action items. Breaking it down this way ensures that plans are manageable and adaptable, allowing for adjustments when needed.
Use the Calendar as a Guide for your Media Outreach
Having ideas ready for special dates and themes also provides a great starting point for press pitches. Local media are often looking for timely, interesting stories. Use the monthly pages to mark potential media pitches and prepare your press releases well in advance.
Keeping Your Team on the Same Page
Including your team in the planning process is essential for museum success. Use this calendar as a collaborative tool—either by holding annual planning sessions with everyone or having your leadership team review it and relay details to their departments. Clear communication of museum-wide priorities makes it easier to coordinate efforts and support colleagues across departments.
Let’s Get Started
By setting clear, strategic priorities and taking a layered approach to planning, you can make this an amazing year for your museum. With the Love my Museum Planning Calendar, you’ll have a clear roadmap to guide your events, exhibits, and initiatives, making sure every detail supports your mission and serves your community.
