An individual donor
The Indiana Historical Society turned to one of their significant door couple, Dorit and Gerald Paul. The Pauls funded a ONE by ONE Community Portrait at the Indiana Historical Society for THREE YEARS RUNNING! They did this OUTSIDE of their usual giving because they saw this event as a way to help the museum increase attendance by broadening their audience.

“What stands out in the #300in3 collection is the variety of the audience. IHS has never seen such audience diversity particularly in the age and ethnicity categories. It gave us exposure to people who weren’t familiar with who IHS is, what we do, or why it is relevant to them.”

Kyle McKoy
Vice-President of Education and Exhibitions
Indiana Historical Society

#300 in 3

Several sponsors
The Greensboro History Museum timed their ONE by ONE Community Portrait to coincide with the city of Greensboro’s “Fun Fourth” celebration. Being part of the city’s celebration gave them additional leverage with sponsors, who knew there was a guaranteed audience. The museum prominently displayed the sponsors names at the event, and in all promotional materials.

“The portraits are up and they are mighty fine individually, and spectacular as one great big community portrait. We had great media coverage and impacted the city in a way that shows we are all about making connections and engaging our community. People laughed, they cried (literally —with joy at finally having a family portrait), came together as families and joined together as new friends while they waited.”

Carol Ghiorsi Hart
Museum Director
Greensboro History Museum

Share the budget with another department
The Oakland Museum of California was about to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Coinciding with that celebration was a new branding campaign which would feature the museum’s guests, and all their diversity. Director of Marketing and Audience Engagement Mary Beth Smith had us work with their branding agency, Image Design Works, to supply them with images to use in their campaign, which would include street banners, subway posters, newspaper and magazine ads as well as a widely distributed brochure.

Thank you for your extraordinary work. The campaign looks beautiful and has really helped us move the dial on some of our key marketing objectives.

Mary Beth Smith
Director of Marketing and Audience Engagement
Oakland Museum of California

Do it in support of your people
Holly Swangstu, then the Director of the Art Institute at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum wanted to celebrate not only the entire staff of the museum, but also their more than 600 volunteers. Such was the excitement and appreciation of all at the museum that we did it for three years. Not only were people excited to get their portraits, but they appreciated becoming part of the “Community Portrait” wall, where their photo could end up next to the CEO of the museum.

“In the 25 years that I have worked here I have never felt so appreciated. Thank you for our portraits.”
Mary Wren
Docent
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Some things we want to try
People have talked about getting a sponsor for the ONE bu ONE Community Portrait experience. No, we haven’t landed FedEx (yet)! But we’re open to companies sponsoring the experience. We’ll put their names up on the “portable location studio” as well as the “community portrait wall.”

Another option is the folder everyone gets to safeguard their print. It goes home with them, so it’s a perfect place to put a sponsor’s message.

The Oakland Museum of California had the brilliant idea that they could get great images for a new branding campaign (coinciding with their 50th anniversary OMCA@50) if they had us come and do a ONE by ONE Community Portrait™ on one of their “Friday Nights @ OMCA” events. The branding campaign was going to focus on their guests. In just 2 days I provided them with 260 images of 445 people!

Different from our usual events we photographed this one in color to match the Image Design Works proposed campaign.

They did a great job of using TONS of the images to really get the point across about how diverse their museum’s base was. There were street banners.

They used subways posters along the BART line. The station nearest the museum ONLY had OMCA@50 posters in every possible frame.

There was a video.

We were thrilled when we went back to do another ONE by ONE Community Portrait experience at the actual anniversary event. We saw our images EVERYWHERE. This is such a great testament to how compelling our images are.

And a reminder that the images can go much farther than the “community portrait wall.” How else can you leverage the image we create?