What’s Your Staff-to-Visitor Ratio?

Visitors don’t come to visit the staff. But they do come for experiences the staff produces. In a sense, those are a sort of middle ground between staff and visitors.

Imagine that visitors did come to visit the staff. No exhibits, no classes. Just people meeting.

You could calculate how many visitors the museum gets per year, per staff member. This ratio would roughly show how well the average staff member contributes to engaging the public.

This is your staff-to-visitor ratio (SVR).

A little museum that gets only 25,000 visitors per year, but has only 5 FTE staff, has a staff-to-visitor ratio (SVR) of 1:5,000 (25,000 / 5).

A big museum that gets 1,000,000 visitors a year, but has an FTE staff of 500, only has an SVR of 1:2,000.

The smaller museum is more effective at engagement per staff member than the big one. If museums had investors rather than donors, which of these museums would they invest in?

Here’s the thing:
Little museums might not get the crowds that the big ones do, but their staff-to-visitor ratio might be worth bragging about.

Warmly,
Jonathan