Join COVES
Why should you become involved?
If you are an institution seeking to learn more about your visitors, or if you are an institution who already knows about your visitors but would like to see how your visitors and their experiences compare to those of your peers, this system is being designed for you. Being involved will not only provide data that allow you to watch for trends over time, but also present the opportunity to help shape the types of questions and strategies we explore in the near future.
How is COVES unique?
COVES is the only collaboration of its kind for museums. Although many museums manage their own audience-focused data efforts, these efforts are not generally designed for comparisons across sites. And, ongoing studies enable museums to engage in a continuous learning process through which they can test out various strategies for attracting new audiences, encouraging repeat visitation, and strengthening the quality of the visitor experience to see how visitors respond through changes in the data over time.
COVES is an “O”ngoing data collection process.
We see a field-wide need for routine visitor experience data (as opposed to every few years, twice a year or another structure that does not capture data every month). In this sense, there is only ever one survey, but the information you collect through can change over time as your museum offerings change.
COVES is based around a membership structure.
In October 2018, COVES became a self-sustaining initiative, and we had 22 museums who were paying to participate! The membership structure is based on institutional size (annual operating budget per IMLS standards), which are broken into seven tiers! This will ranges from $1,000 to $9,900 per institution, based on your annual operating budget. Click here to learn more about pricing.
How Is The Museum Of Science Involved? Does The Museum Make $ On COVES?
COVES is an initiative that is housed at the Museum of Science, Boston. Although the Museum oversees and manages the COVES initiative and is responsible for fiscal and project oversight, the Museum of Science, like all member museums, pays to participate. Annual fees from members cover COVES project costs only; any surplus revenue is reserved for use exclusively on COVES related expenses.
We Sign Up For COVES… Then What Happens?
Once you sign up and we get all the paperwork in order then the sequence roughly goes like this:
- We tailor elements of the COVES core survey to meet your institutional needs and then get everything set up on the back-end.
- One of our team members deliver 2 virtual trainings where we cover as much as humanly possible (what the project is, why you’re starting to get involved, how to do data collection, and everything else)
- And then, the data collection process begins!
For more details about what onboarding looks like, click here for our COVES onboarding timeline.
We have created Evaluation Capacity Building materials (1-2 page documents and short videos) to assist with questions that may arise after the training, and we are always available through email and phone calls to discuss both data collection needs and data interpretation issues. Additionally, The COVES Community of Practice allows you to reach out to any other institution participating in COVES to discuss the questions that arise as you consider how to use your visitor data.
