Over the last few weeks I've been working a lot with donors, and find myself reflecting on all the class time we spent talking about donors. I don't think there was anyone sitting in those classes who thought it was anything but a waste of time. We're all adults, most of us have worked in libraries or retail, there's nothing you can teach us about people and how to handle them, how difficult they can be, and how crazy they can make you. Yet now I'm glad for those classes. Some of what professors were trying to get across must have penetrated my skull, because I've been thinking about those classes all week and realizing I have actually been following my professors' advice.
Everything happens at work at the same time, so it's no surprise both my donor dances started around the same time. One donor was concerned about cassettes he had given to the museum. We were going to get them digitized, and this was one of the big selling points for him to give us these cassettes. He doesn't trust museums in general, but he agreed the tapes should be made more easily available and we were the people to get it done. Then he started worrying. Where was the digitizing going to take place? Could he be present? Should he just buy a machine and take back his tapes and do it himself (that way if something went wrong he had no one but himself to blame), we weren't going to mail them anywhere were we? Since we are currently researching and building our permanent exhibit and the tapes were securely stored, digitizing them wasn't on my front burner when he started calling. But what it really came down to was, he needed some hand holding. He needed to hear (from my boss who he knows better than he knows me), that we knew what we were doing, that we had a plan, that everything was under control. He wasn't worried we hadn't digitized the tapes the second we got them, he just had visions of the U.S. Mail losing these records and needed to hear that things were going to be alright.
The other story concerns a reluctant donor. She was convinced by friends that she should bring her things to us, but wasn't really sure why. She didn't see her notebooks or photographs as important to anyone but herself, and wasn't buying it when her friends and I talked about how she was a primary source, an expert in the area, and her notes would be important to researchers. She was willing to give us some of her things, but had too much of an emotional attachment to what we as a museum really wanted her to give us. She finally decided to loan us what we wanted and let us scan them before giving them back. What she was willing to donate were things I didn't really want, but took anyway. When she called the next day to say she hadn't read the Deed of Gift I had carefully gone over with her and she had signed, and there were photographs she only wanted to loan not give, I agreed to alter the Deed of Gift. Did I have the right to tell her she'd signed them over and couldn't take them back? Yes. Legally do these notes on archaeology of government sites even belong to her in the first place? No (but that's a whole different highly technical subject for another time). Do the things she gave us to keep have any value to us as a museum? Possible, but not likely, and I'm sure there will be a few blogs worth of figuring out what to do with them at a later time.
But our business is as much about preserving relationships with people as it is preserving the artifacts and archives we work with every day. Being accommodating, being willing to take items that don't necessarily fit the scope of collections, or hand holding and assuring someone you really do know what you're doing, makes for building blocks in that relationship. As much as we want to beat our heads against the wall when dealing with a difficult donor, sometimes you just have to go with it. When the donor says "but I don't know you, where's that other girl?" and you have to explain that she left for a different job but you're just as qualified, you can't take it personally. Because you're building trust, a personally connection and relationship with someone. Not as a museum, not as an institution, but as an individual. And going out of your way to make a good impression at all times leads to positive comments and, we can hope, eventually leads to convincing donors to give you the collections you really want to get your hands on.
