“We raised a million dollars front of house, which had never been done.”

The unprecedented success took Aisha Moss, Associate Director of Membership at the High Museum in Atlanta, by surprise. The story started with a daunting goal: In the museum’s 2024 fiscal year, the membership team faced its largest fundraising target in years. 

To meet that lofty number, they aligned every tool available to them. They built a close collaboration with the guest relations team. They looked to their widely popular weekend events as a vehicle to promote museum membership. And they made the most of their powerful unified technology platform: Tessitura.

Taking advantage of popular Friday evenings

When the High Museum fills its galleries with music on a Friday evening, the crowds follow. The team hosts events nearly every day of the week. But it’s with two regular music nights that they’ve seen breakout success in attendance — and membership signups. 

The first Friday of every month, a local DJ sets up inside the museum for High Frequency Fridays. And on the third Friday of the month, a rotating cast of Atlanta’s musicians comes together for Friday Jazz shows stretching long past the museum’s standard hours. Guests wander through the galleries, carrying food and drinks from local food trucks parked out front. Rough Draft Atlanta wrote that the events “transform The High into Atlanta’s hottest pop-up nightclub.”

According to Aisha, Friday Jazz and High Frequency Fridays usually sell out. Attendance can top 3,000. Some attendees are already museum members, but most are unfamiliar with the benefits membership offers. 

“It turns out that a night filled with art, fun and community has a way of turning visitors into members.”
_{— James Lones}

That means each event provides thousands of opportunities to convert an enthusiastic guest into an engaged museum member. So that’s where the museum focused. They activated the guest relations team to put the strategy on its feet.

“The guest relations team was the perfect strategic partner to make our fiscal year revenue goal,” Aisha noted. That’s because, as the museum’s front-facing team, “They are the first and last team members our guests encounter.”

Growing membership through strategic discounts and irresistible benefits

At every Friday night event, front-of-house staff strike up as many conversations as possible. With current members, they discuss the benefits of upgraded tiers and the convenience of automatic renewals. With nonmembers, they offer intro discounts and highlight the ongoing benefits of membership. 

One key incentive is called Apply Your Ticket. As the name suggests, visitors can apply the price of their admission ticket toward a museum membership. That’s possible because Tessitura easily handles transactions that cross ticketing, membership and fundraising functions. 

In addition, Aisha noted, “We talk about our members’ free parking during the day, our exclusive member previews and events like that. That really helped, because they thought, ‘Well, I really like these events at night. I can come back.’” 

They also highlight the benefits of membership in more subtle ways. James Lones, Assistant Director of Guest Relations, shared a simple but effective example: the express entry lane for members. “This exclusive, priority admission lane gives members a fast-track experience that highlights convenience and value,” he said. Nonmembers waiting in the regular line can easily see the advantages of the member express lane.

The initiative brought in a total of $1.09 million, far surpassing their 2024 goal of $678,000.

Targeted upgrades help raise revenue from existing members. The museum encourages individual members to upgrade to a dual or family membership for just the price of their $35 entry ticket. This, too, leverages Tessitura’s ability to integrate ticketing and membership in a single transaction.

“Normally, this upgrade costs $42,” said James. “But with this promotion, the extra savings make it irresistible. We’ve learned that many individual members enjoy bringing guests or meeting friends for shared experiences.” 

The museum’s strategies paid off: The team exceeded their 2024 front-of-house fundraising goal by 60%. “I’ve been at the High for almost 20 years, and this is the first time we did that,” Aisha said. The initiative brought in a total of $1.09 million, far surpassing their 2024 goal of $678,000. That means the front-of-house partnership contributed 35% of the museum’s overall membership revenue that fiscal year, outpacing their original goal of 22%.  

Seamless transactions from the front desk to the galleries

As a long-time Tessitura member, the High Museum is deeply familiar with the advantages of having a centralized system that combines ticketing, fundraising, membership and CRM. The platform also natively supports a wide variety of promotions and programming. Tessitura-equipped tablets make it easy for the team to complete sales, upgrades and renewals anywhere in the museum — even in the galleries or outdoors. Contactless payments make all these transactions a breeze. 

With these capabilities in hand, the museum incorporated thoughtful follow-up into the membership campaign. “We understand that not everyone commits immediately, so we’ve built flexibility into our approach,” James explained. Since transactions can happen anywhere, guests can decide at any point during the evening to take advantage of an on-site offer. A staff member is always available to convert a ticket to a membership.

In addition, QR codes posted throughout the galleries during events allow guests to sign up for a membership directly from their phones. Attendees can enjoy self-service without spending too much time away from the art, music and refreshments. Just as with face-to-face sales, the transaction is instantly recorded in Tessitura, and membership benefits are available immediately.

The follow-up plan contributed to their success. “It turns out that a night filled with art, fun and community has a way of turning visitors into members,” James said. “We’ve often found ourselves staying after closing to finalize these last-minute membership sales.”  

Improving benefit tracking and redemption

A few years ago, museum team members found themselves puzzling over one element of member benefits. “Our benefits run year to year,” Aisha explained. “Once your membership stops and you renew, we start your benefits over again.” But that wasn’t always clear to members.

For example, when the museum issued paper guest passes, “We had people who liked to collect them,” Aisha sighed. They’d try to bring a large group of friends with a stack of old passes.

Members and staff alike have a clear, up-to-date view of which benefits have been redeemed and which remain.

The team turned to Tessitura to improve the process. “We started using the entitlement feature in Tessitura to help monitor guest passes,” Aisha said. Today, members have access to a portal built on Tessitura’s e-commerce platform, TNEW. Once logged in, they can see their available benefits, redeem guest passes and reserve tickets for member previews. Tessitura automatically tracks this activity and makes it visible both on the back end and through the online portal. Now, members and staff alike have a clear, up-to-date view of which benefits have been redeemed and which remain. Clear communication, no more confusion. 

Keeping the revenue flowing with automated membership renewals

Once new members join, the next step is encouraging them to enjoy their benefits and renew their membership. Member retention is vitally important to sustaining the museum’s revenue streams. Yet follow-up communication can be time-consuming.

Fortunately, with Tessitura and an integrated partner platform, the High Museum has been able to automate many membership follow-up tasks. These include renewal reminders, follow-up messages and thank-you emails — all scheduled and sent through the Tessitura-integrated email platform Prospect 2, built by partner L2. To ensure accurate send lists, they make use of Tessitura’s ability to segment based on a variety of transaction and customer data points.  

The team was especially excited to automate their entire yearly membership renewal process through Tessitura and L2. “We have a fully automated upgrade program with auto-renewal in Tessitura,” Aisha said with pride. “It’s like a gym membership. People sign up for auto-renewal, and it’s processed as a recurring gift. The only thing they need to do is update their credit card if it expires.”

As the High has over 41,000 member households, this switch has saved countless hours of administrative heavy lifting. 

“We have a fully automated upgrade program with auto-renewal in Tessitura. It’s like a gym membership.”
_{— Aisha Moss}

But the team didn’t stop there. “Next, we asked: How do we keep moving these people up the pipeline? Because they get comfortable at a certain level,” Aisha said. They realized they could also automate upgrade asks.

“We figured out a way to utilize the Prospect2 integration to send automated emails encouraging members to upgrade,” Aisha said. These higher asks include attractive incentives. “We offer them 20% off the next level when they upgrade,” Aisha said. “And we have a really cool stewardship event with a cocktail, usually with a curator. That’s a very special contact point.”

From the email, members can simply click a link to complete the upgrade. “It goes straight into Tessitura, and they get put up to the next level,” Aisha said. “And then we invite them to a special upgrade event.”

These automations have cut several onerous tasks from the team’s to-do list. Aisha shared that they use this extra time to focus on the relational aspects of fundraising. Instead of spending hours on manual email sends, they can create more opportunities for face-to-face interactions with a human touch. 

Instead of spending hours on manual email sends, they can create more opportunities for face-to-face interactions with a human touch. 

Reporting on real growth

At the High Museum, Tessitura is far more than a database or a transaction machine. Tessitura’s reporting and business insights tools also help the team track the success of their efforts. James noted several encouraging trends in their membership numbers. “We’ve seen consistent revenue growth year-over-year, which is a testament to our overall success,” he said. 

That growth includes higher revenue on Fridays and Saturdays, indicating the effectiveness of their weekend strategies. “It’s fantastic to see our weekend efforts paying off and drawing in those crowds,” James enthused.

Furthermore, the data shows that program weekends (such as those with popular Friday evening events) consistently generate higher revenue than weekends without special programming. “Clearly, our programming and engagement efforts resonate well with our guests,” James observed.

“These numbers highlight the critical role of special programming in attracting visitors and boosting revenue,” he added. “It’s not just about the events themselves, but how they generate excitement and draw people in.” 

Aligning goals, teams and tools 

Reflecting on their success, the team emphasized the benefit of setting a cohesive strategy that aligned goals across teams. They also noted the benefit of fully using Tessitura's capabilities for tracking, monitoring and reporting revenue. “You can code and track contributions assigned to specific areas, such as your front-of-house team, to pinpoint exactly where the impact is happening,” James pointed out.

“We’ve seen consistent revenue growth year-over-year, which is a testament to our overall success.”
_{— James Lones}

With all their staff and tools working together, the membership team raised well over $3 million in 2024. That includes the $1 million from the front-of-house initiative. Having Tessitura’s robust toolkit empowered the team to focus on the human interactions that grow loyalty. Now, the High Museum is poised to tackle even more ambitious goals. 

Photos courtesy of the High Museum of Art.