HMA’s Reaccreditation Process: Reminiscence

by Karin Borei, HMA Administrative Assistant & Reaccreditation Shepherd

Hickory Museum of Art  staff with Hickory Mayor Hank Guess

Toast by Board President Tiffany Brittain

On September 5, 2024, local notables including Hickory’s Mayor, HMA Board members, and other museum supporters along with the museum’s volunteers and staff celebrated HMA’s reaccreditation success with a party.  The Mayor declared the day of the party Hickory Museum of Art Day, and everyone raised a champagne toast.

 Being reaccredited was certainly not as simple as filing a short form and paying some $ dues. Rather, it was eighteen months of intensive work to plan, collect, calculate, write, edit, organize and compile the material for the fifteen pages of detailed questions on the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) reaccreditation application form before the initial deadline of November 1, 2023, and then an additional three months of more work before submitting the final Board-reapproved policy on January 30, 2024. I will admit that there were times I grew weary of the whole obsessive project. Still, I never doubted that we would get everything done, and done well, by deadline. And of course we did.

 The overall process had started at least two years earlier, with the review and revision as needed of almost two dozen policies and procedures and related documents that had been developed and written and used at least as far back as 1991 when HMA was first accredited by AAM. Most of these documents had been revised by staff and re-approved by the Board repeatedly all along, none longer ago than 2014 when HMA was last reaccredited; but the current reaccreditation process encouraged us to do it yet again. To quote Clarissa at the celebration party as an illustration of the amazing volunteer Board we work with, “… our Nominations and Governance Committee … read and re-read and updated and edited probably more policies than they would want to in their entire lives but they did it graciously and eagerly as it was important to [HMA].”

 Above: Working at the museum and at home.

When completed, our application was twice as long as the original form, bulging with all kinds of statistics collected by HMA staff during the past five years mixed with essays of varying lengths ranging from single paragraphs to six pages, all of which essays Clarissa and I collaborated on back and forth. I also, as AAM requested or encouraged, submitted pdfs of every policy or procedure or other document relevant to our operations, ranging from multi-page Bylaws, Ethics for Board members, staff and volunteers, and the latest Strategic Plan, through extensive procedure manuals such as for how to collect and manage both our art and our finances, to an organization chart and other one pagers.  And I made sure that everything was accurate, made sense, had the same format, had the correct Board approval dates, and that everything needed had been submitted.

HMA Executive Director Clarissa Starnes submitting the  completed application from my desk.

 We had an attentively helpful contact at AAM throughout the process who, though she could not (and never did) tell us exactly what to say, carefully reviewed our submissions, always responded to questions promptly, alerted us to AAM-specific language that needed to be in some of our policies, suggested that I check my math in a couple of spots, and indicated that we needed to significantly expand our response to the question of what we had done to improve since our 2014 reaccreditation. And then, when all that was done, in early December Martha emailed us, “I have finished my review of the museum’s Self-Study - what a fascinating read!” That warmed my heart. A “fascinating read” no less.

 The AAM peer review team visited HMA for two days in early April, two museum professionals who themselves had gone through the accreditation process at their own institutions. They talked with the Board, with the whole staff, with volunteers, and with community members, all both with and without the Executive Director present. There was amazement all around, from the reviewers that we actually do all that we say that we do and have done and also that none of us chafe at our management structure and broad information sharing; and from everyone with whom the reviewers interacted, amazement at the reviewers’ incredulity. 

 And then in July 2024, we were confidentially told that we had been reaccredited by AAM’s independent review panel. Out of 33,000 museums of all kinds throughout the United States, we are one out of only 1,100 to be so accredited! Meaning that we maintain Best Practice, and that we operate in a manner that is safe, secure, inclusive and stable and in accordance with AAM’s exacting standards.

Quick HMA accreditation history as of 2022. We had first been accredited in 1991, and at that time most recently  in 2014.

 The accreditation letter from AAM said in part, “We commend the alignment of Board, Director, staff, and community in recognizing challenges and addressing them while fulfilling the mission in exciting ways. We also commend the museum’s ambitious vision to be a center of innovative creativity and create an inclusive community.” And, “It is rare to see a Board, director, staff and community in such alignment and so supportive of one another.” All of that and especially the “so supportive of one another” is why, even though I grouse here and there, why I feel privileged to continue to be a part of HMA.

 To my thinking, the process of self-study is a significant good in its own right, because it forces you to step back for a broader view of your organization’s accomplishments through not just your own perspective. And not only that, when I re-read through our full report I am again, in Clarissa’s words from her celebration party presentation, “bowled over” with how unique we are, along with astonished at how much we actually do accomplish.

 And then the reaccreditation letter said, “The museum’s next Self-Study is due July 1, 2033.”