NEMA needs your help to address a very urgent problem that affects museums throughout the region: lack of diversity in the museum profession.

New England's museum field is many things: caring, committed, enthusiastic. Unfortunately, diversity is not one of our strong suits. Perhaps you've noticed at a NEMA conference or networking event that the room is often overwhelmingly homogeneous.

If our field does not diversify, museums will fail to reflect the culturally varied nature of their communities. And that means our institutions will become increasingly irrelevant in an increasingly multicultural age.

NEMA continues to be committed to field-wide diversity and finding ways to encourage a more multicultural museum profession. Once again this year we are building our NEMA Diversity Fund, which helps fund scholarships to community college students from diverse social, economic, racial, or ethnic backgrounds so that they can attend the annual NEMA conference. By introducing them to the wonderful world of museums that we all love, we hope they might be inspired to join us someday as colleagues. The Diversity Fund also helps NEMA offer assistive services to keep our programs fully accessible.

We need your help to reach this lofty objective, which is why we've created "NEMAppeal 2015."For just one week, June 8 - 12, 2015, we're asking the NEMA family to contribute toward this fund. Our goal is $10,000, which will allow us to provide free registration, meals, and a small stipend to community college students for our 2015 NEMA conference in Portland, Maine, November 4 - 6*, as well as assistive services at the conference and other programming throughout the year.

To make a tax-deductible contribution to NEMAppeal, click on the “Donate Today” button and choose your level of donation. Whether it’s $10 or $100, please give whatever feels right for you. But please give. Your generosity will help our museum field pursue a future of inclusion and openness that will really make a difference.

Remember, the deadline is June 12. Thanks for your donation!

 

For more information, click here.

For a list of donors, click here.

 

*Scholarships will be offered to community college students within a short drive to the NEMA conference location so they can easily attend the conference. Accordingly, this year’s students will be from Portland-area community colleges.