Museums lack transparency in the many ways decisions are made, including board and artist selection, staffing structure, program services, artist contracts and endowment investments and draws to name a few. One of the major gaps the RTM cohort identified and discussed was the general public’s lack of knowledge of how museum’s finance their operations, especially labor costs which are among the most cited grievances to emerge in the last few years. These gaps are in line with businesses that operate in our capitalist structures.

In this spirit, we felt it necessary to hold ourselves accountable by making our funding evident in how it was received, spent, and distributed. We sought to provide fair compensation for RTM staff, facilitators, and consultants. Our retreats and work session intensives were well funded and included self care measures deemed important for doing this heavy emotional and intellectual work in comfort. Importantly we reserved a significant portion of our budget to distribute to our community of practice partners, including payment for all consultations and conversations, public and private, journal articles written, or presentations made to the cohort during our retreats.

This exercise of knowing that we would always present our spending publicly held us to our values by reinforcing the hiring and supporting of local, Black, Indigenous, Latinx and Queer contributors. Museums and institutions readying themselves must work to provide greater transparency to their staffs, artists and community members regarding resources, a transparency that goes beyond what is found on a museum’s publicly available tax recordings.