Introduction

In our ‘user pays’ society a familiar dilemma facing those of us working in public program areas of botanic gardens such as education, interpretation and visitor services is ‘How can we make our programs generate revenue?’ Depending on the degree of financial stability of our organisations we can be asked to contribute to the communal coffers by simply running a few income-generating holiday activities or we may be expected to develop a fully self-funded education unit.

The question must be asked: ‘Why are we even required to link dollars to the delivery of public education – the very reason for the existence of most botanic gardens?’ As public places many botanic gardens include in their mission statements something about education, interpretation or raising public awareness of plants and conservation. Yet only a small percentage of the total budget is given over to the development of education programs and interpretive resources. Education programs are often expected to pay their own way yet no similar demands are made of other work areas such as horticulture and administration.

Running high quality educational programs ¹ requires people and dollars. This paper will demonstrate that there is no such thing as a self-funding educational program and the best any of us can hope to achieve are education programs that can be grown sustainably. This requires core funding and the income generated from some activities available to subsidise those programs that incur high costs in order to achieve effective educational outcomes.

Education programs are not events. The fundamental problem is that education programs are erroneously viewed as events like flower shows, rock concerts or open-air cinema. Such events are generally organised by outsiders who hire our sites for entertainment purposes. They invest huge dollars initially in order to generate high profits later. Their events attract 100s and even 1000s of people and the experience is relatively short-lived for both the organiser and the participant. Visitors are treated as consumers and the aim is to generate maximum revenue from the maximum number of people.

However, education programs are about learning, and effective learning takes time, concentration and active involvement. If our organisational aim is to change people’s attitudes and seriously interest them in key messages about plants and the environment then this involves in-depth engagement. It often requires repeat visitation and the services of lots of people including skilled educators and passionate interpreters. Good education activities are about ‘taking time’. They generally last a few hours, are conducted in small groups and, if we are serious about catering for the whole community, they are also inexpensive. When all this and the preparation involved are taken into account, there can be no such thing as a truly self-funded education program.

So, the challenges become:

How can we raise the profile of education programs within our organisations so that appropriate funding is allocated to the achievement of our missions?
How can education programmers get more staff or more money, ‘creatively’?

Raising the profile of education programs

This requires self-promotion and the development of a learning culture within the organisation. All staff should understand the role of their botanic garden and why public education needs to occur. They should be aware of how their specific work contributes to this outcome and, where possible, they should be directly involved in the educational process. For example, horticulturists planting up garden beds should be aware of how this area might be used to convey key interpretive messages and what these messages are.

In order to mount a convincing argument for funding to senior management, solid statistics and sound evaluation are needed. Education staff should keep accurate records of the nature of education programs delivered, participation numbers, survey results, letters of appreciation, number of enquiries and requests from schools etc. And, more importantly, this data should appear regularly in management reports and staff newsletters. Everyone enjoys ‘good news’ stories!

Lobbying is also far more effective when done collectively so partnerships should be formed with other education groups and like-minded individuals and organisations. It is interesting to note that we value ourselves more when others appreciate our worth.

Finding ways to get more staff

There are creative ways to get more staff to deliver education programs. For no charge at all, as part of the emerging learning culture, occasionally staff from other areas can be coerced into contributing to the delivery of public programs. It’s amazing how passionate and articulate individuals can be when asked to talk about their area of expertise. Experience shows that they enjoy themselves as well!

Another strategy to maximise face-to-face program delivery is to free existing education staff of day-to-day administrative duties and the endless meetings that abound in a large bureaucracy. It can be quite challenging for education managers to find ways to keep education staff free to do what they were primarily employed to do: educate and inspire visitors about plants and the environment. However, everyone benefits from this, staff are empowered to explore their own creative abilities and visitors are rewarded with new and exciting learning opportunities.

Schools programs are often targeted as suitable for revenue generation. Provided this is appropriately funded in the first instance and the revenue generated is directly returned to the unit delivering the lessons, then experienced casual staff can be employed on a cost recovery basis. Delivery can match demand. Costs to the visiting students should be kept to a realistic minimum but this amount should be enough to cover the wages of casual employees. All other costs of the program must be carried by the organisation as core business.

Using volunteers is sometimes cited as the way to recruit ‘free labour’. However, although volunteers, by definition, are unpaid, they are by no means free. Volunteers are entitled to expect and be given good management, clarity about what they are asked to do, training, adequate facilities and the same support that is given to paid staff. All these costs should be properly assessed before launching a new scheme. Once again, organisations must allocate appropriate funds to achieve this.

The use of volunteers for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney provided a good example of this. It cost $750 to train each of the 62,000 volunteers who were on duty for this international event ($46.5 million). Yet, in return, they gave six million hours of service and saved the organisers over half the cost of wages. And it is unlikely that more funds could have been made available for this hospitality purpose.

There are additional and far more significant benefits of engaging volunteers for public program delivery. Volunteers are the very audience we are keen to educate and inspire with an appreciation of plants and their conservation. Volunteers are prepared to take the time required to learn our key messages and they generally reflect the values we deem important in their attitudes and behaviours. They are then willing to give their time freely to our organisations and to engage and enthuse visitors with what they have learnt.

Getting more money ‘creatively’

If organisations are unwilling or unable to allocate appropriate funds to education programs then strategies to obtain them from elsewhere should be investigated. To start, small but worthwhile education programs should be developed and evaluated within existing budgets. This provides a tangible product to take to grant-funding bodies or potential sponsors and donors. Proposals should be written to explain how this service could be expanded to be even more successful if additional funds were available. Education staff should become familiar with what opportunities for funding are out there and become skilled at writing grant proposals. A golden rule to operate by is: At any given time you should have a grant or funding submission in somewhere.

Education, health and the environment are top-of-mind for governments and they often allocate funds that will be distributed to organisations that can demonstrate delivery of positive outcomes in these fields. If education programs in botanic gardens can be tailored to meet the needs of society then they are more likely to secure external funding. And the programs are more likely to succeed if they are developed in collaboration with other government departments or organisations operating in this arena. An added bonus is that costs and responsibilities can be shared.

A best practice example of this is Community Greening, a partnership program between the Botanic Gardens Trust in Sydney and the NSW government’s Department of Housing. The aim of this initiative is to improve the urban landscape and raise social capital by encouraging public housing tenants and nearby school communities to develop communal gardens. The Department of Housing provides the land (and tenants) and the Botanic Gardens Trust provides education horticulturists for training purposes. In this way tenants and the wider community take ownership of their local environment, connect with botanic gardens, learn new skills and make friends with people from a diversity of backgrounds. This program started small but, thanks to funding from external sources, has now grown to employ two full-time education horticulturists who assist over 60 communities to develop and participate in communal gardens. In addition, local businesses and industry have come on board and contribute sponsorship-in-kind by donating building materials, plants and other sustainable gardening resources.

Conclusion

Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to title this paper ‘Developing a Sustainable Education Program’ and outlined above are the ways to make this happen.

In essence, as well as providing appropriate core funding in recognition of the importance of public education, a commitment should be made by senior management to allow revenue generated from education programs to be put back into program development. In this way, botanic gardens will be more likely to fulfil their commitment to educate the public about plants, biodiversity and the environment.

Notes

(1) The term ‘education programs’ encompasses:

Programs for schools – lessons for students of all ages, professional development for teachers, resource materials.

Programs for community – guided and self-guided walks (such as general and themed, Indigenous and heritage, twilight and VIP tours), talks and lectures, workshops, courses on a wide variety of topics (botany, horticulture, natural, Indigenous and other cultural heritage, arts and crafts such as botanical illustration and basket weaving), holiday activities for kids (such as environmental theatre, storytelling, papermaking, bird watching, birthday parties and weekend clubs) as well as programs about the garden displays themselves!

Outreach programs – school garden clubs, travelling exhibitions and education programs (to remote and regional areas), tree plantings and other community gardens, displays at community open days, festivals and other public events.

© Janelle Hatherly

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Developing a self-funding education program