Museum Operations & Strategy13 min read
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's pivot to a pay-what-you-wish model for non-New York residents is the most famous case study in museum pricing. In theory, it was radical: remove the barrier to entry, let people decide their own price, and trust that enough will pay to sustain operations. In practice, it generated significant data about how pay-what-you-wish actually functions—and the story is more complicated than the mythology suggests.
Pay-what-you-wish (PWYW) has become a trendy admission model for museums, especially mid-size institutions looking to increase accessibility while maintaining some revenue. The logic is seductive: everyone can enter, regardless of ability to pay. Those with means pay more. Those without pay less. It feels democratic and financially pragmatic.
The data is less optimistic. PWYW works well in specific contexts (high-traffic tourist venues with strong brand recognition) and badly in others (smaller, regional institutions without established visitor bases). Worse, it creates a different problem than it solves: it increases total attendance but decreases per-visitor revenue so sharply that many institutions end up worse off financially.
This article examines what PWYW actually generates, who pays what, why some museums succeed with it and others fail, and whether it's the right model for your institution.
Pay-what-you-wish means visitors encounter an entry point with no posted price. A sign might suggest a donation, or staff might suggest an amount, but payment is voluntary and unspecified. Visitors decide what to pay—including zero.
This is distinct from suggested donation, which posts a recommended amount ($15 suggested). Suggested donation generates 15–25% higher revenue per visitor than pure PWYW because the suggestion anchors expectations.
When museums implement pure PWYW (no suggested amount), the actual payment distribution typically looks like this:
Average payment: $3–$6 per visitor
For comparison:
The revenue gap is real. If a museum shifts from standard $15 admission to PWYW:
The math: if you had 40,000 annual visitors paying $15 = $600,000 in revenue, and PWYW drives attendance to 65,000 visitors paying an average of $4.50 = $292,500 in revenue, you've lost $307,500 annually.
That's not offset by increases in gift shop sales or café revenue unless you see a corresponding increase in secondary spending per visitor—which you typically don't, because PWYW visitors (especially those paying nothing or very little) have lower spending propensities.
The Met's pay-what-you-wish policy is widely cited as a success. It's worth examining what actually happened.
Timeline:
Here's what actually worked for the Met:
Massive brand recognition: The Met is the world's largest art museum. Most people know it. Removing the price barrier actually addresses access without addressing awareness.
High tourist traffic: A large portion of Met visitors are tourists willing to pay. The PWYW model gives them the option to pay $20–$30 (more than the $25 they previously paid), while also accommodating locals who want to visit but are price-sensitive.
Enormous endowment: The Met has a $3 billion endowment. A 10% revenue decline is manageable. For most museums, a 10% revenue decline is a crisis.
Multiple revenue streams: The Met generates revenue from gift shop, café, special exhibitions, memberships, and events. A decline in one stream is absorbed by others.
Membership focus: The Met has one of the strongest membership programs in the industry. The shift to PWYW paired with aggressive membership promotion means the museum replaced some admission revenue with membership revenue.
For the Met, PWYW was a strategic choice that fit their positioning (accessibility icon) and their financial capacity (absorb revenue fluctuation). For a regional museum with $3 million in annual admission revenue, PWYW is a different calculation.
PWYW succeeds in specific contexts:
If 70%+ of your visitors are tourists from out of state or country, PWYW can work well. Tourists have higher willingness to pay and are less price-sensitive than locals. They're also less likely to research your price in advance. A tourist arriving at your museum with no posted price will often ask staff what to pay, and if staff suggest $10–$15, they'll typically pay it.
The National History Museum in London uses a "suggested donation" model and generates average payments of £8–£12 despite technically being free. The museum is heavily trafficked by tourists. Locals know it's free and pay nothing; tourists pay the suggested amount.
Success metrics for tourist-heavy museums:
Small niche museums (art, design, craft, specialty collections) with highly engaged communities sometimes succeed with PWYW because their core audience is loyal and willing to pay. The museum isn't relying on casual walk-in traffic; it's relying on people who specifically seek them out and value their mission.
Example: A contemporary craft museum with 8,000 annual visitors, mostly members and repeat visitors, implements PWYW and asks visitors to support the museum through optional donation. Members already pay for admission (as part of membership). Repeat visitors choose to pay because they care about the mission. New visitors often pay nothing, but they might become members later.
Success in this context depends on:
If your museum receives significant government appropriations (40%+ of operating budget), PWYW becomes more viable because you're not entirely dependent on earned income. The government funding cushions the revenue decline.
This is common in some European models: the museum is free or PWYW, and government funds 60–70% of operations. The United States has fewer such museums, but they exist in well-funded public systems (some state museum networks, some city-funded institutions).
PWYW fails in most other contexts. The problem is mathematically simple: the revenue decline is larger than the attendance increase can compensate for.
A small museum with 25,000 annual visitors, charging $8 admission = $200,000 in revenue. Shift to PWYW. Attendance increases 40% to 35,000 visitors. Average payment is $3 = $105,000 in revenue.
The museum has lost $95,000 annually. That's not a rounding error. That's 5% of a typical $2 million operating budget. To recover that revenue, you'd need secondary spending per visitor to increase by 270% (from $20 to $74 per visitor), which doesn't happen.
The museum either cuts 5% of operations (staff, programming, conservation) or faces a growing deficit.
The ripple effects are real. A $95,000 annual shortfall means cutting one FTE staff position (assuming $60K salary + benefits). That's typically education or conservation staff. Your programming suffers. Your collection care suffers. Attendance growth is offset by reduced quality. In year two, you're a worse museum with fewer visitors at a lower per-visitor revenue.
Museums in rural areas or areas with lower population density often face this problem. The potential audience for PWYW is smaller. Foot traffic isn't high enough to generate volume to compensate for lower per-visitor payment.
A museum in rural West Virginia or rural Kansas implementing PWYW might see:
The revenue collapse is unsustainable. For context: a rural museum with a $1.5 million operating budget losing $42,000 annually is a crisis. That's funding cuts to programming, possibly staff layoffs. The "free admission" policy becomes invisible to rural visitors who don't have the cultural knowledge to seek out the museum anyway, and it destroys the museum's financial viability.
This is an ironic outcome: the attempt to make the museum more accessible to local visitors (via free admission) makes it less accessible because programming gets cut and the facility deteriorates.
PWYW depends on people choosing to visit. Museums with weak brand awareness struggle because people don't know they exist. Removing a price barrier doesn't solve that. You still have an awareness problem.
A newly opened regional history museum with limited marketing budget implementing PWYW won't see attendance surge just because admission is voluntary. It needs visitors to discover it first. The barrier isn't price; it's awareness.
If your marketing budget is $50,000 per year and your city's population is 200,000, you're reaching perhaps 15,000–20,000 people (7.5–10% penetration). Those 20,000 people might have a 5% conversion rate (1,000 visits). Whether you charge $8 or PWYW, you're not dramatically changing that conversion—the awareness barrier is too high.
What you're doing is cutting $8,000 in revenue from those 1,000 visitors. You don't gain the 5,000 visitors you'd need to break even.
Some museums implement PWYW not as a strategic choice but as a financial dodge. They're struggling and think removing the price barrier will magically increase attendance enough to compensate. It rarely does.
Struggling museums implementing PWYW often decline further because they've eliminated a revenue stream without addressing the underlying problem (usually weak marketing, poor facility quality, or weak programming). They then face a double bind: no admission revenue and still-declining attendance.
The psychological effect is also real: staff know they're being asked to do more (handle more visitors in PWYW model) with less revenue. Morale declines. Staff turnover increases. Quality declines further.
One underappreciated reality of PWYW: a meaningful portion of your visitors will pay $0.01 or ask for change from a cash payment. In physical collection boxes, this creates operational headaches.
Museums that use digital payment systems for PWYW sometimes specify a minimum payment ($0.50) or recommend amounts. Museums that use physical collection boxes find visitors leave pennies, which have to be collected and counted.
More problematic: the psychological effect of seeing visitors pay nearly zero makes staff uncomfortable and makes the museum feel like it's "not being supported." This is real in staff culture. Museums that shift to PWYW often see lower staff morale because staff perceive the museum as undervalued.
Digital payment systems (QR codes, mobile apps) work better for PWYW than physical boxes because you can prompt visitors to select a recommended amount before they proceed. The Tate Modern (free admission) uses this approach effectively, with default suggested amounts of £5, £10, £20.
If your goal is broader access without destroying your admission revenue base, other models work better:
Post a suggested amount ($12 suggested) with language that payment is voluntary. You'll capture 60–75% of the suggested amount on average while maintaining a posted price point that signals value.
Revenue vs. PWYW: 30–40% higher revenue per visitor.
Offer $15 general, $5 student, $10 senior, free child admission. This captures different market segments at different price points while maintaining higher baseline revenue.
Visitors who can pay full price do. Price-sensitive visitors find a tier that works. Students and seniors feel specially accommodated.
Revenue vs. PWYW: 50–100% higher revenue per visitor.
Shift the revenue model from per-visit admission to annual membership. Offer free admission to members ($150–$200 annually) and $10–$15 general admission for non-members.
This creates a revenue split where high-engagement visitors convert to membership (more predictable revenue) and casual visitors pay per visit (lower per-visit revenue, but lower support cost).
Revenue vs. PWYW: Similar or better, with higher predictability and lower marketing cost to acquire repeat visitors.
Mandatory $3 entry (covers operations cost per visitor) with optional additional donation. This is less psychologically charged than "pay what you wish" because the entry fee is fixed. The donation is truly optional.
Revenue vs. PWYW: 40–50% higher revenue per visitor.
Research on PWYW reveals interesting psychological dynamics that museums often get wrong:
Price framing: When museums describe PWYW as "free but we appreciate donations," visitors pay less on average (average $2.50). When described as "pay what you think is fair," they pay slightly more (average $4). When described as "suggested donation $10," they pay substantially more (average $7–$8). Language matters enormously.
A museum in Portland tested framing by changing signage quarterly:
The museum's Q3 revenue (suggested donation with specific amount) was 3.2x the Q1 revenue, with similar attendance levels. The only variable was language.
Social proof: When visitors can see what others are paying (rare in practice, but tested), they adjust their payment upward. A sign saying "average donation: $8" increases average payments 15–25%. Museums in high-traffic locations have tested this by showing a digital counter of "total raised this month" as visitors enter. The effect is modest but real: visitors see that others are supporting the museum and increase their own payments.
Payment method: Digital payment increases payment amounts. Cash allows zero payment with no friction. Card or QR code payment typically results in higher average payment ($5–$8 vs. $2–$3 cash).
This is because card payment creates a moment of intentionality. The visitor must choose an amount or accept a default. Cash payment can be thrown in a box. The physicality of cash handling sometimes produces guilt (staff are counting your $0.01 contribution), which can backfire.
Explicit staff suggestion: When staff directly suggest an amount ("Would $10 work for you?"), payment averages $8–$10. When staff are trained to say "What would you like to donate?" with no suggestion, payment averages $3–$4.
The staff suggestion is powerful because it provides anchoring and social validation. Staff represent the museum; their suggestion carries weight.
Guilt and confidence: Museums trying to minimize guilt around not paying (by saying "pay whatever you want, no pressure") often result in more zero payments. Museums that confidently state "We're pay-what-you-wish. This is how we stay open. We suggest $10," generate higher payments.
The confidence signals that the museum is healthy and that payment is expected. No confidence (no pressure!) signals that the museum is desperate and payment is optional.
Demographics in PWYW: Older visitors pay more (65+ average $6–8 in PWYW). Younger visitors pay less (18–35 average $2–3 in PWYW). Families pay less than couples. This has implications: a museum with an older demographic might do better with PWYW than a museum with a younger demographic.
Should your museum implement PWYW? Use this decision tree:
Do you have 60%+ government funding or a 7+ year operating reserve?
Are 70%+ of your visitors tourists?
Is your museum in a major metro area (population 1M+) with strong brand awareness?
Do you have documented annual attendance of 40,000+?
Q: Won't making it pay-what-you-wish increase attendance dramatically?
A: Maybe 20–40%. But unless you're a well-known institution, awareness is typically a bigger barrier than price. You also need to consider secondary spending—paying visitors spend more on gift shop and café items. Free or low-paying visitors don't. The net revenue impact is often negative.
Q: How do we handle the people who pay zero?
A: Gracefully. Staff should be trained to thank visitors warmly whether they pay or not. If you act resentful or guilt-inducing, you damage your brand and reduce future donations. People who can't afford to pay might become members later or make donations at higher income levels in the future.
Q: Is suggested donation just "free admission with social pressure"?
A: Yes, essentially. But it's socially effective. The posted suggestion anchors visitor expectations. You'll capture 60–75% of the suggested amount on average, which is significantly higher than pure PWYW.
Q: Can we implement PWYW temporarily and change back if it doesn't work?
A: Technically yes, but it's painful. Once visitors expect free or very-low admission, introducing a $10 charge feels like a betrayal. You'll see attendance drop significantly as visitors reject the sudden price increase. If you're going to test a new model, do it for at least 18–24 months to get real data.
Q: What if we pair PWYW with aggressive membership marketing?
A: That can work. If PWYW brings in 60,000 visitors and you convert 5% to membership, that's 3,000 new members. At $150 per membership, that's $450,000 new revenue, offsetting the admission revenue loss. But this requires sophisticated membership marketing and consistent conversion work.
Q: Isn't free admission more equitable?
A: Free admission increases access for people who choose to visit. It doesn't increase access for people who don't know you exist. Equity requires both awareness and accessibility. Suggesting donation or tiered pricing provides accessibility while maintaining revenue for marketing and programming that builds awareness.
Pay-what-you-wish is not a universal solution. It works brilliantly for the Metropolitan Museum and other well-established, high-traffic institutions. It fails for most regional, underfunded, or under-awareness museums.
Before implementing PWYW, test a suggested donation model first. Post a recommended amount and track actual payment. You'll learn whether your audience is willing to pay and at what level. Then make an informed decision about whether pure PWYW or another model makes more sense for your institution.
If you need help modeling the revenue impact of pricing changes or designing a transition strategy, Musa can help you think through the financial implications and test different scenarios. Get in touch at musa.guide/contact.