Museums and societal impact 

The MOI Framework is an impact-oriented evaluation framework specifically designed to reflect current issues in the societal impact of museums. You can use the framework to take a critical and shared look at your museum’s activities and performance to find the potential area(s) for development towards increased impact.

Self-evaluation helps organisations to identify their strengths and development needs. Self-evaluation is a process of observing, analysing, and improving one’s own actions or results, and building mutual understanding about the goals set by the organisation for itself and its chosen actions. The organisation evaluates its activities against its strategic approach and thus identifies areas for development.

Using the framework enables group performance appraisal, increases shared understanding, demonstrates the current status across different areas, and acknowledges your museum’s strengths, resources, and goals. 

Using the framework can be beneficial in various situations, such as while developing a new strategy or when there are major staff changes, as it can provide a better understanding of the working community and the current situation of different activities. Using the framework can also be beneficial when a museum wants to make changes in its operations and activities or check its position against its own impact goals.

There is no single correct way to conduct the self-evaluation using the MOI framework. The framework can be tailored to fit various kinds and sizes of museums and their individual contexts.

English materials are available for download on the NEMO website.

Structure and content

The MOI Framework is organised into modules, each containing a number of impact statements that form the core of the framework. The framework consists of eight modules, divided into Enabler and Impact modules. Enabler modules help you look at internal issues that support an organisation's impact and enable it to take place.

The Enabler modules are the following:

1. What we do – Impact goals and strategy
2. How we work – Organisational culture and competences
3. How our organisation functions – Resources and service development
4. How we embed digital into services and processes – Digital engagement

The Impact modules act as the core modules in helping the museum to evaluate different areas currently identified as being of key importance to museums of impact:

1. Communities and shared heritage

1. Relevant and reliable knowledge
2. Societal relevance
3. Sustainable organisations and societies

The modules consist of 151 impact statements for participants to evaluate.

Using the results

The evaluation process is not the final point in developing your museum, but rather a tool to help you identify issues to support this process. Once you have completed the evaluation process, you will be able to identify development objectives and to create a development plan based on the evaluation results. After the evaluation process is complete, it is highly recommended that what has been learned be taken to the next level with the help of the Development Workbook. This is a separate document designed to help your organisation take the next steps to increase its impact, available for download from the link below.

The Development Workbook will help you define and prioritise areas for development and set concrete goals and steps to achieve them.