This research study examines why and in what ways three museums decide to participate in community visioning (CV) projects. The study illustrates the organizational characteristics and capacities needed to participate in formal civic engagement processes of which CV processes are a subset. The literature offers no systematic examination of cultural institutional involvement in CV, and limited study of their participation in civic engagement activities as a whole. The theoretical framework for this study is grounded in diverse disciplinary theory, drawing largely from Edgar Schein’s (1999 and 2004) theories of organizational culture and Cornelia Flora and Jan Flora’s (1993) entrepreneurial social infrastructure.

This multi-case study design studied three museums from different U.S. Census divisions. Community visioning leaders from twenty-three states in all four census regions were asked to identify museums that participated in CV projects. A natural history museum, arts council and history museum were identified from a pool known to participate in CV projects. A case study profile was built through focus groups, personal interviews, organizational documentation and field observations. A museum’s organizational characteristics were compared and contrasted across museum types in order to uncover facilitators and inhibitors of a museum’s participatory capacity.

Findings and conclusions emerged inductively from the data and from pre-coding based on theoretical frameworks. Two out of three museums examined participated for the entire duration of their respective CV projects. The third museum participated for a limited timeframe. Findings are broken into three sets of facilitative and inhibitive factors: executive leadership, organizational and external factors. Museum executive leadership was the single greatest facilitator and inhibitor of CV participation. Organizational characteristics and capacity supported sustained participation in two cases and inhibited participation in a third case study. External factors played a small but critical part in museum involvement. Organizations exhibiting the most mature entrepreneurial collaborative spirit, social infrastructure and positive, extro-community orientation sustained CV participation. The findings support the theoretical idea that entrepreneurial collaborative organizations are integrated with their community’s entrepreneurial social infrastructure. Entrepreneurially collaborative organizations build social capital, sustain mutually beneficial external collaborations, and innovate internally, based in part on community goals, with external links to resources.