"Is you, or is you ain't, my constitency?"

Question of the Day: “Is you – or is you ain’t – my constishensy?”

I love movies. Some of my favorites are big and serious. Others are pretty brainless and a little embarrassing to admit out loud. But the best ones end up working their way into my vocabulary. And that’s where I got today’s question, from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

Charles Durning, as the ultimate greasy corrupt politician, is asking the people before him, “Is you – or is you ain’t – my constishensy?” [And I apologize for that spelling…he’s aiming for “constituency”…but it sounds better when I try to spell it the way he says it!]

So, who is your constituency? If you’re like me, you find that you have multiple constituencies: Wilmington College students; Wilmington College faculty and staff; Quakers in southwest Ohio; Quakers across the country; local historians; genealogists; schools…you get the idea. And, of course, no two groups want or need the same thing.

I sometimes think of it also as traveling/living/working in three distinct worlds: the Quaker world, the academic world, and the museum world. Very rarely to those worlds overlap…but often they collide!

I know I’m not alone in this, and it goes a long way to explain why we all feel like we’re being pulled in a million different directions. So what brainstorms do you have to make the most out of your exhibits, your programming, your events, your collections, to get more bang for your buck, to reach as much of your “constishensy” as you can in one fell swoop?