Hong Kong’s most Hong Kong museum

Top location, amazing content – but how do you persuade donors to front up and get punters through the door? Angie Tse tells Simran Vaswani about the challenges she faces at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.

Even while she was a youngster, Angie Tse’s father pushed her to volunteer her time for deserving causes. Now, having worked for a number of non-profits, including Amnesty International and Greenpeace, she is Head of Development at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, which was founded in 2003 by members of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association to act as the custodian of the city’s ocean-related history and heritage. Having taken up the job a year ago, Angie talks about the challenges of steering a steady and profitable course for one of the city’s most iconic museums.

How did you get started in your career?

One summer when I was studying social sciences at City University here in Hong Kong, I told my parents that I wanted to get a part-time job to pick up some work experience and earn a bit of pocket money at the same time. My father, who worked as a chef for a catering company at Chek Lap Kok, said, “Hey, why don’t you try to volunteer for a worthwhile cause? I’ll give you the pocket money.”

That pretty much set me up for everything that’s followed. Ever since leaving university, I have always worked for some sort of charity, mostly on the fundraising side. I enjoy being in an agile environment. In a charity, I feel people always have the same goals and it’s good to work with like-minded people. If my job can support me, as well as helping make Hong Kong a better place, I think that makes it all the more worthwhile.

What does your job consist of?

My main task is to raise funds for the museum, which has an annual operating budget of around HK$25 million. We are fortunate to have different stakeholders in the shipping industry who support us financially. So my role is about maintaining the relationships and also organising various fundraising events. On top of that, I am trying to diversify our donor base, because the museum is not solely concerned with the shipping industry, but also marine and ocean science.

How tricky is fundraising is right now?

We receive a subvention from the government but still have to raise funds, which is never easy, especially nowadays. Donors, no matter whether they are individuals, or from trust foundations or corporations, want to know about the impact of our work. So we have to make sure that values are aligned between the donors and the museum – but that’s just the first part. After we have raised the resources, we have to report on progress to the donors, and they want to know if the support they have given is really making an impact. Nowadays it is quite challenging because donors expect more.

Some corporate donors or sponsors want to have some staff engagement with the charity they support. So on top of providing funding to run and carry out programmes, they expect that their staff will get involved in volunteer work. This is a good result for us, because as well as a financial donation, we get some support in the shape of actual manpower.

How do you go about attracting more visitors?

That’s definitely one of the challenges we are facing right now. During COVID-19, like other museums in Hong Kong, we had to shut up shop for more than nine months and the borders were also closed for quite some time. So both these factors had quite a big impact on our visitor numbers, which have been cut from 125,000 a year to about 60,000; however we are confident they will improve in the months ahead.

Now that the borders are open, we’re working on attracting international visitors and tourists to the museum by organising some new programmes. We have scheduled a series of relatively modest exhibitions related to marine biology and conservation, and are putting more emphasis on life in the ocean as well as life on and with the ocean.

Later this year we will also host a major historical exhibition featuring artefacts from a Tang dynasty ship, which are being lent by another Asian museum.

They are testimony to the ancient commercial and cultural contact between China and the Middle East.

We’re also looking to attract more Hong Kong students. Not only do they boost visitor numbers, it also gives us a chance to educate them. We can teach them about the shipping industry in Hong Kong, maritime history in China and also about marine science.

I should point out that our location – on the harbour, right by Star Ferry and in the shadow of the Observation Wheel – is also a real attraction. There’s a gallery on B Deck with the most amazing harbour views: I even take a break there myself sometimes.

Apart from fundraising, what project and event management are you working on?

Our annual gala dinner for 150 guests is scheduled to take place this autumn. We’re always thinking about what should be included in the gala dinner besides good food and wine and how to give our guests a memorable experience, because we’re always grateful for the support of our stakeholders. So I’m trying to focus more on the experience so that the guests will enjoy that night.

Every year we stage special exhibitions which require additional funds, so my team and I are working closely to see how we can approach different sponsors for them. In sum, I would say that the fourth quarter of the year is one of the times when we are busiest.

What do you most like about your gig?

My day-to-day life is mostly about meeting people, which I really enjoy. As Head of Development, a lot of my time is about raising money and also attending meetings with the director, Professor Joost Schokkenbroek, or other team members to see if we can develop relationships with different stakeholders.

I would say about 25 percent of my time is spent going out to meet people, learning more about what other people are doing, introducing the museum to them and trying to see if there’s anything that we can help each other with, and then we can take it from there. The angle might not always be money, but maybe opportunities to collaborate and work together instead. n