Resources and equipment

Purchasing resources

Within the constraints of your general budget it may be difficult to ring fence money to provide education resources. However, schools normally expect to be charged for a workshop so if you can protect this income you should have enough to cover your costs. For details of other sources of income see the ‘Fundraising’ section.

There are a number of good commercial stockists of education resources who provide catalogues and easy ordering by phone, fax and internet. Most have a free delivery service, but some do impose a minimum order value.

For supplier websites go to 'Weblink Index'.

Obtaining 'in-kind' sponsorship

You may also be able to get some goods ‘in kind’ if you have local shops with interesting stock. All you need to do is go and talk nicely to them and offer them free publicity at your museum or within any press releases you put out. (See Marketing and Publicity in the Administration section.)

If your museum or the local community has a newsletter you could put out an appeal for things that you may specifically require, for example, a rural community may well come up with a stack of hessian sacks if that is what you need for a project. The lesson is: if you don’t ask, no-one knows what you want!

Scrap stores

A roll of silver foil, thin rubber pipes, long cup-shaped cardboard tubes, and other potentially useful items fro the scrapstore.

Image: Its amazing what you can get from a scrapstore!

One of the most useful sources is your local scrapstore. They collect unwanted ‘rubbish’ from local businesses and charge you a low annual fee for unlimited visits to collect as much as you need. Some stores are better than others depending on what type of businesses there are in the area but you will soon learn what the standard is for your local store and build ideas around what you know is available. If you can’t find the address of you local scrapstore ask around local teachers because most schools take advantage of these resources.

Details of scrapstores in Cornwall can be found on:

www.cornwallscrapstore.co.uk

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