Nonprofits and Geolocation: Fun Now, Funds Later?

I'm not officially studying the nonprofit sector for IS714, but I've had an abiding interest in the area since writing my final paper for IS837 on the strategic use of IT in a British museum. To that end, I was excited to come across a blog post on how the Brooklyn Museum has used FourSquare, an application that allows individuals to "check in" at various locations, share tips on that location with friends, and earn points and status (like becoming the "mayor" of the location) along the way. Thus far, the Brooklyn Museum has used FourSquare to:

• Reward most-frequent-visitors (mayors) with free membership
• Create a mashup with the Yelp API, highlighting the specific restaurant pics of the museum staff among all those in the local area

To facilitate the use of FourSquare, the museum has also created a mobile version of its website, which itself spawned the idea of users going on a "Gallery Tag" mobile scavenger hunt across the museum, labeling objects with either pre-determined or user-created tags.

While the Brooklyn Museum is in something of a playful, exploratory phase with geolocation right now, it's exciting to imagine how the museum might use the technology more strategically going forward. For example, they could:

• Partner with those local restaurants recommended by museum staff, as well as other local shops and services, driving customer traffic bi-directionally by prompting users who have logged in to one venue to complete the pair by logging into the other (e.g., "Visit Joe's Burgers after you leave the museum to get 10% off your check!")
• Use geolocation at a micro-level within the museum, prompting users to log in and comment at those exhibits or works they find particularly interesting. Data patterns on these log ins and comments can then be analyzed to inform decisions on what objects to keep in (or remove from) the current collection, and what types of potential acquisitions make the most sense to purchase given customer viewing preferences.
• Better manage customer retention by analyzing log in data to determine the frequency of an individual user's visits, incentivizing a once-frequent, now-lapsed visitor to come back with a free admission ticket or gift shop discount

It's great to see a non-profit among the pioneers of a new technology - we'll have to stay tuned to see how they proceed!