Engaging Places, LLC is a design and strategy firm that connects people and historic places.

We help museums, historic sites, and cultural organizations make better decisions about interpretation, visitor experience, and sustainability. Our work begins with the distinctive power of place—buildings, landscapes, and neighborhoods—and turns those assets into practical strategies for public engagement.

We work with boards, staff, volunteers, and community partners to clarify what matters most: who an organization serves, what stories it should tell, what visitors should know, feel, and do, and what level of ambition is realistic with available resources.

What We Mean by Design and Strategy

For Engaging Places, design is not simply graphics, exhibitions, or architecture. It is the intentional shaping of the visitor experience: how people arrive, move through a site, encounter stories, ask questions, participate, reflect, and leave with meaning.

Strategy is not simply a plan. It is the discipline of making choices—about audiences, stories, spaces, collections, programs, funding, staffing, and partnerships—so that historic places can create meaningful and sustainable public value.

Together, design and strategy help organizations connect mission, vision, and values with action. They turn complex histories and limited resources into visitor experiences that are clear, compelling, and manageable.

Who We Serve

Our clients range from small historic sites and community museums to statewide agencies, national associations, and public institutions. We are especially effective with organizations facing complex transitions: changing audiences, layered or contested histories, aging buildings, limited capacity, major facility decisions, capital campaigns, or the need to reconnect with their communities.

Many cultural organizations have rich stories, significant collections, meaningful sites, committed staff, and loyal supporters. Their challenge is rarely a lack of content or passion. More often, they need help deciding what matters most, what to do first, what to stop doing, and how to align people, places, programs, and resources around greater public impact.

How We Work

Engaging Places combines current research, national standards, field-tested tools, and practical experience in museum and nonprofit management. Our work may include interpretive assessments, visitor experience plans, strategic plans, audience research, community engagement, facilitation, training, evaluation, and implementation frameworks.

We do not believe that every organization needs a bigger plan, a larger building, or more programs. Sometimes the most important work is clarifying purpose, focusing on priority audiences, strengthening the existing visitor journey, improving internal alignment, or making phased choices that match the organization’s real capacity.

Our goal is not simply to produce a report. It is to help organizations make clearer decisions, strengthen public value, and create visitor experiences that are meaningful, manageable, and sustainable.

Areas of Expertise

Engaging Places works at the intersection of interpretation, visitor experience, strategy, and sustainability. Our services are customized for each client, but most projects fall into one or more of these areas:

• Clarify Direction: Strategic planning, business planning, governance transitions, facilitation, mission alignment, organizational assessment, and decision frameworks.
• Strengthen Visitor Experience: Interpretive assessments, visitor journey analysis, tour and exhibition strategy, self-guided and facilitated experiences, orientation, wayfinding, accessibility, and visitor outcomes.
• Interpret Complex Histories: Historic site interpretation, civic learning, contested histories, women’s history, African American history, preservation, material culture, and place-based interpretation.
• Engage Audiences and Communities: Audience research, community engagement, stakeholder conversations, target audience strategy, visitor research, prototyping, and outcomes-based planning.
• Build Sustainable Capacity: Financial sustainability, staffing and volunteer strategy, board development, evaluation, fundraising and membership alignment, implementation planning, and phased growth.
• Plan for Historic Resources: Collections planning, preservation-sensitive visitor access, adaptive use, facility-use strategy,  landscape interpretation, and alignment of buildings, collections, and public use.

Working With Us

Because our consulting is highly customized, we accept a limited number of projects each year. We are most effective with clients who are ready to think deeply, make choices, and use the planning process to strengthen their organization’s public value.

Many of our projects begin through referrals from colleagues, funders, board members, or past clients familiar with our work. We welcome conversations with organizations that see a strong fit between their needs and our approach. To discuss your project or explore next steps, contact Max van Balgooy at Engaging Places, LLC.

Engaging Places, LLC is:

• Max A. van Balgooy, President.  One of the national leaders in historical interpretation and community engagement, with extensive experience in developing solutions in collaboration with volunteers, staff, trustees, residents, scholars, design professionals, business leaders, and elected officials.  Recognized researcher, author, and speaker on the trends, challenges, and opportunities facing museums, historic sites, and cultural organizations.  A skilled facilitator and knowledgeable consultant for developing plans for business strategy, historical interpretation, public programming, marketing, and online media.  For more details, read his profile, check out the projects, and connect with him on LinkedIn.
• Mary A. van Balgooy, Vice President, is a museum leader, public historian, and nonprofit executive with more than 25 years of experience guiding cultural organizations and historic sites. As Vice President at Engaging Places, she advises boards and staff on strategy, governance, and sustainability. A former executive director and collections management professional, she brings deep expertise in women’s history, historic preservation, and organizational leadership to strengthen mission-driven institutions. For more details, read Mary’s profile and connect with her on LinkedIn.