Today we’d like to introduce you to Jack Graham.
Hi Jack, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
In the spring of 2021, the Portland Children’s Museum closed after 75 years of serving the community, becoming the only major metro area without one. The FLIP Museum was formed that fall to fill the void. FLIP stands for Fun, Learning, Inspiration, and Play, a nod to what makes children’s museums both unique and critical in our society today. As open-ended play decreases and screen time and adult-led activities increase, children are losing the opportunity to explore and imagine, build social-emotional skills, and build confidence and creative problem-solving skills that child-led learning is best suited to support. This is why the community rallied together to rebuild the children’s museum.
In the spring of 2022, FLIP launched their mobile children’s museum, The Big Deal Mobile, bringing immersive exhibits to the community, as people desperately sought out human connection after the pandemic. The desire for more community centers that support families with young kids was substantial and so FLIP opened the first location in December 2024 in Hillsboro. This small museum fills a need for the communities outside of Portland, for whom a central location is impractical, and will continue to operate as a satellite as FLIP expands into Portland in the near future.
During the last fiscal year (25/26), FLIP served over 80,000 people with mobile events, the Hillsboro children’s museum, and installations in libraries in the community. This included outreach to family shelters, rural libraries, and events put on by culturally-specific organizations.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
While there has been broad community support, the biggest challenge has been to build a philanthropic support network from scratch, at a time when government funding for such initiatives has declined substantially. As is often the case with new ventures, it often feels like a chicken-and-egg paradox. Most funding is available once the museum is open, which requires substantial funding to do so. So, we’ve relied on substantial volunteer and in-kind support to build confidence that FLIP is here to stay. Over the past year, we have begun to shift into the next phase – we are beyond proof of concept, and the community is now investing on a larger scale to support something substantial in Portland.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I have been an entrepreneur for most of my career, having earned the Portland Business Journal’s Fastest Growing Companies top 100 award 6 times. For the past 5 years, I have thrown myself into founding this nonprofit, leveraging my start-up experience and comfort with uncertainty and continuous change. I’ve also had to learn a lot about how the nonprofit world works. Thanks to guidance from leaders in the industry, I’ve been able to adapt what I know about building a sustainable business model with limited resources to an industry that cares about mission and impact rather than shareholder value.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
As with most new ventures, the ability to face uncertainty with an optimism that is realistic, knowing that you can’t predict the future but that ultimately you will succeed. This takes a commitment to hard work, continually adapting to change, and a willingness to “wear every hat” for as long as it takes. People need to see this in you if they are going to join you for the journey, and you need many people to make that choice if your vision is going to succeed. Once they join you, you must strike the right balance, deferring to others who have the skills while leading and making hard choices when the optimal approach is not feasible.
Pricing:
- Tickets to our Hillsboro museum are $10/person
- Memberships at our Hillsboro museum start at $30/person for 6 months
- Renting our mobile museum starts at $300 for 2 hour events
- As a nonprofit, we offer discounts for communities in need and partner organizations
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.FLIPMuseum.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theflipmuseum
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FLIPMuseum
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-flip-museum
