October 20, 2025
Looking back, some of the most memorable moments of my career were spent working for my former client, Nick Gray.
It’s incredible to see how the lessons we learned together have directly inspired his exciting new project, Patron View.
I want to share a few stories from our time planning events for the city’s cultural leaders, and then I’ll tell you more about the innovative work he’s doing today.
Hosting Events
During my time with Nick, a huge part of our work was planning and hosting events.
We brought together museum development officials and membership groups from across the city.
Our goal was simple: to create a space where these talented professionals could connect with each other, share challenges, and brainstorm new strategies to support their institutions.
Mike’s Note: Nick wrote an article in 2018 about one of our events in New York. Nick hosted a cocktail party in Manhattan on behalf of Museum Hack to gather individuals who manage Young Patrons or Young Members programs. Click here to read more about it. Inspiring Guests
We were lucky to have people from the city’s most important cultural institutions attend our events. It was always inspiring to have so many brilliant minds in one room.
We regularly welcomed guests from world-class museums and arts organizations, including:
Lasting Memories
The energy of those events was unforgettable, and working with Nick was always an adventure.
A few memories really stand out:
- The final hours before an event, as we rushed to finalize the guest list.
- The last-minute runs to nearby bodegas for supplies.
- Nick’s unique idea to invite secret special guests, like magicians and financial planners, to help everyone think about fundraising in a new way.
About Patron View
As I mentioned, Nick has taken the passion and insights from those days and built something truly impressive.
His latest project, Patron View, is essentially the internet’s biggest database of public donations to cultural institutions.
The scale is incredible—it tracks over 485,000 individual contributions, making philanthropic giving more transparent than ever before.
He also likes to help collect donor and fundraising information online for cultural organizations.
You can see member lists for the following organizations here:
- The Apollo Circle at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art
- Young Associates at The Metropolitan Opera
- Young Fellows at The Frick Collection
- Young Fellows at The Morgan Library (Steering Committee)
- Notables at Carnegie Hall
What’s really powerful is how the site organizes this information. You can explore leaderboards to see the most active donors, the largest single donations (some in the hundreds of millions!), and even which specific museum funds are the most popular.
It’s a direct result of understanding what cultural institutions truly need: clear, actionable data.
You can learn more about Nick’s Patron View donor database and see how the platform helps both patrons and institutions.
Conclusion
My time working alongside Nick showed me how valuable it is to bring the right people together.
We saw firsthand the challenges that museum professionals face, and the solutions we discussed in those events are the same problems Patron View is now built to solve.
It is exciting to see the ideas from our event-planning days grow into a powerful tool for the arts community. Nick has always been dedicated to supporting these institutions, and his new project is a testament to that commitment.
I highly recommend you see what he’s built by visiting Patron View today.