I am going to make a suggestion. If you are looking for a present to give someone this Christmas, and you want something that they can use all year round – rather than socks and fragrances… give them a membership pack for a London museum they like to visit.

Most museums have some form of membership scheme and usually offer a range of goodies, such as free entry for museums that charge an entrance fee, newsletters and the bigger venues tend to have private members events in the evenings or priority booking for public exhibitions.

In these austerity driven times, a lot of museums are also seeing reductions in grants from local councils and other grant giving bodies, so becoming a Friend of a local museum is enlightened self-interest. You (I mean, the person you give the gift to) gets goodies, and the museum gets money.

I’ve trawled around looking at the venues I am aware of and seeing which have a Friends Society and listed them below.

Some have a very obvious process for purchasing a membership pack as a gift for someone else, others I have had to chase. The smaller museums the policy is generally to send the form to them with the recipients details on, but add a letter explaining that you want the introduction letter (etc) sent to you so you can hand it over as a present.

I’ve probably missed a few out – some by accidental omission and some deliberately. Inclusion in the list means that buying a membership gets you something back in return.

Yes, we should be willing to donate money and get a warm feeling in exchange, but most people want at least a newsletter or two and to feel somehow connected to the venue. One museum I once joined sent me just one letter, a year later, asking if I wanted to renew!

Some museums are I am sorry to say rather difficult to contact – but I decided to leave them in the table below as they have a scheme, they just didn’t reply to phone and email enquiries about buying memberships as gifts. The Cost listed below is generally for payments by cheque/creditcard as opposed to cheaper direct debit, as I will presume you will only be buying a single year’s membership.

A museum membership isn’t just for Christmas, it’s for… well, a whole year at the very least.