The museum gets $580,000 a year from Wanganui District Council, and pays the council $86,500 to lease its building. Other funding expected is $82,000 from the Ministry of Education for school visits, $34,000 from admission fees and $35,000 from its shop.
It would also be applying for about $1 million in grants, and expected to get a substantial amount of that.
Dr Dorfman said it was developing its own merchandise and would like to add a cafe.
It was about to mount a publicity blitz, with new branding, a presence on Twitter and Facebook and a website made by Inferno Design. The website would eventually show the museum's entire collection of hundreds of thousands of objects, with summarised information.
The site was beginning more modestly, Dr Dorfman said, with 200 iconic objects. It could be launched as early as October.
New exhibitions were being planned.
The River show would be a long-term effort, and Whanganui Community Foundation had given $15,000 in seeding money.
Another, Wunderkammer, would feature early 16th Century collections and pose wider questions about the way people collect things.
The Good Nature exhibition would feature live animals and live plants in a rongoa (Maori traditional medicine) garden between the museum and forecourt.
Events were also planned, some of them free. They could include art films and lectures.
Change to the museum building has long been talked of. Dr Dorfman said it was now warmer inside, but still at risk from earthquakes. The cost to insure it has risen from $27,000 to $69,000.
The museum is a charitable trust, with 15 staff, many volunteers and a board of 12 made up of six Maori representatives and six others. Its governance has been controversial, and is now being reviewed by the Auckland University of Technology (AUT).
But Dr Dorfman said Whanganui was the first museum to adopt bicultural governance, and the system was admired by staff and its joint council, and by other museums nationally and internationally.
"We (came) to the conclusion that it's one of the fundamental things that makes us special and we should use that as a core driver."