A New Ithaka S+R Report: Funding for Sustainability

[Marita LaMonica <Marita.LaMonica@ithaka.org>]

*Of possible interest to those involved in or supporting digital 
resources*

Looking for long-term impact

A new Strategic Content Alliance/Ithaka S+R report examines 
funding practices to provide insight on post-grant sustainability 
for digital resources

London, UK and New York, NY 14 June 2011 Ithaka S+R, funded by 
the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance (SCA), released today 
"Funding for Sustainability: How Funders' Practices Influence the 
Future of Digital Resources. This report, written by Nancy L. 
Maron and Matthew Loy, provides funders of digital resources and 
their grantees with an overview of current funding practices and 
highlights areas for potential improvement in defining and 
planning for post-grant sustainability.

"'Sustainability' is a pressing topic for many funders, but we 
found that this can mean different things to different people," 
stated Maron, who leads Ithaka S+R's research on sustaining 
digital resources. "We observed that funders articulate a range 
of desirable outcomes under the umbrella term of 
'sustainability.' But it was much less common for funders to 
require applicants to think deeply about the financial and other 
resources needed post-grant to reach these outcomes."

According to the report, which is based on interviews with 
representatives from more than 25 funding bodies in Europe and 
North America, funders engage in a rich range of planning 
activities to address different aspects of sustainability, 
including technical, content-based, access and discovery, and 
audience impact requirements. But many funders only engage with 
their grantees at the beginning of the grant period, and all too 
often funders and project leaders alike rely heavily on a 
university or other host institution as a back-up plan for 
long-term sustainability.

"The need for guidance around this subject has never been so 
stark," stated Stuart Dempster, Director of the Strategic Content 
Alliance. "As many of our peers in the funding community can 
attest, the path from initial funding to long-term sustainability 
has been a long and rocky road for digital resources, largely 
under-investigated and little understood. This report encourages 
funders to consider a sustainability framework for the types of 
resources that they support in an era of discontinuity."

The report offers funders and project leaders a high-level 
process for working together at the proposal stage to set plans 
for sustainability, including establishing a clear definition of 
sustainability for a particular project, indentifying the steps 
needed to achieve the desired outcome at different stages of the 
project, and establishing metrics for measuring the project's 
ongoing impact.

"This research will be of great immediate and practical value to 
the Heritage Lottery Fund as we consider how to ensure that our 
investment in digital heritage is sustained for future 
generations," commented Karen Brookfield, Deputy Director of 
Research and Business Development, Heritage Lottery Fund. David 
De Roure, a sustainability expert at the Oxford e-Research Centre 
and national strategic director of Digital Social Research, 
added, "This report is set to have impact, not just because it's 
based on a comprehensive consultation, but also because it's 
engaging, insightful, and constructive."

The report, written by Nancy L. Maron and Matthew Loy, is 
available at: http://bit.ly/ixkBDB

About the Strategic Content Alliance

The JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance is a unique collaboration 
initiative funded by public sector organisations, all different, 
but all deeply involved in the creation, management and 
exploitation of digital content for the common good. These are: 
JISC, British Library <http://www.bl.uk/>, BBC 
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/>, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council 
<http://www.mla.gov.uk/> (MLA), and the Wellcome Library. The 
Alliance aims to maximise financial and intellectual investment 
in digital content through a more systematic approach to pooling 
and co-ordinating activity.

About Ithaka S+R

Ithaka S+R is a not-for-profit strategic consulting and research 
service that focuses on the transformation of scholarship and 
teaching in an online environment, with the goal of identifying 
the critical issues facing our community and acting as a catalyst 
for change. It pursues projects in programmatic areas that are 
critical to academic work:  Sustainability of Digital Resources, 
the Role of the Library, Practices & Attitudes in Scholarly 
Communications, Teaching & Learning with Technology, and 
Scholarly Publishing. Ithaka S+R is part of ITHAKA, a 
not-for-profit organization that helps the academic community use 
digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to 
advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.

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Media Contact

UK:

Nicola Yeeles
Public Relations Officer
JISC
n.yeeles@jisc.ac.uk

US:

Marita La Monica
Senior Manager, Marketing & Communications
ITHAKA
marita.lamonica@ithaka.org