This document discusses funding models for maintaining open or club digital projects over the long term. It identifies several potential revenue sources such as core funding, membership fees, use fees, grants, partnerships, and advertising. However, most projects rely on one or two sources which may not be sustainable over time. The document recommends having multiple, diverse revenue streams and being open to innovating new services and business models as existing sources change. No single solution will work for all projects without adaptation to changing environments and needs.

1. How Does One Fund the Ongoing
Maintenance of Open or Club Digital
Projects?
Professor Kristin Eschenfelder
iSchool @ the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences
University of Wisconsin-Madison

3. Statement of concern
How best to ensure the sustainability of our investments in digital cultural
heritage and data projects?
Financial viability is an important aspect of sustainability
What are sources of revenue for these projects?
How should we expesct revenue sources to change over time?

8. Revenue
Sources
Core/structural funding
Consortia/membership model
Deposit fees
Use fees/licensing
Philanthropy
Grants (research problem)
Private partnerships
Premium services
Advertising/sponsorship
Host institution support
Summarized in Kitchen et al. “Funding Models for Open Access digital data repositories” OIR 2015

9. Most common revenue streams?
• Most common
• Structural/core funding
• Data access charges
• Host institution support (sort of )
• Access charge
• Project/grant funding
• Repositories reported an average of two revenue streams each,
but many rely on one source.
• Exploring new revenue streams?
• Yes: 68.2%, No: 27.3%, Maybe: 4.5%
Source: Income Streams for Data Repositories. RDA-WDS Cost Recovery Interest Group: Ingrid Dillo, Simon Hodson, Anita de Waard. OECD (2017); and "Business models for
sustainable research data repositories", OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers, No. 47, OECD Publishing, Paris

10. Lessons learned
• Most projects grow beyond initial assumed funding sources

11. Lesson Learned
• No magic solution that works for everyone
• No solution works for everyone (without change) over the long
term

12. Lessons Learned
• All revenue sources have pluses and minuses
• Best to have several ongoing sources of revenue

13. Lessons Learned
• Revenue sources will change over time
• Big change – try something completely new
• Small change – tweak an existing model
• E.g., change pricing tier or package of services

14. Related Ideas
• What about reducing costs?
• “cost models” or costing tools
• 4C Project - Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation. (2013). In D-
Lib Magazine (Vol. 19, Issue 5/6, p. 7).

15. Related Ideas
• What about value propositions and innovative new services?
• Osterwalder’s Business Model Toolkit:
https://www.strategyzer.com/expertise/business-models
• Knowledge Exchange (2014). Report on Knowledge Exchange
Workshop Sustainable Business Models for Open Access Services. 1–
4. https://www.knowledge-exchange.info/event/sustainability-oa-
services
• Museum/archive/library friendly: https://www.kl.nl/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/kl_busmodin_web_eng_2.pdf

16. Sources
• Dillo, I.; Hodson, S., de Waard, A. (2016) Income Streams for
Data Repositories: RDA-WDS Cost Recovery Interest Group.
• Kitchin, R., Collins, S., & Frost, D. (2015). Funding models for
Open Access digital data repositories. In Online Information
Review (Vol. 39, Issue 5, pp. 664–681). Emerald Group
Holdings Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-01-2015-0031
• OECD. (2017). Business Models For Sustainable Research
Data Repositories: OECD science, technology and innovation
policy paper (issue 47).