NDSA has been an active membership organization since its founding in 2010. It advocates for the digital stewardship needs of its member organizations, convenes a community of practice, and provides professional development opportunities for its members. Today, NDSA is completely run by volunteers from its member organizations, with administrative assistance subsidized by CLIR.

NDSA membership has always been free for any organization committed to long-term digital stewardship. While NDSA has thrived thanks to an active network of volunteers, this model has also presented many challenges to NDSA’s sustainability and independence as the organization has grown and matured. While NDSA was fortunate to have been funded through the Library of Congress’ National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program in our early years, and has received financial support from CLIR since 2016, we now find ourselves unable to fulfill our mission and goals without a sustainable funding model.

NDSA funding would enable us to hire a community manager, who would onboard and support NDSA members, coordinate communications and outreach, and assist with NDSA in-person and virtual events. These are all unmet needs that have been identified as high priority through member surveys, interviews, and discussions within NDSA Leadership.

Over the past few years, NDSA engaged in many activities to uncover these unmet needs. The Task Force on Membership Engagement and Recruitment began in 2021. The group conducted a survey of NDSA’s member base to measure the current value of benefit offerings and understand how to attract and recruit broader partnerships. Survey results led to the creation of the Membership Working Group, charged with discussing the findings on membership types and fees, criteria for evaluating new members, improving the new member onboarding, and more. In 2023, the Membership Working Group held group listening forums and individual interviews to gain more information on member preferences and opportunities for NDSA to engage with and grow our membership. The group recently completed its recommendations on improvements and expansion of NDSA’s member engagement, and submitted a report for review by the NDSA Leadership.

Concurrently in 2022, NDSA Leadership began efforts to explore the optimal organizational alignment to meet member needs and help NDSA fulfill its mission and to serve as a national leader in the field of digital preservation. Through this evaluation, NDSA refreshed its Mission, Vision, and Values and developed a summary of its current host relationship with CLIR, its operational support requirements, and its financial impact.

In late 2022, the Long-Term Conference Planning Working Group was charged with examining NDSA’s annual conference practices and making strategic recommendations on the future of NDSA conferencing and events. The group recommended that NDSA lengthen the interval between its national in-person conferences, incorporate more virtual options, and create a clear mission statement for those in-person gatherings. They also recommended that NDSA explore the implementation of smaller “Designated Community” events that would be accessible to more of its members. Through these recommendations, NDSA will develop a more holistic strategy for its programming and events. A new working group focused on implementing these improvements to NDSA events began its work in May 2024.

When thinking about how to financially support these growing needs, NDSA Leadership has discussed a sliding scale membership fee model, organizational vs. individual memberships, vendor sponsorships, and revenue from events such as the DigiPres conference. Your feedback is critical to help us determine a membership fee schedule that would be both sustainable and affordable. If a fee-for-membership model is not feasible for a majority of member organizations, NDSA will evaluate its other funding options. However, without sustainable funding, meeting the most basic needs of NDSA’s members will be at risk and NDSA’s strategic goals will not be met.

In order to evaluate these funding options, we have created a brief survey which should take about 10 minutes to complete. The survey will be sent out via email to NDSA’s member representatives – please keep an eye on your inbox! In exchange for completing the survey, you may choose to be entered into a raffle for one free registration to the next DigiPres conference. (Your contact information will only be used for the raffle and will not be included in the dataset for analysis.) We request that you complete the survey by September 10, 2024.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact Bethany Scott, NDSA Coordinating Committee Chair, at ndsa[dot]digipres [at] gmail [dot] com. Thank you for your feedback and support!

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