The Interledger Community 🌱: Brandon J. Roy

MHz Curationist Sustainable Financing Study - Final Report

Brandon J. Roy — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 19:16:40 +0000

Project Update

Our project completed its objective of researching a path forward for the ongoing sustainability of our Curationist.org project, and developed a timeline for implementing a multi-faceted plan to execute on that sustainability path. We have produced a document outlining our findings throughout this research and analysis process, which can be found here. Much of the text below, which constitutes our Final Report, is excerpted from this longer Detailed Study Findings report, which we encourage our readers to read in full as time allows.

As you can see in this report, after a good deal of study, we have arrived at a plan to pursue four types of monetization strategies: micropayments, grant funding, corporate sponsorships, and services. We have a plan for which type of funding to pursue first (corporate sponsorships for technical development, alongside grant funding for platform development), mid-term (technical support services and corporate sponsorships for community outreach), and six to twelve months post-launch (institutional collaboration grants, docent services, and micropayments). We are actively pursuing corporate sponsorships for technical development and grant funding for platform development at this time.

Progress on Objectives

We have arrived at a dual strategy at the completion of this report, which serves to generate a strategy on two types of funding: one focused on sustainable funding for content creation, and the other for sustainable finding of ongoing operations of the Curationist.org platform, once we complete our V2 platform launch in early 2022.

The monetization strategy that we will pursue to fund content creation is as follows:

Micropayments

When we launch Curationist.org (v 2.0) in 2022, the platform will have a headless CMS in the background. Accordingly, curators of our works will be able to go into the back end of our system to access the data store of CC0 and CC-BY GLAM content that we have pulled from disparate sources and normalized. From there, they can craft rich stories about the objects.

A successful platform is one that incentivizes curators to visit frequently to share their stories. Building a micropayment system into the footer of each curated collection is one way for us to invite content consumers to financially reward content curators quickly and easily for the creation of that content. The invitation will include a message to this effect: “The work that is presented here was contributed by a volunteer. If you find value in this information, we invite you to say ‘thank you’ to this contributor through a micropayment of X (e.g., $1 USD).” This message will be accompanied visually by a button the user may click to take action. Many platforms employ similar mechanisms successfully, including major newspaper platforms like The Guardian UK.

As we explain later in this report, we will start our exploration of micropayments through user testing with our curators. Specifically, we will explore curators’ interest in receiving micropayments and will speak with them about various micropayment scenarios. We plan to build this user testing and dialogue around the use of COIL technology because, at this stage, we think COIL is the micropayment processing technology that we will want to use. As such, we will build user scenarios around the use of COIL during this “proof of concept” tech phase.

One of the challenges of building an effective user experience around micropayments is that curators’ acceptance of micropayments will be optional, not mandatory. While some of our curators are independent (individuals speaking on their own behalf), others are institutional - i.e., curators speaking on behalf of their GLAM institution. Both types of curators (independent and institutional) should be able to opt-in or out of the micropayment system.

Lastly, we want to point out that in addition to incentivizing the creation of curated collections (as described above), we are also trying to find ways to incentivize metadata work, which is where people augment the metadata that exists for a digital object with additional information. While there is a longer-term potential of finding ways to build micropayment monetization pathways into the creation of metadata, it will not be our first exploration. Rather, we will start our field testing of micropayments at the curated collections level to see whether there is acceptance of this type of monetization strategy. We will begin that process with some user testing to engage curators around various micropayment engagement scenarios and different UI options, and we will learn what we can from that user testing to get a final spec for micropayments onto our roadmap. We will use this user testing phase to also field test curator tolerances for our intended content policy, content moderation system, and editorial standards. Later, we will consider whether micropayments are also a strategy that we want to explore at the metadata creation level, by following a similar test-driven development process.

The monetization strategy that we will pursue to fund operations is as follows:

Corporate sponsorships

We strongly believe that we can bring great value to the world through the creation of a data store of GLAM content in CC0 and CC-BY format with normalized metadata and taxonomy. While it can be used successfully within our own platform, the highest and best use of our platform may be as a demonstration of, and advertisement for, the usefulness of this centralized data store. In fact, as this central source of GLAM content grows, it will become a significant and growing contribution to the free-knowledge movement.

Corporations have historically found value in sponsoring the expansion of content in the free-knowledge field, when doing so allows them to leverage that content in order to advance their corporate goals. Because we only offer CC0 and CC-BY creative commons content, and because we plan on being thoughtful about how we approach issues such as indigenous data sovereignty, we believe corporations will find value in a data store like ours existing that is designed to be cleaner from a data hygiene perspective than an environment like Flickr Commons.

We are in the process of generating a list of major corporate sponsors who we believe will find great value in the type of data store that we are seeking to build particularly when it comes to content that is not already easily accessible online. When they see and understand the value proposition, they will want to fund the development of this work. One of many examples of the types of organizations that could find great value in this includes Automattic, the creator of WordPress. Specifically, Automattic could take free GLAM content that is smartly and meticulously tagged, and deploy this content for use in the public blogs created by their users. Additionally, Google has leveraged Wikipedia data in its search algorithms.

We see this as a sequential process: first, we will normalize the way that the content that already exists is able to be accessed from a metadata and taxonomy standpoint. Initially, the data store will leverage the work of large institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian. We believe that completing this first step will make it easier for smaller, traditionally underrepresented GLAM institutions in the Global South to participate by providing them with a ubiquitous template. Eventually, we will also try to raise capital for those institutions to further assist their efforts. Involvement from these lesser-known institutions will allow us to achieve our ultimate goal of raising underrepresented voices by bringing their content and stories to light in a way that can be easily shared.

Corporate sponsorship development is needed in two areas: technical development and community outreach.

First, we must complete the technical component of the development of the data store. While the taxonomy and metadata work has completed its structural development, technological groundwork is still underway (such as ensuring that the centralized data store is complete and content from multiple API streams has been normalized) and will require the support of corporate sponsors to finish.

Second, we will need assistance with outreach efforts to targeted communities in underrepresented regions to communicate the benefits of and encourage their participation in the data store, and eventually additional pools of funding that could go directly to those communities to assist them with the digitization of their collections.

Grants

Grants have been a source of MHz Curationist’s funding from the outset. We are continually seeking additional grant funding in order to service different aspects of what we’re building; we do not anticipate changing this approach to funding.

We will continue to pursue grants that will enable our data store to be fully built, our taxonomy and metadata work to be complete, and our platform to be up and running. However, even with the completion of this work behind us, we will still be uncomfortably positioned as too much of an island in the work that needs to be done on the GLAM content that we wish to enrich with metadata and curation work. The more we can make our systems interoperable with the systems of other organizations across the internet, the more a community can develop that allows for that content to be used beyond our own platform.

Therefore, while we continue to seek grant funding for platform development and data store development, upon launch, we will begin prioritizing community collaboration grants that focus on interoperability between our community and other communities focused on similar work.

An example of this is the work of the Wikimedia Project’s work on Wikidata. The more interoperability we can enable between our work and theirs, the more we can ensure that our important work won’t be siloed and can be used by all, wherever that work is most useful across the web.

One further way that we can ensure that our work is not siloed on our own platform is by collaborating with the world’s colleges and universities on OER. We envision these collaborations leveraging our platform or data store to teach and will thus pursue grants to further this opportunity.

Services

We plan to actively market two different types of services that would enable customized interactions with our platform and/or data store. Those two service types are docent services and tech support services.

Docent services

Collaborations with colleges and universities will stimulate the development of Curationist as an OER. Moreover, our curators will develop a tremendous amount of content that will be very useful to educators worldwide. Just as an in-person museum may hire a docent to walk them through a museum, we can offer virtual docents that will walk visitors through content that exists on our platforms to teach them about the world through the eyes of our curators. Whenever possible, a) the docent services will be provided by content creators themselves, and b) those docents will talk about cultural content that is from their own culture.

The majority of funds for these docent services would be distributed to the people who have generated the compelling content, with a certain small percentage handed back to the institution for operational overhead. As our OER plan develops and expands, a “Head of Docent Services” role will need to be developed to allow this system to be architected and implemented.

Technical support services

We want to enable the GLAM institutions of the world to leverage our data store free of charge. Meanwhile, we will offer paid services to institutions that need hand-holding in that process or who need custom work done to ensure that integrations work. This will be true for both ingress and egress services - meaning that if there are institutions that wish to leverage the content within our data store, we will offer services, as well as services to GLAM institutions that wish to contribute to our data store. Because we are interested in the latter, and it is beneficial to us, we will attempt to seek grant funding to facilitate a pool of resources that will allow us to provide free services as possible to GLAM institutions interested in plugging into our system who cannot afford the technical support services necessary to do so.

Ultimately, we are hopeful that once our baseline set of API calls, taxonomies, and structures are in place, most organizations can interact with our data store and technology structure in a self-serve way. For those who can’t, we will have fair and reasonable prices to guide them in that process. As with previous services, most of the funds associated with billables in that area will go directly to fund the technologists with a small percentage overrun for administrative overhead.

Key activities

INITIAL MONETIZATION RESEARCH:

Investigation of Monetization Strategies In Use by Like-Kind Open-Access Platforms

We set out to understand funding models employed by like-kind open-access platforms currently in operation. Specifically, we set out to learn the following:

How are the organizations funded? Grants and/or corporate funding?
How are staff and other operating expenses covered?
How do the organizations incentivize people to produce content?
Do the organizations provide paid services?
Do the organizations accept micropayments and do these payments only go to the content producers?

To gain a better understanding of funding options available, and how our peers are finding the proper balance, we took a close look at how six like-minded open-access organizations sustain their operations.

RESEARCH SAMPLE:

Specifically, we studied two organizations from the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums): Free Music Archive (an organization that provides free and royalty-free music from independent artists) and Internet Archive (a nonprofit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.

Additionally, we included two open-knowledge websites in our study: Smarthistory (an organization that makes the history of art accessible and engaging to more people in more places than any other publisher) and Khan Academy (a nonprofit with the mission to provide free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere).

Lastly, we studied the Wikimedia Foundation (providing the essential infrastructure for free knowledge) and WikiArt (a visual art encyclopedia, formerly known as WikiPaintings, with the primary goal of making the world’s art accessible to anyone, anywhere). WikiArt is unaffiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, though they are both parts of the Wiki movement. The Wikimedia Foundation organization and its websites stand apart from the other four organizations in our study in terms of scope and marketplace recognition, not to mention funding. Nevertheless, the underlying principles that form its foundation are in alignment with those governing MHz Curationist, thus we included the Wikimedia Foundation in our study.

To gather financial data on these six organizations, we examined the most recent IRS Form 990 that is available for each organization that is based out of the United States. Free Music Archive is headquartered in the Netherlands and WikiArt in Ukraine.

Funding Sources:

Free Music Archive: Grants, Program Service Revenue, and Micropayments
Internet Archive: Grants, Program Service Revenue
Smarthistory: Grants, Program Service Revenue
Khan Academy: Grants, Program Service Revenue
Wikimedia Foundation: Grants, Program Service Revenue
WikiArt: Advertising

RESEARCH FINDINGS:

Of the six organizations studied, only one (Free Music Archive) accepts micropayments as a source of funding. Five of the six organizations (all except WikiArt) are funded by grants, with Khan Academy and Internet Archive earning supplemental funding from program service revenue. WikiArt is funded entirely through advertising revenue.

To supplement its grant funding, Khan Academy and Internet Archive draw 37 percent and 40 percent of their total revenue from the sale of paid services, respectively. Similarly, Free Music Archive supplements its income from paid services, however, data was incomplete as to how much of their total funding consists of service fees.

When it comes to content creation, three of the six organizations in our study rely on volunteers to produce content for free: Wikimedia, WikiArt, and Smarthistory. Content creators for Khan Academy and Internet Archive are paid, whereas the musicians who produce content for Free Music Archive are paid through micropayments.

Finding only one of the peer organizations we investigated accepting micropayments, we returned to our question, “How do the organizations incentivize people to produce content?”

Of the rest of the organizations, the most data existed for Wikipedia. The Wall Street Journal referenced a 2009 study on the subject in which they determined the following:

“Altruism and fact-checking are the top motivations of contributors, the study found. About 73% indicated "I like the idea of sharing knowledge and want to contribute to it," while 69% said, "I saw an error I wanted to fix."

“When asked what would make them more likely to contribute to the site, the top response was if "I knew there were specific topic areas that needed my help" (41%), followed by "It was clear to me that other people would benefit from my efforts" (36%). Thirty-two percent marked "Other/don’t know/don't want to say."

Our own explorations into micropayments will help us to determine whether it is the proper path for us, but whether it is or not, the insights on why people take the time to contribute to Wikimedia Foundation sites will prove invaluable as well.

RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS:

Our study of like-kind organizations that are curating content on open-source platforms reveals that none of these organizations are sustaining themselves through micropayments alone. All of these organizations are funding their operations through a blend of grants, advertising, and revenue from the sale of paid services. While the two largest organizations that we studied (Wikimedia and WikiArt) have a no-cost content creation platform, three of the organizations have found it necessary to financially incentivize content creators.

It is thus reasonable to conclude that a sustainable funding model for MHz Curationist will include a blend of revenue streams, such as grants, corporate sponsorships and donations, fee-for-service, micro-payments, and advertising.

FURTHER MONETIZATION EXPLORATION:

We will now explore five means of monetizing the Curationist platform:

Micropayments
Corporate sponsorships
GLAM Data Store
Grants
Services

We will evaluate each monetization strategy against its ability to: a) fund ongoing operations, and b) incentivize content creation.

Micropayments

Micropayments are small transactions, often carried out online that can be as small as a fraction of a cent. Depending on the payment system and platform, a micropayment may be as small as $0.01 USD or as large as $5.00 - $20.00 USD.

When it comes to utilizing micropayments as a means of funding operations and infrastructure, our research has not produced a model that invites participants on a platform to contribute to that platform’s base operations. However, due to the administrative overhead and fees associated with processing micropayments, we plan to build in a surcharge on top of each micropayment that we receive, which will be a set percentage based on real administrative costs and fees assessed, in order to sustain the micropayment model without losing money on it.

Meanwhile, our research has revealed that it is possible for us to integrate a micropayment system that financially rewards the creator of the content. We believe there will be enough upside from these micropayments for people to not only create content but to promote the content they have created within their own network.

Research from Like-Kind Organizations:

To Fund Operations: Negative/none observed
To Fund Content Contributors: Seldom used (1 of 6 organizations studied)

Conclusion:
None of the organizations in our study fund their operations through micropayments alone. We believe it is possible for us to integrate a micropayment system that financially rewards the creator of the content while building in a modest processing fee into each payment to sustain the fees associated with offering the micropayment model. Therefore, while we do not see micropayments as a way to fund operations, we do see a way to make micropayments self-sustaining, such that they do not add cost to operations and infrastructure.

Corporate Sponsorships

Corporate sponsors make sponsorship investments in nonprofit organizations when one or both of the following benefits is present:

The nonprofit organization has attracted a sizable audience, whose demographics complement the corporation’s demographics, or represent a demographic that the corporation wants to pursue; and/or
The nonprofit organization is engaging in a project that would bring value to the marketplace, and thus to the corporation, by solving a problem that the corporation no longer has to solve or invest its time, energy, and human resources first-hand.

When we consider how Curationist is positioned against these two criteria, we come to see the following:

Curationist is an emerging platform currently operating with a beta site. Accordingly, financial modeling, operational sustainability exercises, and digital platform management work is currently underway. Curationist has not yet reached the brand-building stage in its life cycle, thus it does not have the traffic metrics that would entice a corporation to invest marketing dollars into advertising on the site. While Curationist has long-term goals of approaching corporations for funding, who wish to associate their business with its global audience of culturally interested individuals, pursuing this as a source of short-term funding is premature.

Curationist is engaged in a massive digital undertaking that would benefit corporations who are motivated by bringing open-access, cultural content, to a global audience in a way that helps raise underrepresented voices through digital storytelling. Curationist is positioned to attract funding from corporations who value the creation of such a GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) data store.

We will focus on opportunities to draw revenue from the latter in the next section.

Research from Like-Kind Organizations:

To Fund Operations: Negative/none observed
To Fund Content Contributors: Negative/none observed

Conclusion:
The financial data that we reviewed did not yield any insights into whether an organization was receiving funding from corporate sponsors or not. Curationist is in the development stage in its life cycle, thus its website traffic volume is not yet enough to attract a corporate sponsor for advertising. This is not a short-term source of funding for operations nor content contributors.

GLAM Data Store

There are multiple online locations where one can find Creative Commons content. Many large organizations are providing their own streams of CC0 and CC BY content, typically via API, such as the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Originally, we planned to connect to the API of organizations such as these, bringing their CC0 and CC BY content into a central source. However, this was problematic because every institution’s API and content is unique. Trying to bring everything together in a single-search algorithm that was functional and easy to use was nearly impossible, resulting in non-normalized, slow results.

Thus, we turned our focus to normalization. Specifically, we are making the CC0 and CC BY content that we gather as part of a data structure (a taxonomy) that puts content into categories based on a GLAM taxonomy that we have created. In addition, we have created standardized ways to handle metadata with normalized tagging.

The output on the Curationist site is a massive amount of hosted content that is:

free and openly accessible via uniform methods
categorized and uniformly-tagged
standardized in its appearance on the site
easily searchable
returns results quickly

Now that this normalized GLAM metadata and taxonomy systems have been created, it can expand over time. Our aim is for these systems to be useful to others, so that people who are new to the idea of putting their content into CC0 and CC BY, will use our metadata schema and taxonomy, bringing their content into a much larger, global pool of content.

Corporations who find such a data store of GLAM content useful for themselves and/or their users, members, or customers, will see a benefit in investing money into this project. Such funding would achieve the objective of funding operations, but not necessarily incentivizing content creation.

Research from Like-Kind Organizations:

To Fund Operations: N/A
To Fund Content Contributors: N/A

Conclusion:
We are plowing new ground at Curationist, so there is no like-kind organization to study. However, we believe that Curationist’s massive digital undertaking will be compelling to corporations who are motivated by having access to large amounts of normalized image data. Corporations interested in funding the project would also be bringing open-access, cultural content, to a global audience in a way that helps raise underrepresented voices through digital storytelling. Accordingly, we have developed a shortlist of possible corporations for whom such a data store of GLAM content could prove useful for themselves and/or their users, members, or customers, will see a benefit in investing money into this project, and we will begin by contacting them. Such funding would achieve the objective of funding operations, but not necessarily incentivizing content creation.

Grants

Curationist was conceived out of a desire to tell curated stories about cultural objects in ways that help raise underrepresented voices. Information about the cultural objects that can be searched and found on the platform is enhanced by the stories that are shared about the objects themselves - this is made possible thanks to the normalization of the data store at the metadata level.

In this way, Curationist is providing an open educational resource (OER), with an eye towards ensuring that the systems we are building are freely available to be used around the world.

When it comes to grant funding, we are looking for organizations that see alignment with our ambition to overcome colonial voices with digital storytelling. We want to give voice to narratives that are true to an object’s original creator and/or culture, and do so in a way that makes it easy for underrepresented voices to plug into the system. Ultimately, we want small institutions in the far corners of the world to have the same access to contribute their narrative to cultural objects, as the more well-heeled, prominent cultural locations.

The right grantor will help us take what we are building and bring it to a larger audience so that it lives well beyond the Curationist website. The right grantor will help us make the platform more accessible for smaller GLAM institutions to plug into.

A grant will help fund certain aspects of the Curationist operation, but it is unlikely that it would incentivize content creation.

Research from Like-Kind Organizations:

To Fund Operations: In use/viable (5 of 6 organizations studied)
To Fund Content Contributors: Negative/none observed

Conclusion:
Grant funding was proven to be a cornerstone means of funding like-kind organizations. Curationist is providing an open educational resource (OER) that is freely available globally. The right grantor will help us fund operations so that we are able to bring what we are building to a larger audience. It is unlikely to find a grant that would help subsidize content creation.

Services

Curationist’s content is a valuable resource for groups to use in support of their educational efforts. Structuring customized access to this resource can unlock a revenue stream.

We see two types of service offerings as paid add-ons to that which Curationist offers for free: 1) docent services, and 2) technical support services.

Docent Services

Starting a virtual storytelling program with a college, university, or school district could provide Curationist with an ongoing revenue stream. For instance, a docent could walk a class through a certain type of art that is physically isolated to certain parts of the world but that, through the data store, has been brought together in one virtual museum. There are numerous ways to model online offerings after ticketed offerings available in-person in modern museums.

Technical Support Services

Certain people or institutions may need digital support services. While access to our API will be free, there may be specific technical needs that require hands-on support for which we can charge a fee.

Over time, each of these service offerings will evolve based on consumer demand and user feedback. The goal will be for all fees collected for services to cover the cost of providing those services, plus a modest profit to contribute toward the cost of general operations. Ideally, we would seek to provide services to people regardless of their ability to pay, but to accomplish this we would need to seek further grant funding to generate a pool of resources, from which we would draw down need-based access to services.

Research from Like-Kind Organizations:

To Fund Operations: In use/viable (3 of 6 organizations studied)
To Fund Content Contributors: Negative/none observed

Conclusion:
Half of the like-kind organizations that we studied derived revenue from pay-for-service offerings. We foresee providing both docent and technical support services (custom API integrations), with all fees collected covering the cost of providing those services, plus a modest profit to contribute toward the cost of general operations.

In summary, of the five monetization strategies, one (micropayments) is worthy of further investigation as a means of incentivizing content creators and three (corporate sponsors for GLAM data store, grants, and services) are worthy of further investigation as a means of funding ongoing operations.

STUDY CONCLUSIONS:

The monetization strategy that we will pursue to fund content creation is as follows:

Micropayments

Lastly, we want to point out that in addition to incentivizing the creation of curated collections (as described above), we are also trying to find ways to incentivize metadata work, which is where people augment the metadata that exists for a digital object with additional information.
While there is a longer-term potential of finding ways to build micropayment monetization pathways into the creation of metadata, it will not be our first exploration. Rather, we will start our field testing of micropayments at the curated collections level to see whether there is acceptance of this type of monetization strategy. We will begin that process with some user testing to engage curators around various micropayment engagement scenarios and different UI options, and we will learn what we can from that user testing to get a final spec for micropayments onto our roadmap. We will use this user testing phase to also field test curator tolerances for our intended content policy, content moderation system, and editorial standards. Later, we will consider whether micropayments are also a strategy that we want to explore at the metadata creation level, by following a similar test-driven development process.

We believe it is possible for us to integrate a micropayment system that financially rewards the creator of the content, while building in an overrun (e.g., a small administrative fee) on each payment to cover the cost of administering the system. This is the only monetization strategy that we are pursuing at this time to fund content contributors, starting with user testing in an attempt to bring us to enough technical clarity to get it onto our development roadmap. Therefore, while we do not see micropayments as a way to fund operations, we do see a way to make micropayments self-sustaining, such that they do not add cost to operations and infrastructure.

The monetization strategy that we will pursue to fund operations is as follows:

Corporate sponsorships

Corporate sponsorship development is needed in two areas: technical development and community outreach.

Grants

Services

Docent services

Technical support services

Communications and marketing

Though marketing has not been a focus of this grant, we have been doing some public speaking about our platform, and the ways in which we seek to monetize it. This has been a discussion topic on our recently created Medium page, which can be found here: MHz Foundation - Medium.com

We regularly speak about our coming platform in blogs and conferences, but have yet to speak in detail about monetization and sustainability outside of Medium and the Web Monetization Community.

What’s next?

INTENDED TIMELINE:

CURRENTLY (as of publication date)

As of the publication date of this post, we’re in beta.
While we’re in beta and gearing up for a new beta release in early 2022 prior to a full launch later in 2022, we are actively pursuing corporate sponsorships with a specific focus on sponsorships for technical development.
Also while we’re in beta, we are seeking grant funding for platform development and data store development.
Secure board approval of the creation of an advisory group of GLAM representatives to inform and guide our work.

END OF 2021/BEGINNING OF 2022

Launch the new site.
Technical support services will be online and ready for use.
Pursue corporate sponsorships for community outreach.
OER plan will be complete.
Launch GLAM advisory group (2022).

6-12 MONTHS POST-LAUNCH

Pursue educational institutions/collaboration grants (i.e., once they have a platform to collaborate on).
Docent services will launch.
We will initiate the tech development cycle to integrate micropayments into our site.
Maintain close contact with the advisory group to address specific needs.

What community support would benefit your project?

After we launch Curationist.org (v 2.0) in 2022, we will be ready to start testing a micropayment system, and we have already collected a good deal of feedback from the Web Monetization Community on what our criteria and resources should be.

We believe it is possible for us to integrate a micropayment system that financially rewards the creator of the content, while building in an overrun (e.g., a small administrative fee), on each payment to cover the cost of administering the system. This is the only monetization strategy that we are pursuing at this time to fund content contributors, starting with user testing in an attempt to bring us to enough technical clarity to get it onto our development roadmap. Therefore, while we do not see micropayments as a way to fund operations, we do see a way to make micropayments self-sustaining, such that they do not add cost to operations and infrastructure

We are excited by this. When we are ready to implement, we will be pioneering something new for the open knowledge community, and attempting to learn lessons from elsewhere in the open knowledge community including the Wikimedia sphere, by trying to create an environment that values volunteer work. When we are ready to develop this post-platform launch, it is clear that we will not want to do it alone. We hope to turn to the Web Monetization Community for advice and support, and also hope to apply for a subsequent Grant for the Web grant to help us fund the technical development of these important features.

Additional comments

We would like to thank the Grant for the Web community for building the grant environment around a community, and for encouraging shared learning and collaboration. We have taken that to heart, and adjusted our findings throughout our process based on the guidance provided by others and the collaborations offered by partners we have found through this community.

We seek to continue our relationship with this community, and to go from research to action within the year, with the ongoing guidance of the Web Monetization Community, and we hope the financial support of Grant for the Web when the time is right. We would appreciate any feedback from this community on how we can best proceed with these goals as we continue to try to change the Internet for the better together!

Relevant links/resources

Mini Report #1: Stating the Problem - MHz Curationist Sustainable Contributor Payment Study
https://community.webmonetization.org/mhzcscps/mini-report-1-stating-the-problem-mhz-curationist-sustainable-contributor-payment-study-1ip0

Mini Report #2: Market Research - Reviewing the GLAM & open knowledge spaces for monetization methods.
https://community.webmonetization.org/mhzcscps/mini-report-2-market-research-reviewing-the-glam-open-knowledge-spaces-for-monetization-methods-2di1

Mini-Report #3: Sustainable Monetization Explorations
https://community.webmonetization.org/mhzcscps/mini-report-3-sustainable-monetization-explorations-756

Mini-Report #4: Monetization Study Conclusions for Curationist.org #ExpandingCulturesTogether
https://community.webmonetization.org/mhzcscps/final-report-web-monetization-study-conclusions-for-curationist-org-2440

MHz Sustainability Report - Detailed Study Findings

https://community.webmonetization.org/mhzcscps/mhz-sustainability-report-study-findings-fpm

MHz Curationist Sustainable Financing Study - Detailed Findings

Brandon J. Roy — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 20:43:37 +0000

BRIEF

MHz Curationist is seeking a pathway to long-term financial sustainability. This report explores various types of monetization strategies, the pros and cons of each, and a timeline during which various monetization strategies may be developed and tested.

BACKGROUND

The MHz Foundation, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit, has been participating in the global open access movement with Curationist.org since 2016. In the spring of 2019, MHz Curationist beta was introduced to the world at the Creative Commons Global Summit, as a collaborative platform for people — wherever and whoever they are — to deepen their learning and transform their understanding of arts and culture from around the world.

MHz Curationist is a mission-driven, not-for-profit, arts and culture platform, online. MHz Curationist offers an open-access space for contributors to collaboratively curate arts and cultural content using Creative Commons licensing. The MHz Curationist platform is intended to be clear, easy to use, and entertaining.

For nearly three years, MHz Curationist has listened, discussed, and researched opportunities for the platform, with global Open-GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) communities. MHz Curationist is poised to become an important contributor to, and next-generation platform and publisher of, open access cultural content. Arriving at a mature moment for the global open access movement, MHz Curationist builds upon the collaborative work of individuals and institutions worldwide, who have contributed millions of data and digital assets to the global commons. MHz Curationist prioritizes content using Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC-BY) and the Creative Commons Zero Publication Domain Dedication (CC0), which enables maximum opportunities for use in commercial and non-commercial applications while continuing to grow the commons for all.

What makes MHz Curationist unique is that it leverages Creative Commons content that has been shared by GLAM institutions around the world through their open-access programs, as well as third-party aggregators and community content hubs, and brings all this cross-institutional content into the same structure to be used for powerful curated online exhibits. The site is contributed to, and managed by, not computer algorithms but a collaborative team of freelance curators enthusiastic about sharing arts and culture in dialogue with others.

MHz Curationist is an inspiring and welcoming place for collaborators, guest editors, and future users, to share viewpoints on arts and culture. MHz Curationist will offer new, compelling, and unique content, particularly through the publication of editorial features, collections, and new metadata that build upon content from open access source repositories. Editorial features will incorporate fresh voices and visions through collaborations with the open access community, content, and commercial partners. MHz Curationist's contributions of enhanced data and long-form text will be one of our most significant contributions to the commons.

MHz Curationist, working with partners, has the potential to capture international attention and interest for those seeking applications of openly licensed cultural content.

CURRENT SITUATION

Any organization that has overhead, needs to have that covered in order to continue operating. A platform has staff, it has technical expenses, and it has at least some developmental costs on an ongoing basis. MHz Curationist’s ongoing operating expenditures include, but are not limited to: hosting, design, development, and administrative management.

MHz Curationist received a three-year grant from the MHz Foundation to cover initial platform development and three years of operating costs, which ends in August 2022. By the end of that period, a technical platform will exist whose baseline ongoing costs MHz Foundation will be in a position to sustain; however, additional costs need to be planned for, such as iterative product enhancements and ongoing programming, in order for the site to flourish. If a sustainable funding source cannot be developed, the site, and all of the work that has gone into creating it, will cease to maximize its potential.

The platform also has teams of contributors. These contributors spend time and effort researching, writing, and designing editorial content for the platform, in the form of curated online exhibits. For us, a thorough study on sustainability must also include the sustainability of rewarding an expanding pool of independent global contributors for their labors. This is a very different type of sustainability study, with completely different variables than the ones associated with operations and infrastructure.

It is important to note that in the Curationist platform’s existing beta state, all site contributions are done by paid staff. This hourly pay rate is certainly not sustainable at scale. There are many ways that platforms choose to incentivize their users’ production of content. Some choose not to monetarily incentivize users, and to find non-monetary methods. We know that for our site to reach a level of content production that will make it viable, this issue needs to be addressed clearly and carefully, and with the utmost respect for those dedicating their time and talents.

STUDY AREAS

We must explore financial sustainability for both aspects of our platform; specifically, we need to define a monetization strategy for operations and infrastructure, and we need to define a monetization strategy for payments to contributors.

In order to find paths to sustainability for each sustainability goal, we will investigate the following monetization methods: micropayments, monetization of our data store, monetization of technical support services, monetization of value-added services, grants, corporate sponsorships, and others from market research.

We aim to determine the proper mix of these monetization strategies that will allow MHz Curationist to maximize its potential.

INITIAL MONETIZATION RESEARCH:

Investigation of Monetization Strategies In Use by Like-Kind Open-Access Platforms

We set out to understand funding models employed by like-kind open-access platforms currently in operation. Specifically, we set out to learn the following:

How are the organizations funded? Grants and/or corporate funding?
How are staff and other operating expenses covered?
How do the organizations incentivize people to produce content?
Do the organizations provide paid services?
Do the organizations accept micropayments and do these payments only go to the content producers?

RESEARCH SAMPLE

Funding Sources:

Free Music Archive: Grants, Program Service Revenue, and Micropayments
Internet Archive: Grants, Program Service Revenue
Smarthistory: Grants, Program Service Revenue
Khan Academy: Grants, Program Service Revenue
Wikimedia Foundation: Grants, Program Service Revenue
WikiArt: Advertising

RESEARCH FINDINGS

Finding only one of the peer organizations we investigated accepting micropayments, we returned to our question, “How do the organizations incentivize people to produce content?”

Of the rest of the organizations, the most data existed for Wikipedia. The Wall Street Journal referenced a 2009 study on the subject in which they determined the following:

RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS:

FURTHER MONETIZATION EXPLORATION:

We will now explore five means of monetizing the Curationist platform:

Micropayments
Corporate sponsorships
GLAM Data Store
Grants
Services

We will evaluate each monetization strategy against its ability to: a) fund ongoing operations, and b) incentivize content creation.

MICROPAYMENTS

Research from Like-Kind Organizations:

To Fund Operations: Negative/none observed
To Fund Content Contributors: Seldom used (1 of 6 organizations studied)

CORPORATE SPONSORSHIPS

Corporate sponsors make sponsorship investments in nonprofit organizations when one or both of the following benefits is present:

The nonprofit organization has attracted a sizable audience, whose demographics complement the corporation’s demographics, or represent a demographic that the corporation wants to pursue; and/or
The nonprofit organization is engaging in a project that would bring value to the marketplace, and thus to the corporation, by solving a problem that the corporation no longer has to solve or invest its time, energy, and human resources first-hand.

When we consider how Curationist is positioned against these two criteria, we come to see the following:

Curationist is an emerging platform currently operating with a beta site. Accordingly, financial modeling, operational sustainability exercises, and digital platform management work is currently underway. Curationist has not yet reached the brand-building stage in its life cycle, thus it does not have the traffic metrics that would entice a corporation to invest marketing dollars into advertising on the site. While Curationist has long-term goals of approaching corporations for funding, who wish to associate their business with its global audience of culturally interested individuals, pursuing this as a source of short-term funding is premature.
Curationist is engaged in a massive digital undertaking that would benefit corporations who are motivated by bringing open-access, cultural content, to a global audience in a way that helps raise underrepresented voices through digital storytelling. Curationist is positioned to attract funding from corporations who value the creation of such a GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) data store.

We will focus on opportunities to draw revenue from the latter in the next section.

Research from Like-Kind Organizations:

To Fund Operations: Negative/none observed
To Fund Content Contributors: Negative/none observed

GLAM Data Store

The output on the Curationist site is a massive amount of hosted content that is:

free and openly accessible via uniform methods
categorized and uniformly-tagged
standardized in its appearance on the site
easily searchable
returns results quickly

Research from Like-Kind Organizations:

To Fund Operations: N/A
To Fund Content Contributors: N/A

GRANTS

In this way, Curationist is providing an open educational resource (OER), with an eye towards ensuring that the systems we are building are freely available to be used around the world.

A grant will help fund certain aspects of the Curationist operation, but it is unlikely that it would incentivize content creation.

Research from Like-Kind Organizations:

To Fund Operations: In use/viable (5 of 6 organizations studied)
To Fund Content Contributors: Negative/none observed

SERVICES

Curationist’s content is a valuable resource for groups to use in support of their educational efforts. Structuring customized access to this resource can unlock a revenue stream.

We see two types of service offerings as paid add-ons to that which Curationist offers for free: 1) docent services, and 2) technical support services.

Docent Services
Starting a virtual storytelling program with a college, university, or school district could provide Curationist with an ongoing revenue stream. For instance, a docent could walk a class through a certain type of art that is physically isolated to certain parts of the world but that, through the data store, has been brought together in one virtual museum. There are numerous ways to model online offerings after ticketed offerings available in-person in modern museums.
Technical Support Services
Certain people or institutions may need digital support services. While access to our API will be free, there may be specific technical needs that require hands-on support for which we can charge a fee.

Research from Like-Kind Organizations:

To Fund Operations: In use/viable (3 of 6 organizations studied)
To Fund Content Contributors: Negative/none observed

STUDY CONCLUSIONS

The monetization strategy that we will pursue to fund content creation is as follows:

Micropayments

The monetization strategy that we will pursue to fund operations is as follows:

Corporate sponsorships

Corporate sponsorship development is needed in two areas: technical development and community outreach.

Grants

Services

Docent services

Technical support services

INTENDED TIMELINE:

CURRENTLY (as of publication date)

As of the publication date of this post, we’re in beta
While we’re in beta and gearing up for a new beta release in early 2022 prior to a full launch later in 2022, we are actively pursuing corporate sponsorships with a specific focus on sponsorships for technical development.
Also while we’re in beta, we are seeking grant funding for platform development and data store development.
Secure board approval of the creation of an advisory group of GLAM representatives to inform and guide our work.

END OF 2021/BEGINNING OF 2022

Launch the new site.
Technical support services will be online and ready for use.
Pursue corporate sponsorships for community outreach.
OER plan will be complete.
Launch GLAM advisory group (2022).

6-12 MONTHS POST-LAUNCH

Pursue educational institutions/collaboration grants (i.e., once they have a platform to collaborate on).
Docent services will launch
We will initiate the tech development cycle to integrate micropayments into our site.
Maintain close contact with the advisory group to address specific needs.

CONCLUSION

As you can see in this report, we plan to pursue four types of monetization strategies: micropayments, grant funding, corporate sponsorships, and services. We have a plan for which type of funding to pursue first (corporate sponsorships for technical development alongside grant funding for platform development), mid-term (technical support services and corporate sponsorships for community outreach), and six to twelve months post-launch (institutional collaboration grants, docent services, and micropayments). We are actively pursuing corporate sponsorships for technical development and grant funding for platform development at this time.

Mini-Report #4: Monetization Study Conclusions for Curationist.org #ExpandingCulturesTogether

Brandon J. Roy — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 23:44:52 +0000

- SECTION A -

We have investigated five monetization strategies in a search for the best way to financially sustain MHz Curationist on an ongoing basis. The five monetization strategies that we have investigated are: micropayments, corporate sponsorships through advertising, corporate sponsorships through the monetization of our GLAM data store, grants, and services. Specifically, we have studied the best way to underwrite the costs associated with operations and infrastructure and payment to content contributors.

Monetization Strategy

Research from Like-Kind Organizations:

Micropayments

To Fund Operations: Negative/none observed
To Fund Content Contributors: Seldom used (1 of 6 organizations studied)

Conclusion: None of the organizations in our study fund their operations through micropayments alone. We believe it is possible for us to integrate a micropayment system that financially rewards the creator of the content, while building in a modest processing fee into each payment to sustain the fees associated with offering the micropayment model. Therefore, while we do not see micropayments as a way to fund operations, we do see a way to make micropayments self-sustaining, such that they do not add cost to operations and infrastructure.

Corporate Sponsorships: Advertising

To Fund Operations: Negative/none observed
To Fund Content Contributors: Negative/none observed

Conclusion: The financial data that we reviewed did not yield any insights into whether an organization was receiving funding from corporate sponsors or not. Curationist is in the development stage in its life cycle, thus its website traffic volume is not yet enough to attract a corporate sponsor. This is not a short-term source of funding for operations nor content contributors.

Corporate Sponsorships: GLAM Data Store

To Fund Operations: N/A
To Fund Content Contributors: N/A

Conclusion: The financial data that we reviewed did not yield any insights into whether an organization was receiving funding from corporate sponsors or not. Curationist is in the development stage in its life cycle, thus its website traffic volume is not yet enough to attract a corporate sponsor. This is not a short-term source of funding for operations nor content contributors.

Grants

To Fund Operations: In use/viable (5 of 6 organizations studied)
To Fund Content Contributors: Negative/none observed

Conclusion: Grant funding was proven to be a cornerstone means of funding like-kind organizations. Curationist is providing an open educational resource (OER) that is freely available globally. The right grantor will help us fund operations, so that we are able to bring what we are building to a larger audience. It is unlikely to find a grant that would help subsidize content creation.

Services

To Fund Operations: In use/viable (3 of 6 organizations studied)
To Fund Content Contributors: Negative/none observed

Conclusion: Half of the like-kind organizations that we studied derived revenue from pay-for-service offerings. We foresee providing both docent and technical support services (custom API integrations), with all fees collected covering the cost of providing those services, plus a modest profit to contribute toward the cost of general operations.

Next, we will offer our recommendations for which model(s) we intend to pursue, how we will prioritize our work, and a timeline for our investigation.

- SECTION B -

The monetization strategy that we will pursue to fund content creation is as follows:

Micropayments

One of the challenges of building an effective user experience around micropayments is that curators’ acceptance of micropayments will be optional, not mandatory. While some of our curators are independent (i.e., individuals speaking on their own behalf), others are institutional - i.e., curators speaking on behalf of their GLAM institution. Both types of curators (independent and institutional) should be able to opt-into or out-of the micropayment system.

Lastly, we want to point out that in addition to incentivising the creation of curated collections (as described above), we are also trying to find ways to incentivize metadata work, which is where people augment the metadata that exists for a digital object with additional information.
While there is a longer-term potential of finding ways to build micropayment monetization pathways into the creation of metadata, it will not be our first exploration. Rather, we will start our field testing of micropayments at the curated collections level to see whether there is acceptance of this type of monetization strategy. We will begin that process with some user testing to engage curators around various micropayment engagement scenarios and different UI options, and we will learn what we can from that user testing to get a final spec for micropayments onto our roadmap. We will use this user testing phase to also field test curator tolerances for our intended content policy, content moderation system, and editorial standards. Later, we will consider whether micropayments is also a strategy that we want to explore at the metadata creation level, by following a similar test-driven development process.

The monetization strategy that we will pursue to fund operations is as follows:

Corporate sponsorships

We strongly believe that we can bring great value to the world through the creation of a data store of GLAM content in CC0 and CC-BY format with normalized metadata and taxonomy. While it can be used successfully within our own platform, the highest and best use of our platform may be as a demonstration of an advertisement for the usefulness of this centralized data store. In fact, as this central source of GLAM content grows, it will become a significant and growing contribution to the free-knowledge movement.

Corporations have historically found value in sponsoring the expansion of content in the free-knowledge field when doing so allows them to leverage that content in order to advance their corporate goals. Because we only offer CC0 and CC-BY creative commons content, and because we plan on being thoughtful about how we approach issues such as indigienous data sovereignty, we believe corporations will find value in a data store like ours existing that is designed to be cleaner from a data hygiene perspective than an environment like Flickr Commons.

We are in the process of generating a list of major corporate sponsors who we believe will find great value in the type of data store that we are seeking to build particularly when it comes to content that is not already easily accessible online. When they see and understand the value proposition, they will want to fund the development of this work. One of many examples of the types of organizations who could find great value in this includes Automattic, the creator of Wordpress. Specifically, Automattic could take free GLAM content that is smartly and meticulously tagged and deploy this content for use in the public blogs created by their users. Additionally, Google has leveraged Wikipedia data in their search algorithms.

Corporate sponsorship development is needed in two areas: technical development and community outreach.

First, we must complete the technical component of the development of the data store. While the taxonomy and metadata work has completed its structural development, technological ground work is still underway (such as ensuring that the centralized data store is complete and content from multiple API streams has been normalized) and will require the support of corporate sponsors to finish.

Second, we will need assistance with outreach efforts to targeted communities in underrepresented regions to communicate the benefits of and encourage their participation in the data store, and eventually additional pools funding that could go directly to those communities to assist them with the digitization of their collections.

Grants

Services

Docent Services

Technical Support Services

We want to enable the GLAM institutions of the world to leverage our data store free of charge. Meanwhile, we will offer paid services to institutions that need hand holding in that process or who need custom work done to ensure that integrations work. This will be true for both ingress and egress services - meaning that if there are institutions that wish to leverage the content within our data store, we will offer services, as well as services to GLAM institutions that wish to contribute to our data store. Because we are interested in the latter, and it is beneficial to us, we will attempt to seek grant funding to facilitate a pool of resources that will allow us to provide free services as possible to GLAM institutions interested in plugging into our system who cannot afford the technical support services necessary to do so.

Timeline

CURRENTLY (as of publication date):

As of the publication date of this post, we’re in beta.
While we’re in beta and gearing up for a new beta release in early 2022 prior to a full launch later in 2022, we are actively pursuing corporate sponsorships with a specific focus on sponsorships for technical development.
Also while we’re in beta, we are seeking grant funding for platform development and data store development.
Secure board approval of the creation of an advisory group of GLAM representatives to inform and guide our work.

END OF 2021/BEGINNING OF 2022:

Launch new site
Technical support services will be online and ready for use Pursue corporate sponsorships for community outreach
OER plan will be complete
Launch GLAM advisory group (2022)

6-12 MONTHS POST-LAUNCH:

Pursue educational institutions/collaboration grants (i.e., once they have a platform to collaborate on)
Docent services will launch
We will initiate the tech development cycle to integrate micropayments into our site
Maintain close contact with the advisory group to address specific needs

Conclusion

Mini-Report #3: Sustainable Monetization Explorations

Brandon J. Roy — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 23:08:43 +0000

MHz Curationist is a mission-driven, not-for-profit, online arts and culture platform. MHz Curationist offers an open access space for contributors to collaboratively curate global arts and cultural content. The MHz Curationist platform is intended to be clear, easy to use, and entertaining.

MHz Curationist is poised to become an important contributor to, a next-generation platform and publisher of, open access cultural content. The site is contributed to, and managed by, a collaborative team of freelancers enthusiastic about sharing arts and culture in dialogue with others.

There is a financial burden associated with normalizing and storing content that has been curated from worldwide sources. First, we have to understand the best way to fund our base operations on an ongoing basis. Second, it is important to understand how MHz Curationist might best financially incentivize people to curate content on an ongoing basis.

In this report, we will explore five means of monetizing MHz Curationist:

Micropayments
Corporate sponsorships
GLAM Data Store
Grants
Services

We will evaluate each monetization strategy against its ability to: a) fund ongoing operations, and b) incentivize content creation.

Micropayments

When it comes to utilizing micropayments as a means of funding operations and infrastructure, our research has not produced a model that invites participants on a platform to contribute to that platform’s base operations. However, due to the administrative overhead and fees associated with processing micropayments, we could build in an overrun on each micropayment that we receive in order to sustain the micropayment model.

Meanwhile, our research has revealed that it is possible for us to integrate a micropayment system that financially rewards the creator of the content. We believe there will be enough of an upside from these micropayments for people to not only create content, but to promote the content they have created within their own network.

Therefore, while we do not see micropayments as a way to fund operations, we do see a way to make micropayments self-sustaining, such that they do not add cost to operations and infrastructure.

Corporate Sponsorships

Corporate sponsors make sponsorship investments in nonprofit organizations when one or both of the following benefits is present:

The nonprofit organization has attracted a sizable audience, whose demographics complement the corporation’s demographics, or represent a demographic that the corporation wants to pursue; and/or
The nonprofit organization is engaging in a project that would bring value to the marketplace, and thus to the corporation, by solving a problem that the corporation no longer has to solve or invest its time, energy, and human resources in first-hand.

When we consider how Curationist is positioned against these two criterion, we come to see the following:

Curationist is engaged in a massive digital undertaking that would benefit corporations who are motivated by bringing open-access, cultural content, to a global audience in a way that helps raise underrepresented voices through digital storytelling. Curationist is positioned to attract funding from corporations who value the creation of such a GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) data store.

We will focus on opportunities to draw revenue from the latter in the next section.

GLAM Data Store

Thus, we turned our focus to normalization. Specifically, we are making the CC0 and CC BY content that we gather part of a data structure (a taxonomy) that puts content into categories based on a GLAM taxonomy that we have created. In addition, we have created standardized ways to handle metadata with normalized tagging.

The output on the Curationist site is a massive amount of hosted content that is:

free and openly accessible via uniform methods
categorized and uniformly-tagged
standardized in its appearance on the site
easily searchable; and,
returns results quickly

Now that this normalized GLAM metadata and taxonomy systems has been created, it can expand over time. Our aim is for these systems to be useful to others, so that people who are new to the idea of putting their content into CC0 and CC BY, will use our metadata schema and taxonomy, bringing their content into a much larger, global pool of content.

Grants

In this way, Curationist is providing an open educational resource (OER), with an eye towards ensuring that the systems we are building are freely available to be used around the world.

The right grantor will help us take what we are building and bring it to a larger audience, so that it lives well beyond the Curationist website. The right grantor will help us make the platform more accessible for smaller GLAM institutions to plug into.

A grant will help fund certain aspects of the Curationist operation, but it is unlikely that it would incentivize content creation.

Services

Curationist’s content is a valuable resource for groups to use in support of their educational efforts. Structuring customised access to this resource can unlock a revenue stream.

We see two types of service offerings as paid add-ons to that which Curationist offers for free: 1) docent services, and 2) technical support services.

Docent Services
Starting a virtual storytelling program with a college, university, or school district, could provide Curationist with an ongoing revenue stream. For instance, a docent could walk a class through a certain type of art that is physically isolated to certain parts of the world but that, through the data store, has been brought together in one virtual museum. There are numerous ways to model online offerings after ticketed offerings available in-person in modern museums.

Technical Support Services
Certain people or institutions may need digital support services. While access to our API will be free, there may be specific technical needs that require hands-on support for which we can charge a fee.

Conclusion

In summation, there are several means through which operational and platform-level financial sustainability could be achieved. In our next report, we will outline our conclusions and next steps, offering our recommendations for which model we intend to pursue and how we might do so.

Mini Report #2: Market Research - Reviewing the GLAM & Open Knowledge spaces for Monetization Methods

Brandon J. Roy — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 21:55:27 +0000

Brief Summary of the Sustainable Contributor Payment Study Goals

MHz Curationist received a three-year grant from the MHz Foundation to cover initial platform development and three years of operating costs, at which point they will consider continued funding to some level. By the end of that period, the MHz Foundation hopes to find a low baseline cost for Curationist that can be covered by its endowment, with an understanding that this will not cover iterative product enhancements, programming, or payment to contributors to the platform. At the end of the three-year period, which ends August 2022, a technical platform will exist that MHz Foundation will be in a position to sustain the baseline ongoing costs of; covering additional costs will be necessary for the site to flourish. If a sustainable funding source cannot be developed, the site, and all of the work that has gone into creating it, will cease to maximize its potential.

It is important to note that in the Curationist platform’s existing beta state, all site contributions are done by paid staff. This hourly payment rate is certainly not sustainable at scale. There are many ways that platforms choose to incentivize their users’ production of content. Some choose not to monetarily incentivize users, and to find non-monetary methods. We know that for our site to reach a level of content production that will make it viable, this issue needs to be addressed clearly and carefully, and with the utmost respect for those dedicating their time and talents.

MHz Curationist is seeking partners who can contribute donations, sponsorship, in-kind technical support, along with a case study and demo development. Moreover, it is seeking a pathway to determining the proper mix of donation, sponsorship, in-kind donations, and micropayment contributions that will allow it to maximize its potential after launch.

Brief summary of MHz Curationist

MHz Curationist is a mission-driven, not-for-profit arts and culture platform online. MHz Curationist offers an open access space for contributors to collaboratively curate arts and cultural content. The MHz Curationist platform is intended to be clear, easy to use, and entertaining.

MHz Curationist is poised to become an important contributor to, and next-generation platform and publisher of, open access cultural content. The site is contributed to, and managed by, a collaborative team of freelancers enthusiastic about sharing arts and culture in dialogue with others.

Ideally, digital organizations like MHz Curationist receive micro-donations from site users to financially support operations. However, it is important to consider the entire ecosystem necessary to maintain the platform. Operating costs are ongoing and include expenditures for hosting, design, development, and administrative management.

In addition to costs for overhead, there are the costs affiliated with content creation.

Financial sustainability for MHz Curationist requires funding that will cover both overhead and content creation.

We set out to understand funding models employed by like-kind open-access platforms currently in operation. Specifically, we sought answers to the following questions:

How are the organizations funded? Grants and/or corporate funding?
How are staff and other operating expenses covered?
How do the organizations incentivize people to produce content?
Do the organizations provide paid services?
Do the organizations accept micropayments and do these payments only go to the content producers?

Lastly, we studied the Wikimedia Foundation (providing the essential infrastructure for free knowledge) and WikiArt (a visual art encyclopedia, formerly known as WikiPaintings, with the primary goal of making the world’s art accessible to anyone, anywhere). WikiArt is unaffiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, though they are both part of the wiki movement. The Wikimedia Foundation organization and its websites stand apart from the other four organizations in our study in terms of scope and marketplace recognition, not to mention funding. Nevertheless, the underlying principles that form its foundation are in alignment with those governing MHz Curationist, thus we included the Wikimedia Foundation in our study.

To supplement its grant funding, Khan Academy and Internet Archive draw 37% and 40% of their total revenue from the sale of paid services, respectively. Similarly, Free Music Archive supplements its income from paid services, however data was incomplete as to how much of their total funding consists of service fees.

If Not Micropayments, Then How?

Finding only one of the peer organization organizations we investigated accepting micropayments, we returned to our question “How do the organizations incentivize people to produce content?”

Of the rest of the organizations, the most data existed for Wikipedia. The Wall Street Journal referenced a 2009 study on the subject in which they determined the following:

Conclusions

Next Steps

Next, we need to gain a better understanding of the universe of grant opportunities available to MHz Curationist. We will develop a target list of prospective corporate sponsors and corresponding donation amounts. Additionally, we need to consider our willingness to offer advertising on our platform, and what fee-for-service might look like on MHz Curationist. Lastly, we need to examine how best to incorporate micropayments into the user experience.

Ultimately, it is important to us that we stay true to our understanding of the benefits of open access platforms. It is critical that the democratization of knowledge and understanding come at the lowest cost possible. By funding our operation primarily through grants and corporate sponsorships, we will diminish any barriers to enjoyment of art and culture by all.

Article in reference:

ttp://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/08/31/only-13-of-wikipedia-contributors-are-women-study-says/

Mini Report #1: Stating the Problem - MHz Curationist Sustainable Contributor Payment Study

Brandon J. Roy — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 20:37:53 +0000

Sustainable Contributor Payment Study Goals:

Initially, we intended to use this report to explore how we could leverage micropayments as a method of monetizing our website without resorting to an advertising model. However, as we started to examine how we would do this, we came to the realization that our exploration of micropayments needed to be placed in a broader context of how we are looking at monetization as a whole. To step that back further, monetization itself is a piece of a larger effort we are focusing on as we determine the sustainability of our project.

Therefore, we decided to reframe our study, to take you on a journey highlighting all of our investigations, as we seek to find a pathway to sustainability. In it, we will explore different types of monetization, and one of those is indeed micropayments. We will arrive at pros and cons lists of various types of monetization methods, and conclude with a series of next steps, pointing our organization towards what we believe we can find as our paths to sustainability. The plural, paths, was chosen purposefully, as we do not believe that a single monetization method will allow us to sustainably continue our project. The ultimate goal of this study is to find the right hybrid model of various methods that will allow us to achieve sustainability.

Before we even get into detailing our organization, a mission-driven, not-for-profit arts and culture platform online, we need to describe what we mean by sustainability. Any organization has overhead it needs to cover in order to continue operating. A platform has staff, it has technical expenses, and it has at least some developmental costs on an ongoing basis. All of these incur costs.

Our platform also has teams of contributors. These contributors spend time and effort researching, writing, and designing editorial content for our platform, in the form of curated online exhibits. For us, a thorough study on sustainability must also include the sustainability of rewarding an expanding pool of independent global contributors for their labors. This is a very different type of sustainability study, with completely different variables than the ones associated with operations and infrastructure.

We therefore will be bifurcating our study into two sections, and exploring how we can use monetization models to achieve sustainability for each. These two sections will be as follows:

Sustainability of operations and infrastructure
Sustainability of payment of contributors

In order to find paths to sustainability for each sustainability goal, we will investigate a minimum of the following monetization methods:

Exploration A: Micropayments
Exploration B: Monetizing our data store
Exploration C: Monetizing services
Exploration D: Others from market research

NOTE: The design of the Mini Report structure will be to be able to report on each exploration, and what pros and cons we have determined, in an open and transparent manner, in hopes of garnering community feedback. Our final report will not simply be a compendium of our Mini Reports, but one that has edited each of those sections in response to Grant for the Web community feedback.

Who We are, What We Do, and Why We Exist:

Our open access publication, MHz Curationist, is an online space for collaboratively curating arts and cultural content, using Creative Commons legal tools. The MHz Curationist platform is intended to be clear, easy to use, and entertaining. It is a platform that is enriching, but not overly academic, as well as being fun and trustworthy. MHz Curationist is our way of giving back to the Commons.

The MHz Foundation, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit, has been participating in the global open access movement with Curationist.org since 2016. In the spring of 2019, MHz Curationist BETA was introduced to the world at the Creative Commons Global Summit, as a collaborative platform for people — wherever and whoever they are — to deepen their learning, and transform their understanding of arts and culture from around the world. Our motivation and inspiration continues.

For nearly three years, MHz Curationist has listened, discussed, and researched opportunities for the platform, with global Open-GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) communities. MHz Curationist is poised to become an important contributor, and next-generation platform and publisher of open access cultural content. Arriving at a mature moment for the global open access movement, MHz Curationist builds upon the collaborative work of individuals and institutions worldwide, who have contributed millions of data and digital assets to the global commons. MHz Curationist prioritizes content using Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC-BY) and the Creative Commons Zero Publication Domain Dedication (CC0), which enable maximum opportunities for use in commercial and non-commercial applications, while continuing to grow the commons for all.

What makes MHz Curationist unique is that it draws upon Creative Commons and public domain content shared by GLAM institutions through their open access programs, as well as third-party aggregators and community content hubs. The site is contributed to, and managed by, a collaborative team of freelancers enthusiastic about sharing arts and culture in dialogue with others.

MHz Curationist is an inspiring and welcoming place for co-collaborators, guest editors, and future users, to share viewpoints on arts and culture. MHz Curationist will offer new, compelling, and unique content, particularly through the publication of editorial features, collections, and new metadata that build upon content from open access source repositories. Editorial features will incorporate fresh voices and visions through collaborations with the open access community, content, and commercial partners. MHz Curationist's contributions of enhanced data and long-form text, will be one of our most significant contributions to the commons.

MHz Curationist is seeking partners who can contribute donations, sponsorship, in-kind technical support, along with a case study and demo development. MHz Curationist, working with partners, has the potential to capture international attention and interest for those seeking applications of openly licensed cultural content.

Our Definitions of Stability:

A: Operations and Infrastructure Stability

MHz Curationist was fortunate enough to be able to receive a three-year grant from the MHz Foundation, to cover initial development and three years of operating costs for the platform. However, the amount of money being provided by MHz Foundation is finite, and will run out in a couple of years. At that point, a technical platform will exist, and the costs of development will likely be lower than they are now, when we are actively paying teams of developers and designers to create and enhance a usable and user-friendly platform. There will, however, be ongoing costs that need to be covered or the site will simply cease to exist once the Foundation funds run out.

B: Payment of Contributors Stability

It is important to note that in our platform’s existing beta state, all site contributions are done by paid staff. The public tools we are in the process of building are simply not ready. Therefore, we have not yet needed to face the question of how to incentivize users to produce high-quality content on our platform. Right now they do it because they get paid for it (and hopefully have a great passion for it too). This hourly payment rate is certainly not sustainable at scale. There are many ways that platforms choose to incentivize their users’ production of content. Some choose not to monetarily incentivize users, and to find non-monetary methods. We know that for our site to reach a level of content production that will make it viable, this issue needs to be addressed clearly and carefully, and with the utmost respect for those dedicating their time and talents.

NEXT STEPS:

Before delving into each monetization study, and how we can apply it to both of our stability paths, we will start with another Mini Report to produce a survey of others within the GLAM and open knowledge platform spaces, particularly those with non-profit designations, to determine how they have tackled sustainability in both categories. Our hope is that we can learn lessons that can be incorporated into our planned studies, and perhaps even add a new topic or two for consideration.

MHz Curationist : Building a Sustainable Payment Structure for Arts & Culture Contributors - Grant Study

Brandon J. Roy — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 18:05:53 +0000

Introductions

We are thrilled to have been selected as a Grantee in 2020 amongst so many fantastic projects, as we explore options for paying the authors on our platform who contribute their perspectives on global topics of arts and culture.

We look forward to using this community platform for Web Monetization to exchange and learn from others looking to make strides in this area of interest.

Our Grant Reporting Goals:

Over the course of the next 5 months, our team is mobilized to create a Study Report that will be built upon a series of four (4) Mini Reports identified as follows:

1: Stating the Challenge
2: Market Research
3: Monetization Explorations
4: Conclusions & Next Steps

We invite you all to comment, and exchange with us as we share our findings.

MHz Curationist - Context:

Built from the Commons, MHz Curationist (Curationist.org) is a novel, interactive, and trustworthy Open Access web platform that provides myriad tools and opportunities to engage with arts and culture through co-creative authorship.

The mission of MHz Curationist builds upon and contributes to the Commons of arts and culture.

Some of MHz Curationist's distinguishable attributes where we seek to make strides are:

1: Become a Collective of Commons Co-Creators

Seek to combine efforts of different stakeholders from open access communities to do the most good
Build on collaborative global work of open access communities who’ve contributed millions of data & digital assets to the Commons
Offer a fresh start for community building

2: Empower Diverse Narratives

A manifold platform for subject experts of different perspectives to curate and interpret culture
Cooperative workflow access for educators and experts to frame and reframe narratives
A commitment to ensuring equity in access and dialogue

3: Create Pan-Institutional Access

Provide users centralized access to expansive cultural objects in one platform for editorial, learning, and research purposes
Draw upon CC and PD content shared by GLAMs plus third-party aggregators and community content hubs

Discover our platform and follow our journey:

Platform site: www.curationist.org
Foundation site: www.mhzfoundation.org
Twitter: @mhzcurationist & @curationist_edu
Instagram: @mhzcurationist

MHz Curationist : Building a Sustainable Payment Structure for Arts & Culture Contributors - Grant Study

Brandon J. Roy — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 18:04:29 +0000

We look forward to using this community platform for Web Monetization to exchange and learn from others looking to make strides in this area of interest.

Our Grant Reporting Goals:

Over the course of the next 5 months, our team is mobilized to create a Study Report that will be built upon a series of four (4) Mini Reports identified as follows:

#1: Stating the Challenge
#2: Market Research
#3: Monetization Explorations
#4: Conclusions & Next Steps

We invite you all to comment, and exchange with us as we share our findings.

MHz Curationist - Context:

The mission of MHz Curationist builds upon and contributes to the Commons of arts and culture.

Some of MHz Curationist's distinguishable attributes where we seek to make strides are:

1: Become a Collective of Commons Co-Creators

Seek to combine efforts of different stakeholders from open access communities to do the most good
Build on collaborative global work of open access communities who’ve contributed millions of data & digital assets to the Commons
Offer a fresh start for community building

2: Empower Diverse Narratives

A manifold platform for subject experts of different perspectives to curate and interpret culture
Cooperative workflow access for educators and experts to frame and reframe narratives
A commitment to ensuring equity in access and dialogue

3: Create Pan-Institutional Access

Provide users centralized access to expansive cultural objects in one platform for editorial, learning, and research purposes
Draw upon CC and PD content shared by GLAMs plus third-party aggregators and community content hubs

Discover our platform and follow our journey:

Platform site: www.curationist.org
Foundation site: www.mhzfoundation.org
Twitter: @mhzcurationist & @curationist_edu
Instagram: @mhzcurationist