Sustainability Presentation on Day 1- Tom Bruce of the LII

Tom Bruce, the Director of the LII (USA) - the original recipe LII, will join us via videoconference to present on issues of sustainability for open access legal publishers.

The notes are attached.

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IF YOU LEARN NOTHING ELSE TODAY, LEARN THIS:

IT’S EASY TO NEGLECT THE FOUNDATIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY, ESPECIALLY WHEN DAY-TO-DAY OPERATIONS ARE DIFFICULT. BUT IF YOU DO, YOUR ORGANIZATION WILL DIE.

The usual disclaimers

● What I’ll describe today are things we’ve done here at the LII

● Some will work differently or not at all because

○ The US is not Africa

○ We have high traffic volumes

○ We are in a very big place, and very remote from our audience

What is sustainability?

“Sustainability” has become a kind of code word, but that’s not all there is to it.

● Donors increasingly see what they do as an investment that will produce a return.

● Not a return in money, but a return in results.

● Usually, those results will take much longer than the “lifespan” of the donation to produce.

Sustainable organizations create three kinds of value:

● Economic value. That’s what we’ve just been talking about.

○ Revenue generation

○ Revenue diversification

● Social value.

○ Generating content that the audience needs and wants

○ Generating content with measurable impacts

○ Engaging the audience as community

● Organizational capacity.

○ Adaptive capacity.

○ Leadership capacity.

○ Resource allocation

Sustainability is hard for LIIs

● There is much more enthusiasm for establishment than there is for maintenance.

○ It’s easier to get money to put some documents up than it is to get money to maintain and grow the collection.

● Supply chains are fragile

○ Did I say supply chain? Sounds awfully corporate.

○ What else would you call the flow of documents that you deliver? It’s the raw material you use to make what you make.

● Hiring and firing is difficult

● Continual managing of relationships is essential

● Messaging can be complex

● It is hard for operations-oriented people to think about relationships, strategies, and marketing.

Sustainable organizations

I’m going to spend proportionately less time on these, but I do want to mention a few aspects of social value and organizational capacity that I think have a unique slant in the LII context.

Social value: things to remember

● Social value is in the eye of the beholder, not yours

○ In order to create value for an audience, you have to know who they are and what they want.

■There is probably more than one

■Set up and use your analytics. Do surveys. Ask.

○ People do legal research for a purpose, not as an end in itself.

○ Donor organizations (and committed people like us) worry about freedom and democracy. Your audience has more immediate things to worry about.

● Engagement is difficult but crucial.

Organizational capacity: things to remember

● Being adaptive is hard.

○ Do regular SWOT analyses.

○ Think about

■supply chains

■key relationships

■key personnel

● Fulfilling your mission depends on things that it can be easy to throw off the boat when operations get difficult. But that’s when you need them the most.

○ People

○ Relationships with suppliers

○ Relationships with key audience components

Sustainable business models

“The job of a successful program director is to maximize income while minimizing commitments” -- William Y. Arms

Revenue: a three-legged stool

● Revenue earned from core competencies

○ IT services for your audience (eg. websites and blogs for lawyers)

○ IT services for your suppliers (document conversion; court-records systems)

○ Research/question-answering services

● Revenue earned from online presence

○ Dues and subscriptions

○ Sponsorships

○ Tiered service models

○ Directory services

○ Online advertising

● Revenue donated by sponsors and supporters

○ Pre-designated donations

■Grants

■Designated gifts

○ Undesignated income

It is important to balance these.

● Too much pursuit of earned income, and you lose your mission.

● Too much donated income that comes with strings attached, and you lose your independence (and probably your mission too, because programs become hard to kill).