By Leah Duncan,
Digital Humanities Librarian
Davidson College

Elisa Naquin
Metadata and Digital Strategies Librarian
Louisiana State University

Abstract

When libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage organizations facilitate community-centered programming, their funding and budgeting models should be intentionally aligned with inclusive and relational values. The Louisiana Digital Library (LDL) is a statewide platform for sharing Louisiana’s digital cultural heritage, and over thirty institutions contribute collections to the LDL. Funding from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH) allowed a project team at Louisiana State University to host the inaugural LDL Fest, a three-day event that brought together a community of digital library administrators and users. In addition to the LEH grant, the project team sought additional contributions from within the LDL community while forgoing corporate sponsorship. By sacrificing a potential source of funding, the project team ensured that people who build and use the LDL would be centered in every aspect of the three-day LDL Fest; that commitment also guided the team’s allocation of funds. By insisting that the LDL’s community-centric values direct the LDL Fest’s sponsorship model and budgeting priorities, the project team ensured that the flow of money honored, rather than distracted from, the community that the LDL serves.

Introduction

The Louisiana Digital Library (LDL) is a statewide platform for sharing Louisiana’s history and culture with users around the world. Over thirty Louisiana libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage organizations contribute digitized and born digital materials to the LDL. In 2022, a team of LDL administrators at LSU received a $5,000 Grant from Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH) to fund the first-ever LDL Fest, an event that ultimately bought together diverse LDL collection administrators, librarians, archivists, educators, and researchers to connect while learning about digital collections and digital scholarship methods. In addition to the LEH grant, the team sought additional event funding from within the LDL community. To ensure that the LDL Fest remained focused on fostering connection among LDL community members, the project team aimed to incorporate community-oriented values into all aspects of the event, including the focus of this case study: soliciting sponsors and budgeting funds.

A low barrier for LDL participation enables its diversity of contributing institutions. Prospective organizations submit a short application for membership and, if approved, sign a submission agreement and pay a one-time fee of $750. Afterward, content administrators can begin uploading collections at no additional cost and without any sunset clause. Unlike some multi-institutional digital libraries, which harvest content from existing digital library platforms, the LDL allows member institutions to add digital objects and metadata directly to the digital library, with no requirement to host content on a separate site. This allows even small or less-resourced institutions to contribute collections that often represent life in Louisiana from the perspective of people who have been historically deprived of political power. The inclusion of a diverse group of contributing institutions, ranging from large research universities to historic Acadian villages, allows the LDL to more fully represent the history and culture of the state.

The LDL is governed by this decentralized group of contributors. The LSU Libraries hosts and administers the LDL platform, while the Louisiana Digital Consortium (LDC) provides structure and leadership for the LDL community. The LDC is led by staff at LDL member institutions who are willing to attend biannual meetings, serve as officers, and participate on committees. Although many LDL content administrators have job descriptions at their home institutions that include digital collection management to some degree, they also have other duties that sometimes take precedence over LDL administration and LDC projects. As such, the community has limited capacity to plan professional events, especially without external support. Fortunately, grant funding from various sources has allowed the LSU Libraries to provide such events in recent years, one of which was the 2023 LDL Fest. The Fest was a three-day event at State Library of Louisiana, and it was planned and executed by a small team at the LSU Libraries, with volunteer assistance from LDC members. It featured digital humanities workshops, keynote talks by Jessica Marie Johnson and Pam Fessler, panel discussions with cultural heritage professionals, and time for LDL collection administrators to discuss the LDL’s future.

While we knew that this grant would allow us to host the LDL Fest by funding travel for visiting speakers and participants, we decided to invite other institutions within the LDL community to enhance the event through their own contributions. However, in seeking models for the kind of community-centric funding we imagined, the team quickly found that the approaches discussed in academic literature on event sponsorship often center for-profit corporations and are not aligned with the community-oriented nature of many digital libraries. Similarly, literature around cultural heritage organizations and non-profits more broadly provides little insight on allowing organizational values to influence budgets, however small those budgets might be. This case study will address these gaps by illustrating how the LDL Fest team relied on community-oriented values as a guide in gaining sponsorships from within the LDL community and in prioritizing financial decisions. The LDL Fest provides a model for nonprofits that are interested in planning events without relinquishing time and decision-making power to organizations outside of the community.

Literature Review

COMMUNITY-BUILDING IN STATEWIDE DIGITAL LIBRARIES

As multi-institutional repositories devoted to representing regional history and culture, many state digital libraries attest to their pursuit of collaboration and community, both between the digital library as a whole and a broader community of users, as well as among contributing cultural heritage institutions. For example, the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, which maintains the state digital library called DigitalNC, focuses on connecting with the broader community. They articulate their mission as supporting “community engagement and lifelong learning by promoting and increasing open access to North Carolina’s cultural heritage.” Taking a slightly different approach to community, Connecticut Digital Archive describes the digital library’s relationship with member institutions: they emphasize a generative balance of autonomy and cohesion, writing, “Much like a community garden where each person may grow whatever they want on their plot, Members put whatever they feel is important to them in their collections and share it with others to create something bigger than themselves.” Community-building, whether with groups of users or within a multi-institutional repository, is enriched by the diversity of institutions that create collections in statewide digital libraries. Contributors typically range in size and availability of resources, from small-town museums to large academic libraries. La Beaud and Lawrence emphasize this variety in the Mississippi Digital Library, writing that their collections are “as diverse as the participating institutions,” and that this diversity enables a more accurate and inclusive representation of the state’s history (2013, p. 2). This small sample of digital libraries indicates that digital librarianship is turning toward authentic collaboration among cultural heritage institutions and, consequently, more inclusive representation in state digital libraries.

Beyond providing an online space where a range of institutions can host digital cultural heritage content, many statewide digital libraries also foster community by offering support to members in the form of training and conferences. Florida’s Sunshine State Digital Network provides frequent webinars on topics such as digital project management, copyright for digital libraries, and anti-oppressive community engagement. The Texas Digital Library hosts an annual Texas Conference on Digital Libraries, which is designed to “bring together those working on digital projects — including outreach librarians, repository managers, catalogers, faculty members, technical staff, and others.” In Minnesota, the MN+ Digital Collections Conference allows digital collection creators in the region to gather and learn from each other. Across the globe, such opportunities to exchange knowledge are creating professional connections that generate innovative and inclusive engagement with digital cultural heritage.

DONOR-CENTRIC FUNDING

To fund professional development events, libraries and related organizations often seek sponsors. With a typical sponsorship model, commercial organizations provide financial or in-kind assistance to the sponsee, who is often planning an event or activity. In return, the sponsor hopes to achieve a commercial objective, such as an expanded client base or improved brand image (Meenaghan, 1983). Literature on event sponsorship is widely published in marketing and management journals, and papers are written primarily for the sponsor’s benefit, with studies focusing on how the sponsor can take full advantage of its sponsorship investments. Taking a slightly different angle, Toscani and Prendergast (2018) advise sponsees to leverage this research and learn the “sponsor’s expected outcomes.” With an understanding of commercial expectations, “sponsees are in a better position to negotiate sponsorship terms” (p. 399). Broadly, literature about sponsorship models focuses largely on strategies either the sponsor or the sponsee might use to extract the greatest possible financial benefit from the relationship.

One common strategy in sponsorship packages is the use of hierarchical levels indicating the size of sponsors’ contributions (Giannoulakis, 2014; McDonnell and Moir, 2014, pp. 77-78; Aktas and Sel, 2019). For example, many readers will have attended an event where platinum-level sponsors were recognized. These categories give sponsors “the opportunity to be exclusive, thus separating the sponsor from its competitors” (Skinner and Rukavina, 2003, p. 68). In fact, Copeland et al. (1996) identified exclusivity as the most important factor for corporations in choosing a sport sponsorship. Literature indicates that sponsors may value creating a philanthropic reputation through their investment, but largely for the sake of profit. For example, Jensen and Smith (2024) investigate the imbalance between sponsor funding dedicated to men’s sports and women’s sports, noting that “in 2020, only 1.75% of global sport sponsorship dollars were allocated to women’s sport.” The authors conclude that “women’s sport…provides a way for brands to potentially differentiate themselves from the clutter of traditional, male-dominated sport property sponsorships” (pp. 17-18). In short, sponsors might support women’s athletics not for the sake of gender equity, but because women’s sports currently offer a less crowded field for positive brand association. Ultimately, studies on sponsorship published in business journals focus on branding and profit: benefits that small community-oriented nonprofits such as state digital libraries are unlikely to offer.

COMMUNITY-CENTRIC FUNDING

However, a rich conversation is emerging in nonprofit spaces about ways to center ethics and values in fundraising practices. Contributors to the Community-Centric Fundraising (CCF) movement are exploring the harm of donor-centric fundraising and proposing alternative principles and strategies grounded in community, equity, and social justice. On their “History” page, CCF leaders argue that nonprofits often sustain the oppressive structures they hope to dismantle by “grounding practices in donor experiences instead of community needs.” The movement encourages nonprofits to “see and treat one another not as competitors but as critical partners” and see the broader community as more important than any one organization’s mission. Applying CCF principles, Gray and Hitt (2024) explain how they reimagined their organization’s annual gala-style paddle raise after realizing the format fostered inequity. “We said we valued all contributions,” Gray and Hitt write, “but we still cheered loudest for the big donations during the high-pressure ask while our community members…were not celebrated on the same scale.” The following year, donors committed contributions privately via personalized donation cards distributed at the gala. Pham (2020), another CCF contributor, specifically warns against tiered event sponsorship. She argues that nonprofit events usually have a transformational mission, but tiered sponsor levels “scream transactional.” She also notes that tiered sponsorship levels create division rather than belonging. “Why create a sense of othering,” she asks, “when we can foster belonging by building a community of grantmakers who believe in our impact?”

Outside of CCF, other authors encourage nonprofits to consider the needs of all stakeholders, rather than more heavily emphasize the needs of donors. Keegan (2023) directly builds on CCF’s principles and proposes a framework of community-engaged philanthropy (CEP). She argues that this framework “help[s] ensure that small groups of people do not hold too much power” and that community members affected by the nonprofit’s work will have an influential voice (p. 9). Keegan recommends creating opportunities for all community members to contribute to the organization’s work, whether through donation or volunteering, and she encourages organizations to value the input of all donors, regardless of the size of their contribution. Madden, Harrison, and Vafeiadis (2023) similarly advocate for fundraising efforts that center on a common goal rather than on a transaction. They promote mutual benefit and relationship-building over exchange and obligation, and they recommend approaching all stakeholders—whether they are donors, employees, community members, or volunteers—with an ethics of care. These recent publications reimagine fundraising as a tool for creating fruitful connections around a nonprofit’s values and goals, rather than as a competition in which exclusive recognition is the trophy sponsors might win.

ETHICS OF HONORARIA

While a thoughtful conversation has emerged around community-centered event sponsorship, less has been published about community-centered financial decision-making. Rinne-Meyers (2024) argues in a contribution to the CCF blog that nonprofit financial decisions should be “mission-aligned,” and that a key aspect of this alignment should be fair compensation of employees. While few writers would argue against fair compensation for employees, there is less consensus on the question of fair compensation for academics invited to speak at an event, such as a nonprofit conference. As Pardo-Guerra (2021) writes regarding academic honoraria, “The politics of remuneration are always fundamentally messy.” Indeed, in 2022 van Alstyne tweeted from @HigherEdPR that she recommends academics charge $3,500 for a one-hour talk—an amount significantly above a more standard $500 honorarium that Golash-Boza (2017) mentions in her advice column for academics. While $3,500 reflects a reasonable fee for a freelance speaker charging by the hour, de Cruz (2022) notes that such a high expectation for honoraria would price out smaller organizations, excluding scholars at less-resourced institutions from valuable knowledge exchange and preventing visiting speakers from receiving feedback from less-privileged researchers. Ultimately, de Cruz argues that conference hosts should cover the travel expenses of visiting speakers. She also notes that since most academic institutions expect their faculty to present research as part of their salaried job duties, honoraria should not be considered a full compensation for time, but a “token of appreciation for sharing information.” Although the topic of compensation for academic talks is contentious, most long-form pieces (rather than social media posts) agree that by covering travel expenses, event hosts are inclusive of speakers who may not receive adequate departmental travel funding; likewise, by expecting a true honorarium rather than full compensation of time, speakers are inclusive of event hosts who do not have an adequate budget for a four-figure fee.

The central value evident in this discussion–as well as discussions about community-centric fundraising as opposed to donor-centric fundraising–is that nonprofits should develop an approach to fundraising and budgeting that focuses on the needs of the served community and invites contribution from a diversity of perspectives. In the case of facilitating a professional event, this advice might influence a decision to opt out of pursuing corporate sponsorship and instead make space to hear from, engage with, and rely on diverse community members. Regardless of how a community-centric approach specifically manifests in a nonprofit’s funding model and budget, literature suggests that organizations claiming to be service-minded and inclusive, like the Louisiana Digital Library, should be suspicious of financial relationships that allow outside organizations to extract value from the people and institutions that nonprofits are positioned to support.

Case Study

PRIORITIES FOR FINANCIAL DECISION-MAKING

The project team received a $5,000 Rebirth Grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH) to fund the inaugural LDL Fest. While we were confident that this grant would allow us to host visiting speakers and provide travel assistance to a few collection administrators, we decided to seek additional funding that we could use to enhance the event. To prepare for a second phase of fundraising, we drafted an expanded budget accounting for potential additional contributions. Like our original proposed budget for the LEH grant, we developed the expanded budget with three ranked priorities in mind. The team’s highest budgeting priority was to directly support individuals by increasing our honoraria to speakers and our travel reimbursements for out-of-town attendees who lacked other institutional support. The team’s middle priority was to foster community by using our funding to create a space conducive to organic dialogue. We attempted to create conditions for idea exchange by freely providing a variety of meals and refreshments as well as securing a venue with multiple indoor and outdoor spaces where people could talk or recharge alone. The team’s lowest priority was to lend the event a sense of cohesion and legitimacy by purchasing promotional items and professionally printed programs and nametags. These priorities ultimately directed the project team to use limited funding in a way that reflected our values: namely, that all labor should be appreciated and that new ideas—plus the energy to pursue them—grow out of authentic connections among people who share a common interest.

MODELS FOR LIBRARY EVENT FUNDING

When researching models for library event funding, the project team found the field dominated by tiered models of sponsorship. For example, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) conference uses academic honorifics to distinguish sponsors based on their contributions; according to the 2019 conference program, Elsevier, EBSCO, and Springer Nature contributed over $30,000 and were summa cum laude, organizations such as Gale and ExLibris contributed between $22,500 and $29,999 and were magna cum laude, and smaller sponsors—mostly university libraries–were put on the figurative dean’s list or honor roll (p. 14). The 2023 Digital Library Federation (DLF) Forum used the more traditional medals-based metaphor, distinguishing an IT consulting agency as the platinum sponsor and honoring several other organizations as gold, silver, and bronze sponsors. On a smaller scale, the locally hosted LOUIS Users Conference (LUC) is an event offered to about fifty library members of the LOUIS consortium of academic libraries in Louisiana. LUC provides sponsorship packages distinguished as either gold, silver, or supporting, and the 2023 sponsors included organizations such as EBSCO, SirsiDynix, JSTOR, and Gale. Companies like Elsevier and EBSCO presumably have ample funding at hand to contribute to library events and thereby advertise to a significant customer base. Recognition as a top-tier sponsor of library events benefits the image of a company like Elsevier, and large non-profit associations like the American Library Association require funding to bring their members together for meaningful dialogue.

 

Figure 1: Sponsors acknowledged in the program book for the 2019 ACRL National Conference.

Although many of the events that we referenced as helpful examples sought funding from commercial organizations and used a traditional tiered sponsorship model, we decided that we would exclusively seek funding from non-profits in our network. Commercial sponsors might have been able to contribute impactful funding, but we were not willing to hand any aspect of the event to a for-profit business outside of our community of cultural heritage organizations. We wanted our community of collection administrators to maintain control of the programming and outcomes, and we hoped attendees would use free time to connect with each other rather than with vendor representatives. Also, since the LDL is directed by a decentralized network of professionals across Louisiana, we wanted to provide institutions in the network the opportunity to assume ownership of the event through financial contribution, planning, and/or volunteering.

A non-hierarchical framework for sponsor recognition was more aligned with our vision of sponsorship as a model of shared ownership and distributed participation. When the project team broadcasted information about sponsorship opportunities, instead of touting the visibility of becoming a platinum-level partner, we transparently listed the benefits that specific contributions would enable: $50 would allow us to improve our honoraria for keynotes; $200 would provide lunch for 30 LDL administrators; $600 would provide transportation and lodging for one out-of-town participant. (See Appendix A for the “Sponsorship Opportunities” flier.) If an organization donated enough to fund one coffee break, they were recognized as the sponsor of that coffee break. If an organization donated enough to fund lunch on the most well-attended day of the LDL Fest, they were recognized for that lunch. Logistically, this meant that organizations who contributed more were potentially made visible for more attendees. However, they were not further recognized at a more valuable tier such as platinum, with smaller contributions from less-resourced institutions relegated to a less valuable tier such as silver. Instead of slotting contributions into predefined tiers, we directly discussed the mutual benefits of contributions with interested sponsors. This non-judgmental and low-pressure communication fostered reciprocal relationships with LDL institutions and other non-profit partners based on mutual respect and gratitude.

Moreover, a non-hierarchical model is more reflective of the community-oriented values and structure of the LDL more broadly. Every Louisiana institution that wants to present digital cultural heritage content on the LDL can currently do so after the LDC approves their application and they pay a one-time fee of $750. Whether a contributing institution can ingest thousands of items with broad research value or a small collection with narrower significance, that institution will receive the same degree of visibility on the LDL homepage, the same representation on the LDC, and the same level of support from administrators at LSU. LDL administrators recognize that small and less-resourced cultural heritage organizations—for which even one $750 payment can be difficult—often hold the collections that represent the true diversity of our state, from cosmopolitan New Orleans to Acadian sugar farms. We provide a low barrier of participation and offer the same resources to every LDL member because we genuinely respect the content contributions of each member, as long as the content can be safely and ethically made public. Likewise, the LDL Fest project team honored every contribution we received, whether it funded a single coffee break or multiple speaker honoraria. Consequently, the grid of sponsor logos displayed on our program materials meaningfully communicated the diverse range of LDL member institutions and partners which build and use the diverse range of collections presented on the digital library.

Figure 2: Sponsors acknowledged in the LDL Fest program materials.

SPONSOR MOTIVATIONS

Organizations that sponsored the LDL Fest were motivated by the same community-oriented and non-hierarchical values that informed the project team’s funding priorities. People representing other Louisiana cultural heritage organizations noted that their appreciation for the interdependence of memory institutions led them to commit funding. One such organization is 64 Parishes, the magazine published by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Erin Greenwald, former Editor in Chief of 64 Parishes, explained in personal correspondence that the magazine’s mission to tell Louisiana’s diverse and complicated stories relies on information professionals, such as LDL collection administrators, who work to share local knowledge. She described the LDL as one of 64 Parishes’ “most important partners,” and writes, “We sponsored LDL Fest because we recognize that providing opportunities for the LDL community to convene for professional development and relationship building is beneficial to all of us” (email to Leah Duncan, February 21, 2024). Similarly, members of the Louisiana Association for Archives and Manuscripts (LAMA) shared that they contributed to the LDL Fest because LDL goals and programming overlap with their own (Zach Tompkins, email to Leah Duncan, February 22, 2024). In both cases, organizational motivations to contribute were deeper than mere mutual benefit and built instead on an understanding of mutual reliance.

LDL member institutions who contributed to the LDL Fest were motivated by both gratitude for the digital library and a sense of ownership. Pati Threatt, Archivist & Special Collections Librarian at McNeese State University, writes in personal correspondence that her decision to commit a portion of the institution’s limited budget to the LDL Fest was driven by a desire to “support the collaborative nature of the LDL.” She notes that “McNeese can’t contribute very much to the LDL, but we can contribute a little bit” and concludes, “I’m also very grateful to the LDL, because otherwise I wouldn’t have any sort of digital library at all.” In explaining her contribution, Threatt effectively describes the relationship many LDL members have to the LDL as a repository and as a community: a relationship that centers collaboration, invites all members to take ownership, and fills a genuine need (email to Leah Duncan, February 21, 2024). Pat Vince, Director of Library IT and Digital Scholarship & Initiatives at Tulane Libraries, similarly explains that she advocated for Tulane to support the LDL Fest because of her own feeling of ownership over and investment in the LDL. She writes that she collaborated on the original bylaws of the LDC and served as the first chair of the Executive Board, and she makes a connection between this professional history and her “passion for the LDL” (email to Leah Duncan, February 21, 2024). Although representatives of McNeese and Tulane have different relationships with their own institutional resources, both communicate a desire to support a community that aligns with their own values and in which they have personally invested.

THE FINAL BUDGET

The project team decided from the beginning that the LDL Fest budget would first compensate facilitators and speakers, then build a space for organic conversation, and finally create visual legitimacy with promotional items, and these clear priorities simplified financial decisions throughout the months of event preparation. The State Library of Louisiana donated the use of their facilities before we submitted our proposal to the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. This venue was ideal for our needs, offering formal and informal meeting space for both large and small groups, as well as quiet outdoor seating options. The $5,000 grant that we ultimately received from the LEH was allocated to cover honoraria for keynote speakers and workshop facilitators, and to provide travel funding to our visiting keynotes and a small number of out-of-town LDL collection administrators. With funding for honoraria and reimbursement as well as a donated multi-functional venue, the project team was confident that we could successfully host the LDL Fest. Although we were not dependent on additional contributions, we would use smaller sponsorships to offer more generous support to traveling participants and to provide free refreshments.

After distributing information about sponsorship opportunities to LDL members and other Louisiana library listservs, we received funding commitments from six organizations ranging from $100 to $500. We allocated these contributions to cover daily coffee, pastries, and lunches, and an evening reception at the Louisiana State Museum. Frequent coffee breaks and free on-site lunches created a relaxed setting for participants to meet and exchange ideas. The State Library afforded places for participants to sit at tables inside, in chairs alone, or on benches in the shade, and this spatial variety allowed people to drift to areas where they felt the most at ease. Relatively small contributions from Louisiana cultural heritage organizations allowed us to make the event more conducive to spontaneous and generative connections.

We received a final unexpected $1,000 contribution from the Louisiana Association of Archives and Manuscripts (LAMA). With honoraria, travel funding, and food covered, this funding allowed us to purchase and distribute custom LDL t-shirts, professionally printed nametags and event schedules, and LDL-branded flash drives for a facilitator who requested them for a workshop. While these were low-priority purchases, these items did lend a sense of celebratory import to the gathering.

DISCUSSION

Our final list of sponsors ultimately reflected the LDL as a statewide resource mutually owned and created by a wide variety of cultural heritage institutions, and this community of institutions maintained complete control over the inaugural LDL Fest. The benefits of this community-centric funding were felt as a refreshing absence of corporate pitches and a sense of pride in what our network was able to come together and create. The resulting sense of warmth, collegiality, and optimism was so distinct that the project team would continue to avoid sponsorship agreements in which a corporate sponsor is allotted time to promote their product or space to set up a table. We would consider reaching out to relevant commercial sponsors with an opportunity to enhance the event based on a specific community need, such as more inclusive representation in the LDL. For example, a sponsor could fund a participatory archiving session, in which community members connected to a specific group, event, or topic would be invited to bring personal materials for digitization and share their stories (“What Is Participatory Archiving?,” n.d.). The session deliverable might be a digital collection representing a previous gap in the LDL. This is just one idea to illustrate the difference between donor-centric sponsorship, in which a sponsor pays to control the event floor for a specified space and time, and community-centric sponsorship, in which a sponsor receives recognition for helping the library fulfill a need defined by the community.

Although post-event feedback from participants was largely positive, several participants noted in an anonymous survey that too many of our panels were filled by researchers presenting work only tangentially related to LDL collections, rather than by people engaged in the direct work of building, maintaining, and promoting the LDL. One survey respondent described their experience of the research presentations, writing, “I know the LDL is very important for research and creation, but I would have had a more productive day if I could have had practice in arranging and describing records.” Another respondent wrote, “I wanted to hear more about how to use the LDL, not the…research projects that resulted.” This constructive feedback provides evidence that many participants’ desires were in line with the project team’s goal to amplify the experiences and expertise of those professionals who are most directly impacted by LDL developments. For the inaugural year, the team was unable to recruit a full slate of LDL professionals who were available to present on their work, so we provided multiple panel-spots to graduate students and researchers who presented projects enabled—to various degrees—by LDL resources. In future years, we hope our event schedule centers our community of LDL contributors, just as much as our inaugural budget did.

Conclusion

Judging by the dearth of literature on the financial decision-making that enables cultural heritage events—and the human-centered nature of this work—most cultural heritage professionals are not particularly excited about fundraising and budgeting. The LDL Fest project team’s interest in soliciting and allocating funds certainly paled in comparison to their eagerness to provide a platform for idea exchange, create activities to catalyze focused conversations, and facilitate engaging digital humanities workshops. However, sponsorships and financial decisions lie behind each of these methods for fostering community around digital cultural heritage.

By relying on LDL partners and institutions to supplement our original LEH grant, the team likely sacrificed impactful funding from some asset management company or for-profit data repository. In exchange for missing out on this potential funding, the lobby of the LDL Fest was filled with Louisiana librarians, archivists, and digital humanists connecting with each other rather than vendor representatives. Each presentation session provided a platform for LDL users and administrators to share their work, without any time set aside for product pitches. Even our t-shirts, programs, and signage amplified the institutions that form our community, without reserving space for external corporate branding. By insisting that the LDL’s community-centric values direct the LDL Fest’s sponsorship model and budgeting priorities, the project team ensured that the flow of money honored, rather than distracted from, the community that the LDL serves.

Acknowledgements

The original project team was led by Sophie Ziegler. Although they transitioned to a new professional role before we hosted the LDL Fest, Ziegler’s leadership was instrumental in winning the LEH grant, jumpstarting event planning, and encouraging the community-centered approach described in this paper. Thank you, Sophie, for your support and guidance.

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Appendix A