Biological Collections Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century (2020) / Chapter Skim
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7 Securing Financial Sustainability
7 Securing Financial Sustainability
Pages 161-178
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From page 161... ...
Collections need an adequate, predictable flow of resources to maintain the specimens and the data that are their historical legacy, while also innovating and adapting to new uses and demands. Achieving financial sustainability is a goal for all institutions with biological collections.
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From page 162... ...
As the needs for research, education, and the expanding end-user community for biological collections increase, so does the pressure for long-term financial stability. For many public academic institutions, federal, state, and county financial support can represent a large part of the collections support, which makes them vulnerable to fluctuations in public funding.
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From page 163... ...
In addition, living collections rarely have local institutional support, and a long-term federal strategy to support our nation's biological collections has not been developed. A clear, long-term vision for both individual collections and the collections community is needed for successful fundraising.
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From page 164... ...
and modern research such as studies of climate change, species interactions, and functional traits, as described in detail in Chapter 2, as a community, biological research collections do not market themselves well or effectively demonstrate their value to stakeholders. The centrality of biological collections to these educational and research activities is still not widely appreciated outside of the immediate research and collections community, as evidenced by the recent defunding of active collections at places such as The University of Oklahoma (Nhcoll-l Listserv posting from Dr.
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From page 165... ...
There is a need to share observations and conclusions in ways that people can understand and through multiple channels of communication. The benefits of more effective communication include: • Enable biological collections administrators and staff to articulate the vitality of their programs.
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From page 166... ...
Considering the extraordinary range of types and purposes of biological collection specimens, these knowledge gaps make it difficult to articulate for funders or administrators who are not scientists the value proposition of biological collections in ways that translate into increased resources. Describing assets and articulating the return on investment for collections is also difficult to calculate, and the financial consequence of the unavailability of specimens or their associated data is a question that is at best challenging to answer or one that is rarely even asked.
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From page 167... ...
The collections community and funders need a strategic vision that includes a variety of tactics and benchmarks to prioritize accessions and deaccessions of collections and to alert the community of collections in danger of being lost. Financial commitments and strategic planning to continue to digitize specimen records and build and maintain the cyberinfrastructure are also required to ensure the long-term utility and accessibility of digital data associated with biological collections.
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From page 168... ...
RANGE OF OPTIONS FOR ADDRESSING THE ISSUE OF FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY Overcoming the barriers described in the previous section will require a thoughtful approach that takes advantage of resources that are available not only within the biological collections community but also from outside the community. This section describes a number of strategies for surmounting these barriers, including developing strategic business models and long-term frameworks to diversify funding portfolios and explore diverse funding mechanisms, strengthening partnerships and offering training opportunities, taking advantage of well-established communications practices from the science communications community, and developing a national vision for ensuring financial sustainability.
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From page 169... ...
Similarly, the William & Lynda Steere Herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden is an example of a collection that has been endowed through individual philanthropy. The named Bayer Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden reflects the corporate support obtained for that collection building in the late 1990s.
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From page 170... ...
. Other examples include collaborative networks to develop and support software initiatives such as Specify and Arctos, and Thematic Collections Networks funded for collaborative digitization projects through NSF's Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC)
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From page 171... ...
, rethinking the value proposition of biological research collections will be key to ensuring their financial sustainability. Finding ways to increase appreciation for the invaluable contributions that biological collections make to research and innovation will be the first step in ensuring their health and stability in the future.
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From page 172... ...
can allocate where it is needed for operation or even for exploring new ideas/capabilities for the collection. Complementary Funding for Research and Infrastructure Only a few funding sources -- most notably NSF and NIH -- invest in collections infrastructure, although support may also come from other federal agencies, state and local agencies, foundations, collection-holding institutions, and individuals.
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From page 173... ...
. While there has been little overlap between natural history and living collections in this arena, both communities have taken different approaches to financial sustainability but have insights to offer each other.
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From page 174... ...
Also, specimens are often collected with public funds through NSF, and therefore these institutions cannot always justify charging for their use. Traditionally, natural history collections exchange, borrow, or lend specimens within their communities on a quid pro quo basis.
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From page 175... ...
It is here where funding entities could provide the necessary investment to implement these changes. Develop a National Vision for Biological Collections and a Distributed Collection Network in Service to the Nation The collections community needs to assume a leadership role in developing a national vision for ensuring the financial sustainability of biological collections.
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From page 176... ...
A visionary collections community can accomplish this in two ways: develop compelling value propositions, business models, and strategic plans to implement and periodically assess their investments; and build partnerships to develop a national collections network to further the mission of collections in research and education. Researchers need to be encouraged to value not only the samples immediately relevant to their own research -- and which may be lost to future researchers -- but also the value of their specimens to future generations.
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From page 177... ...
This could be an ongoing activity centered at a national biological collections center and should include both natural history and living col lections together. Recommendation 7-3: The National Science Foundation Directorate for Biological Sciences should continue to provide stable, long-term funding to support investigators who rely on biological collections for research and education.
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