Beginning today, the Kamusi Project is requesting subscriptions to the project from institutions that use or benefit from our resources, and from those that support our goals. We have begun mailing requests to selected institutions. If you have suggestions for institutions we should ask to subscribe, please send us their contact details. If you represent an institution that we have not yet contacted, please request subscription details and we will get back to you right away.

We have been planning the institutional subscription program for several months. Until recently, the Kamusi Project was funded primarily by grants that have now run their course. However, the project still has much work ahead of it in the goal of producing comprehensive dictionary and learning resources for Swahili and other African languages. Many of our readers have donated generously to keep the project going, but we do not have the fundraising infrastructure to generate enough private donations to support all we hope to accomplish.

Institutional subscriptions are a sensible way to raise the funds necessary for the project to continue. Many institutions use Kamusi Project resources in their daily activities, and many others share our larger goals. Institutions can tap their existing budget mechanisms to pay for subscriptions that any of their individual members can then use at any time. Just as an institution might decide to subscribe to a magazine or journal, it can subscribe to the Kamusi Project for a rate in keeping with its size.

The most frequent question about the subscription plan is this: Why should anyone subscribe to a project when its resources are freely available online? This is a classic "commons problem," in which, as long as everyone else subscribes, it is in the interests of each individual not to subscribe. That is, if everyone but me subscribes, then I can hitch along as a free rider; I reap all of the benefits (daily improvements to the dictionary, new online Swahili lessons, the benefit of having the resource available to students and professionals around the world) while bearing none of its costs. Of course, if nobody subscribes, then everybody loses; work is halted and the resource remains incomplete, which is where the Kamusi Project has been mired since February. We are asking that institutions recognize the perils of leaving it to others to bear all the costs of this common resource. For each individual institution, the solution to the commons problem is indeed to send in the requested subscription fee, because only by doing so can the institution have any influence on whether the project survives, thrives, and continues to provide it with valuable services. It is a small gamble for an institution to subscribe, because it is possible that nobody else will subscribe and very little additional work will therefore occur, but the odds favor a winning payout, in which many others subscribe and the subscription returns every penny in improvements and additions to the resource.

We are asking a wide variety of institutions to subscribe. Our first round of letters went to all the colleges and universities in the US that teach Swahili, since their students are among our most frequent users. We will soon request subscriptions from organizations that work in East Africa, such as NGOs, bilateral aid organizations, and missions. We are hopeful that charitable trusts and foundations will be interested in subscribing, since the Kamusi Project provides resources for many organizations supported by foundation grants, and in many cases the project is in keeping with their stated goals. We will also request subscriptions from universities in Europe and Asia that teach Swahili or have programs in African Studies, as well as other institutions that our records indicate make frequent use of the project. Finally, we hope that corporations with business interests in Swahili-speaking countries, or that are interested in supporting the goals of the Kamusi Project, will not only subscribe, but will also consider making more substantial underwriting grants to the project.

The Kamusi Project was among the first experiments in cooperative scholarship for Africa on the Internet, and as an academic initiative it has been quite successful. However, our business model, in which we give away everything we produce, has been a disaster. We are therefore embarking on a new collaborative experiment in cooperative funding, which we hope will enable us to continue our success as a unique and growing knowledge resource. Please wish us luck, and let us know if you have contact information for organizations from which we should request subscriptions (perhaps your school, library, church, or workplace), or if you represent an organization that would like to subscribe.