Mission and Activities

Ithaka is an independent not-for-profit organization with a mission to accelerate the productive uses of information technologies for the benefit of higher education worldwide. We help promising not-for-profit projects develop sustainable organizational and business models.  We also work with established institutions that are rethinking the way they serve their core constituents.

In pursuing our mission, we engage in three primary areas of activity:

1. Research on trends and lessons learned to help the higher education community understand, and manage, the transition to an electronic environment;
2. Strategic Services to help organizations and initiatives in higher education address pressing strategic issues and develop sustainable models;
3. Administrative support services – in finance, human resources, and information technology – to strengthen organizational infrastructure and enable projects to focus on core mission activities.

We work in close collaboration with JSTOR and ARTstor, and we are currently incubating three initiatives: Aluka, a digital library of scholarly resources from and about the developing world; NITLE, a collaborative effort to promote emerging technologies in liberal arts contexts; and Portico, a permanent archive of electronic scholarly journals.

The Need for an Organization like Ithaka

Electronic and networking technologies have had a dramatic impact on the academy, scholarly communication, and the manner in which knowledge is disseminated.  Most members of our community can point to positive ways that technology has transformed higher education, including improved communication across time and distance, and increased access to knowledge and resources.  At the same time, change has occurred on individual or institutional levels much more rapidly than it has occurred at the basic infrastructural level.  Challenges in coordination and collaboration – which have always been a part of higher education – have hampered the full potential of new technologies.

When the commercial sector faces dramatic transformations, change most often occurs through the actions of new entrants that take advantage of new opportunities and an evolving environment. These new entrants are supported by venture capital firms and investment banks motivated by the opportunity to generate profits.  In the not-for-profit sector, and in higher education, there is a lack of comparable depth of human and financial resources for starting up sustainable, innovative enterprises.  However, we believe that certain challenges and opportunities facing higher education can best be addressed by not-for-profit organizations, particularly if they bring to bear creativity, focus, and agility, and are motivated by a strong sense of accountability as well as by their missions.

Ithaka promotes innovation in higher education by supporting entrepreneurial not-for-profit initiatives.  We are ready to support innovation whether it occurs in a start-up – as in our incubated entities – or in a long-established institution.  We aim to combine a commitment to the core values of higher education, a deep understanding of technology and its impact, and experience developing economically sustainable not-for-profit business models, to help advance community-wide benefits during this time of technological transition.

Ithaka received start-up funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation.

Contact Information

New York:
151 East 61st Street
New York, NY 10065
212-500-2600

New Jersey:
100 Campus Drive, Suite 100
Princeton, NJ 08540
609-986-2200

Michigan:

301 East Liberty, Suite 250
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
734-998-9100