Atlantic Digital Heritage Institute

Strategic Funding and Organizational Development Plan (2026–2028)

Vision

Atlantic Digital Heritage Institute (ADHI) seeks to become a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving, digitizing, indexing, and disseminating French colonial and Haitian archival materials. Our long-term goal is to transform difficult-to-access historical records into searchable, interconnected resources that advance scholarship, genealogy, and public understanding of the Atlantic World.

Strategic Goal 1: Build Organizational Capacity

Objective

Develop the organizational systems necessary to manage large-scale archival projects efficiently and sustainably.

Proposed Funding

Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines – Capacity Building Grant

Proposed Project

Develop ADHI's Digital Collections Infrastructure.

Deliverables include:

• standardized metadata framework

• indexing standards

• authority files for names and places

• document cross-referencing protocols

• Geneanet integration workflow

• Wikidata/Wikimedia linking standards

• volunteer training manual

• quality-control procedures

• documentation standards

• digital collections workflow

Organizational Benefit

The project creates reusable organizational infrastructure that allows ADHI to process archival collections consistently and efficiently.

Community Benefit

Researchers, genealogists, educators, and descendants will be better able to discover and connect historical records through standardized indexing and linked archival resources.

Long-Term Impact

The project better positions ADHI to pursue larger collaborative archival preservation and digitization grants.

Strategic Goal 2: Expand Public Humanities Programming

Objective

Increase public understanding of archival research and historical handwriting.

Proposed Funding

Humanities Iowa Mini Grant

Project:

Reading the French Archives:
A Community Workshop on Historical Handwriting

Outcome:

One public workshop introducing participants to historical French cursive and primary-source research.

Strategic Goal 3: Expand Statewide Humanities Access

Proposed Funding

Humanities Iowa Major Grant

Outcome

Expand the workshop into a statewide series.

Potential locations:

• Central Iowa

• Eastern Iowa

• Western Iowa

Outcome:

Increase public engagement with French archival materials throughout Iowa.

Strategic Goal 4: Increase Public Access to Archival Collections

Proposed Funding

Wikimedia Rapid Fund

Goal

Increase freely accessible archival materials through:

• Wikimedia Commons

• Wikidata

• Wikipedia

• multilingual metadata

Strategic Goal 5: Establish International Digitization Partnerships

Potential Funding

• UCLA MEAP

• British Library EAP

• CLIR

• NHPRC

• NEH

Objective

Digitize endangered archival collections while creating publicly accessible digital resources.

Strategic Goal 6: Establish ADHI as a National Research Organization

Long-Term Goals

• Collaborative Research (NEH)

• Scholarly Editions

• Public Humanities

• Collections Stewardship

Objective

Lead major collaborative research and preservation initiatives focused on French colonial and Haitian archival collections.

Organizational Growth Strategy

Each funded project should produce permanent organizational assets.

Examples include:

• digital infrastructure

• metadata standards

• archival workflows

• public programming

• educational curriculum

• digitized collections

• international partnerships

• documented procedures

• volunteer training

• expanded public access

These assets strengthen ADHI's ability to carry out increasingly ambitious preservation, research, and public humanities initiatives.