[Themaintainers] Concluding the Grant Funded Period: The Maintainers step into a network-led chapter

[Liliana Coelho]

Dear Maintainers,

We’re excited to share this update as we complete the grant-funded chapter
of The Maintainers, which has spanned  from 2020 to 2025, with the generous
support of Siegel Family Endowment <https://www.siegelendowment.org/>
and Alfred
P. Sloan Foundation <https://sloan.org/>. This funding made it possible for
us to create several fellowship iterations, host free public programs,
offer engagement opportunities for community members, and support full-time
staff and contractor support, all dedicated to supporting localized efforts
to implement maintenance, repair, and care work on the ground.

As we look ahead, we’ll be introducing a leadership transition of The
Maintainers, building from our summer 2024 publications of our Narratives
of Change (Chapter 1
<https://themaintainers.org/narrative-of-change-chapter-1/> and Chapter 2
<https://themaintainers.org/narrative-of-change-chapter-2/>). We see this
new pathway as an opportunity to expand the network of Maintainers-related
projects, further uplifting global maintenance and repair leaders, and
supporting maintenance researchers and practitioners.
*Many paths forward: How grant funding was critical to reach our current
maturation *

We’ve explored many future pathways for The Maintainers, and through this
process, we’ve learned a lot about what it means to maintain The
Maintainers itself: from having dedicated staff and awarding fellowships to
providing honoraria for our members’ contributions, hosting free events,
and overseeing a digital platform to disseminate knowledge and content
about implementing maintenance practices. In addition to the core
operations funding from the Siegel Family Endowment
<https://www.siegelendowment.org/> and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
<https://sloan.org/>, we’ve recently  been able to diversify revenue
streams through a contribution from The Culture of Repair
<https://www.cultureofrepair.org/> to support the Steering Committee, a
sponsorship for the Impact Fellows from VR (Ex) Change
<https://www.vrexchange.org/>, along with some individual contributions
from our wonderful community of Maintainers.

We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve built together. Collaborating with our
community since 2020 has shown us there’s no single “right” path to support
a movement for maintenance thinking and action. All of the learnings,
insights, and support over the years has brought us to *this* moment.
*What’s changing?*

After leveraging this grant period to build a solid project infrastructure
for The Maintainers, we (Lauren and Liliana) will be stepping back from our
roles as Co-Directors in July 2025, marking the transition of The
Maintainers into a distributed-leadership model.

This decision was formalized in fall 2024 when our 2024-25 Steering
Committee (composed of former Maintainers Fellows and Advisory Board
members) expressed a strong desire and vision for the work to
continue—though in a more scaled-down way—even as long-term funding
remained uncertain.

The idea of a distributed leadership model has long been a part of this
community’s vision, but it wasn’t possible to shape it fully until we had
dedicated staff to facilitate the planning. Over the past year, we’ve
worked closely with the Steering Committee and our program advisor Jessica
Meyerson at Educopia to design this leadership transition so that our most
engaged community leaders could step up. This interim Steering Committee
will guide The Maintainers through the coming year and explore what global
distributed leadership can look like in practice. We will share more about
the details of this governance model and introduce you to our incredible
Steering Committee in subsequent communications.

This past year has been about more than just wrapping up a grant-funded
chapter—it’s been about preparing The Maintainers for a sustainable, more
agile, and community-centered future. In close partnership with our 2024-25
Steering Committee, much of our focus has been on building the containers
and streamlining the infrastructure that will allow the project to
transition from a staffed initiative to a distributed leadership model,
while staying rooted in its core values of care, repair, and maintenance.
This intentionally flexible model will support lighter infrastructure while
ensuring collective accountability and shared direction, matching our
current moment and honoring the many hands that have shaped it.


*Highlights from the year*

   - Archiving the entirety of The Maintainers’ body of work. We’ve wanted
   to ensure that the rich documentation created over the years via events,
   fellowships, tools, reflections, and more was preserved in a durable, open
   format. This year, we finally made that vision a reality. With
   encouragement from our peers in the information sciences and technical
   assistance from Educopia, we archived the entirety of The Maintainers’
   published body of work from our WordPress site to the Open Science
   Framework. This free, open-source platform will allow current and future
   maintainers to access and build upon our work. The archive honors years of
   contributions and ensures that our collective knowledge remains accessible
   for learning, reuse, and inspiration.
   - Refining our leadership model and gathering a fantastic Steering
   Committee. The 2024-25 Steering Committee
   <https://themaintainers.org/announcing-the-new-maintainers-steering-committee/>
is
   an intentionally convened group of advisors and former Movement Fellows,
   who combine localized practice with international network building.
   Together, we have spent countless hours working through our collective
   questions about the purpose and power of The Maintainers. These
   conversations have helped define the contours of our next phase, and we’ve
   designed a lightweight but intentional governance structure to carry the
   project forward with care. These conversations have helped define the
   contours of our next phase, and we’ve designed a lightweight but
   intentional governance structure to carry the project forward with care.
   The members of our Steering Committee represent leadership in different yet
   complementary areas of expertise, and you will learn more about them in
   upcoming communications.
   - Compiling a Maintainers Study Guide to support the implementation of
   maintenance practices. As part of wrapping this chapter, we’ve been
   synthesizing our collective learning into a Maintainers Study Guide, set
   for release later this summer. Drawing from five years of fellowships,
   meetups, workshops, conferences, and cross-sector partnerships, the guide
   offers practical starting points for those interested in applying
   maintenance thinking in their own contexts. It will be a resource not only
   for reflection but also for activation—supporting new users as they enter
   the network and explore what maintenance as a practice and lens can mean
   for them.

[image: A zoom screenshot of the 2024-25 Steering Committee. There are six
people waving!]A wave from The 2024-25 Maintainers Steering Committee
members: from top left to right we have Lauren, Liliana, Sam, Himani,
Nathan, Purna, Camille and Mathew!*Leadership Transition*

We wanted to take a moment to reflect on the ethos and values we’ve tried
to embed into the project, as Co-Directors of The Maintainers. For Lauren,
this meant designing programs that expanded The Maintainers’ partnerships
with universities, circular economy coalitions, and grassroots community
groups, while emphasizing international collaboration to tackle the
challenges of an interconnected world. For Liliana, it meant approaching
operations and community engagement from a place of transparency,
iteration, and celebration.

Together, our goal has always been to center the maintainers who often go
unnoticed, and to create a space where they are seen, valued, and warmly
welcomed. We hope this ethos will leave a lasting trace and that the
Steering Committee will carry it forward as they steward the network into
its next phase.
*What’s to come? *

The Maintainers isn’t ending – it’s evolving. And we’re not going far.

We remain committed to this work and will continue to support and represent
The Maintainers’ vision. In our next updates, we’ll share more about the
process of this transition, formally introduce the 2025-26 Interim Steering
Committee, and share ways to stay connected and involved.


With care,
Lauren and Liliana
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