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For The Future Indicative, Ep 5 Part 2
Transcript
ALEX EFFGEN
Welcome to the Future Indicative: a podcast on the trends, technologies, personalities, and narratives of business. My name is Alex Effgen, and today’s topic is Nonprofit.
MATT BURRIESCI
“I’ve been in the nonprofit sector my whole life. I founded my first nonprofit when I was 17. A nonprofit to me is a mission-driven organization that exists outside the normal wealth-producing mechanism of capitalism.
A nonprofit exists for the benefit of the classically liberal project, writ large. It exists to support the Republic, to fill in holes and gaps in the private and public arenas.”
ALEX EFFGEN
That was Matt Burriesci, Executive Director of the Providence Athenæum, an independent, member-supported library located in the capital of Rhode Island. Founded in 1836, this 501(c)(3) predates the establishment of public libraries in the United States, and is one of a handful of membership libraries–most founded in the 18th and 19th centuries–to provide a young technical and agrarian citizenship access to analogue information back when it did not drown us digitally. Nearly 200 years later and the inheritors of these member libraries lead very different lives, but do they have different needs and values? That is what we’re here to find out.
But first, let me say Happy New Year! The Future Indicative has reached its fifth episode analyzing human topics that straddle business and society, and will continue to cover the evergreen and the ephemeral in this year of anniversaries.
The colonies declared their independence 250 years ago, and as its e. pluribus unum continues to define itself amidst population growth, competing cultural priorities, and technological advancement, we must survey the spectrum of products and services that have developed in this melting pot and learn what we can of their success and failure. Promise and possibility.
In the late 1960s anthropologist Margaret Mead expressed concern that the contemporary form of family organization was failing, and that to avoid the inevitable counterrevolutions that would limit our freedoms and creative capacities, it would take all the constructive and creative imagination available to accomplish the social rearrangement.
While that’s still a work in progress, we have not yet lost the war thanks in part to institutions that were founded and grounded in principles that transcend EBITA, or Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, and Amortization. But if they’re not in it for the money, then what are they in it for?
MATT BURRIESCI
“The reason why I’ve dedicated my life to this sort of work is because I feel this work is important for everybody, for the Republic, and in all sorts of different ways.
We provide a service that doesn’t necessarily concentrate on maximizing wealth or anything like that. It just focuses on providing a service that we feel is important for all of society. I don’t want to overstate it, but it is a bit of like the glue that holds society together in a way.”
ALEX EFFGEN
In a letter dated 6 January 1816, former president Thomas Jefferson wrote to Charles Yancey, and I quote, “if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”
Twenty years later, the Providence Athenæum was founded and incorporated after a previous Providence Athenæum (est. in 1831) and the Providence Library Company (est. in 1753) could not agree on terms for a merger. Both organizations dissolved to form a new library, which included the collections of both earlier institutions. Member libraries were already a trend in many cities across the young Republic, as we see Athenæa incorporated in Boston and Salem (Massachusetts) in 1807 and 1810, Portsmouth (New Hampshire) in 1817, New Haven (Connecticut) in 1826, and Cincinnati (Ohio) in 1835. Even a far off port like San Francisco founded theirs in 1855, six years after the Gold Rush. But the question we continue to ask is why?
MATT BURRIESCI
“One thing I think about a lot at the Athenæum is why is it here in the first place? This institution did not need to exist. So why does it exist? What were the best intentions of its founders? What did they believe it was for? What’s the most charitable interpretation of those intentions and how does that sort of translate to our modern era?
The intention of the founders was to create a collection of useful and edifying books.
And we all know what useful means. They were technicians and farmers and people who really did need a repository of technical knowledge to be useful, to share knowledge. It was a database in some sense.
But that edifying word is kind of interesting. We might roll our eyes on it, but what it really means is productive to moral instruction.
And today we might think that’s a little patronizing or maybe even a little religious in orientation but that’s not really what they meant. What they meant was to provide examples of good character. To exemplify the Classical virtues: prudence, temperance, courage, justice, wisdom, because in their minds, it was widely believed that a Republic required citizens to be both informed and virtuous. Back then they believed that the best way to do that was through history. Not because history was unblemished, but because it was remarkably blemished. Because the point was to learn the lessons of the failures of others more than anything else.”
ALEX EFFGEN
To create a collection of useful and edifying books. Matt Burriesci identifies that as the first principle of the Providence Athenæum. And that first principle delivers the product that addresses the need of its members, and provides them value.
The Future Indicative podcast is built on four principles. Whether your business is nonprofit or for profit, there is no product without addressing these four principles:
SPECIALIZE: What is this?
SELL: Who needs this?
SECURE: What can disrupt this?
SCALE: How do we expand this?
The Athenæum’s first principle is SPECIALIZE: A collection of useful and edifying books that provide a repository of shared technical knowledge as well as examples of good character.
Matt also identified who needed these books in 1836: technicians and farmers. While the young Republic was incredibly literate due to its general religious requirements (think catechism and Sunday School), most libraries were reserved for institutions of higher education, exclusive to those receiving training in religion, law, or medicine. The first public high school in the US was 15 years old in 1836. To provide a trade- and agrarian-based society access to information required the commitment of like-minded members to congregate at the end of their work day at an athenæum, mechanics hall, or lyceum, and learn collectively from a paid lecturer, or independently from a printed volume.
While lectures and literacy still provide the primary lessons to our modern learning, our congregation is now rife with factions. And every fact gets questioned as fiction. If the need and value for an athenæum sold itself in 1836, how does Matt SELL it in 2026?
MATT BURRIESCI
“I’m a big believer in going where we need to go. That we just do what we do. And we don’t try to appeal to everyone. We don’t try to be all things to all people.
Because if you’re all things to all people, you’re nothing to nobody. We just stick to our core mission. We do what we do. And people seem to find us.”
ALEX EFFGEN
This sounds like the “People will come” speech delivered by James Earl Jones in the movie Field of Dreams. But this isn’t a ballpark in a cornfield. This is a library in the heart of a busy city. How do you get eyeballs on what you’re up to?
MATT BURRIESCI
“We don’t spend a ton on marketing. We could spend more, but we are still growing because people are experiencing the Athenæum and…and they see that we’re sincere in what we’re doing. And so they want to join us. They voluntarily join us.
I know that’s probably contrary to a lot of marketing thought, and I do have a background in marketing. But for us, the important thing is just to stay true to our mission and the people who want that mission, who elect to buy into that mission, will do so naturally.”
ALEX EFFGEN
It’s not necessarily contrary to marketing thought. In our episode on Marketing, you’ll remember that Megan Heuer defined great marketing as being “operationally excellent and emotionally resonant.” We discussed how marketing had to reinvest itself in the value of the product. Sincerity and authenticity were important components to amplify the value of that product, so staying true to the mission seems to be the cornerstone of Matt’s marketing. And it’s working, without the urgency impressed by digital competition.
MATT BURRIESCI
“The Athenæum allows people to think for themselves. It allows people to critically engage with literature on their own terms and to set their own path. And that’s something that was very true from the founding, that this was an institution founded sort of on a rugged principle of self-improvement. We don’t prescribe a path for you. You come in and you find your own path. We are here to support that. We are here to support the individual pursuit of wisdom.
And that takes many paths, you know what I mean? We’re not here to set that path for you. But we have a commitment to collecting and promoting…what we feel are enduring works of literature…even those that are produced in the present.
We’re not part of your algorithm. We’re not here to reinforce whatever’s in your echo chamber. You’re here to experience different ideas and to engage with them on your own terms. And I think that’s something that’s very sorely lacking in our echo chambers and our information silos.
So we try to curate that, and then allow people to sort of access it through whatever means they can, if that makes sense.”
ALEX EFFGEN
Individual pursuit of wisdom? While gathering with those who are like minded? This sounds like a trap, especially when you sit in one of their oversized leather-chairs and commune in their historical aesthetic while pondering over a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. Fun fact: back in the day Edgar Allan Poe frequented the Providence Athenæum!
MATT BURRIESCI
“This institution has been here for almost 200 years. It’s been through thick and thin. It’s been through all sorts of problems, but it remains and endures. And there’s something timeless about the place. And when you walk into the Athenæum—I always love seeing people when they walk in the Athenæum for the first time because they always look up and their mouths open. They can’t believe that an institution like this exists and exists in its current state.
What we’ve been doing is really been going on for thousands of years and that we’re just sort of an incarnation of it. We’re part of a very ancient tradition that manifests in this sort of romantic interior that we have, but it endures. It’s still there. It’s still growing. It’s still healthy. And if that’s true, that must mean people still want it.”
ALEX EFFGEN
Thank you for joining us on Part 1 of the Future Indicative’s Nonprofit episode. In Part 2, the 21st century has new technology to disrupt those useful and edifying books, and we’ll explore how the Athenæum SECURES their value for future generations, as well as expands to lands beyond Providence. To learn more about this unique institution please visit www.provath.org.
While opinions expressed are solely our own, we won’t limit your freedoms and creative capacities to learn from them. It will take all of our constructive and creative imagination to accomplish the social rearrangement, and that starts here with you. If you’ve heard something you like, then play it out loud in your private and public arenas, and tell people where you heard it. On behalf of Indicate Marketing, I’m Alex Effgen. And we appreciate your time.
