










































Atla Association Update


3

2024 Association Update
John F. Kutsko, Executive Director 

In 2018, I taught a dissertation writing workshop at the Alex Haley 
Farm, formerly owned by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 
Roots. The restored farm in Clinton, Tennessee, is now owned by the 
Children’s Defense Fund. It’s a training center and space for spiritual 
renewal. I wasn’t prepared for the unexpected emotion I felt when 
I drove up to the gatehouse, and a gentle person invited me in with 
the words, “Welcome home.” I had never been there before, but it 
felt both welcoming and homey.

The annual gatherings of associations like ours have typically 
been a chance to reconnect—a family reunion. That has very much 
characterized the Atla Annual conference. Like everything, it has 
changed over time: smaller these past years, and an online experience 
for many. But an intentional time and gathering for mutual support 
is indispensable. I hope you experience some reunion in person or 
online. So let me begin by saying, “Welcome home.”

This association update, like the meeting itself, is hybrid: Atla 
has a fiscal year, a calendar year, and an annual cycle marked by 
Board terms, which coincides with this meeting. My report on the 
state of Atla’s finances is for the last fiscal year’s audit, that is, the 
year ending nine months ago (i.e., August 31, 2023). But I will also 
provide program and product highlights from the past year and look 
ahead to next year’s initiatives for 2024–2025.

It is not possible to adequately convey the business and admin-
istrative details, the development of the databases, the Open Press 
publishing, and association programs and services in the few min-
utes I have for the update. Atla is 24/7. So, I encourage you to read 
the Annual Reports, weekly updates, monthly blogs, and regular 
announcements posted to Atla.com and its socials—every week, all 
year long.

A few words of thanks. Now that I am into my second year, I’ve 
gotten to know many Atla members, and it confirms my first impres-
sion that theological librarianship is both a profession of wide-ranging 
expertise and a vocation of service and commitment—commitment 

http://Atla.com


4    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

to students, faculty, institutions, and to the resources for information 
literacy that foster and preserve the study of religion and theology. 
Second, thanks to the Atla Board for supporting me. They serve at 
your pleasure, and I serve at theirs. Third, Atla is a membership 
organization, a public trust of its members and governed by its 
volunteers. Atla has 45 full-time staff, but these are the committees 
that govern and guide the organization: 

• Board of Directors and Committees
 ° Finance Committee
 ° Governance Committee
 ° Moral Ownership Committee
 ° Nominating Committee

• Association Committees
 ° Conference Committee
 ° Conduct Committee
 ° Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
 ° Atla Open Press Advisory Council
 ° Professional Development Committee
 ° Scholarly Communication and Digital Initiatives Com-

mittee
 ° CRRA Program Committee

• Editorial Boards
 ° Books@Atla Open Press
 ° Theological Librarianship
 ° TCB: Technical Services in Religion and Theology

• PCC (NACO/SACO/CONSER) Funnels

Thanks to everyone serving on them, and please consider that ser-
vice for yourself.

THE STATE OF THE ASSOCIATION

The last fiscal year that ended August 31, 2023, was financially posi-
tive, and the state of the association is strong. The audited fiscal year 
2023 financial statements from the independent audit are available 
online in the 2023–24 Annual Report (https://www.atla.com/wp-content/
uploads/2024/04/2024AtlaAnnualReport-1.pdf ) on pages 28–31.

https://www.atla.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2024AtlaAnnualReport-1.pdf 
https://www.atla.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2024AtlaAnnualReport-1.pdf 


Business Reports    5

The audited Statement of Financial Position reported the orga-
nization’s total liabilities and net assets at year-end, as $19,342,863, 
up $1,077,501 from FY2022. 

Actual revenue was $8,229,018 against actual expenses of 
$7,565,321, as shown on the Statement of Activities. This brings Atla’s 
total net assets (sometimes called total net worth) to $12,469,747—
up $663,697 from FY2022. This has been a positive fiscal year and a 
strong recovery from FY2022 to FY2023.

Current assets represent cash and investments and other assets 
that will likely be converted to or provide benefit similar to cash 
in the next 12 months. The current asset level is a gauge of liquid-
ity and the organization’s ability to meet its near-term obligations. 
Atla’s current assets increased by $560,267 from FY2022 to FY2023, 
giving Atla strong coverage to support its liabilities. In our current 
fiscal year, the assets in the unaudited FY2024Q2 financials total 
$10,312,864, an increase of $1,101,487 over the previous year. This 
continues our good cash flow position this year.

Atla’s primary source of revenue (92%) continues to be royalties 
from the research tools we create (see figure 1). Income generated 
from Membership and Engagement activities (2%) include dues, 
conference fees, and fees for services such as hosting ejournals for 
other organizations. We are grateful to EBSCO and the relationships 
that support this partnership. Administration is a category that 
includes unrealized gains and losses from investments, and this 
year we’ve experienced unrealized gains.

Figure 1: FY2023 Results: How revenue is earned 



6    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

On the expense side, the largest portion (60%) was used to produce 
the Atla research tools we create and provide through EBSCO (see 
figure 2). However, a significant amount of Atla’s expenses—more 
than nine times the revenue—is focused on fulfilling the mission of 
the association. Last year this was 19%, which is also higher than the 
previous year.  This includes funding committee work, open access 
publishing, Membership and Engagement staff, and professional 
development opportunities for our members, such as this confer-
ence and our webinar series. Board and governance work, as well 
as much of the administration costs, are also really the work of the 
organization’s ends. 

Figure 2: FY2023 Results: How revenue is spent

Total investment—including the endowment, operating reserve, 
and other non-endowed funds—grew from $6,843,934 at May 2023 
to $7,854,138 at May 2024—that is, just over $1,000,000 (see table 1). 
This growth is largely due to increases in market valuation of the 
holdings and realized investment income. Nevertheless, the alloca-
tions allowed now by the new investment policy have significantly 
helped.

Table 1: Total Investments
MAY 31, 2024 MAY 31, 2023

16-1233 (OTHER NON-ENDOWED FUNDS)

Cash Equivalents  $2,648,656.62  $1,651,263.61 

Equities                   -     $1,291,666.06 



Business Reports    7

Fixed Income  $1,060,477.78  $2,807,088.91 

Alternatives                   -     $22,972.32 

TOTAL FUND  $3,709,134.40  $5,772,990.90 

16-1233A (ENDOWED FUNDS)

Cash Equivalents  $102,072.07  $86,543.47 

Equities  $1,356,391.30  $984,400.10 

Fixed Income                   -                      -    

Alternatives                   -                      -    

TOTAL FUND  $1,458,463.37  $1,070,943.57 

16-1233B (OPERATING RESERVE)

Cash Equivalents  $51,442.79                   -    

Equities  $1,625,548.07                   -    

Fixed Income  $982,421.66                   -    

Alternatives  $27,127.80                   -    

TOTAL FUND  $2,686,540.32                   -    

ALL FUNDS

Cash Equivalents  $2,802,171.48  $1,737,807.08 

Equities  $2,981,939.37  $2,276,066.16 

Fixed Income  $2,042,899.44  $2,807,088.91 

Alternatives  $27,127.80  $22,972.32 

TOTAL ALL FUNDS  $7,854,138.09  $6,843,934.47 

As of June, Atla has 742 members in 28 different countries. 
Membership is down in most categories from FY2023 to FY2024 as 
shown in table 2. This trend for peer library associations and learned 
societies, too, is not unique to Atla, but it is an issue for concern.



8    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Table 2: Atla membership trends (FY2015–2024
FY15 FY16 FY17 FY18 FY19 FY20 FY21 FY22 FY23 FY24 

YTD

INDIVIDUAL 367 377 368 346 330 336 350 367 382 341

LIFETIME 88 91 97 94

RETIRED 22 24 25 18 19 17

EMERITUS 75 71 20 13 12 4

STUDENT 80 45 57 69 86 71 85 92 90 53

INSTITUTIONAL 234 239 263 285 294 292 291 301 304 306

AFFILIATE 62 61 47 32 23 22 23 23 13 9

INTERNATIONAL 
INSTITUTIONAL

10 10

TOTAL MEMBERS 843 828 832 826 830 816 794 814 820 730

THE IMPACT OF THE ASSOCIATION

If you’ve read my blogs, you will have seen that I have a sober and 
realistic view of the pressures we face in theological education at 
seminaries and divinity schools, and the study of religion at col-
leges and universities. But here is the thing: Religion is not a siloed 
field. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It isn’t supposed to be cloistered 
and studied in isolation from its comprehensive impact on lives, 
communities, culture, and society. How religion is studied may be 
variable, but the need for understanding it is constant. This fact 
plays to our strengths: an association providing community and 
professional development for theological librarians, and the tools 
your faculty and students need to study religion in its historical, 
interdisciplinary, and evolving ways.

You have also seen in my blogs a theme that I deeply believe in. 
It is about Atla’s capacious future: Religion is Everywhere. Religion 
is Everywhere in Society. What an opportunity for the vital and 
essential role of theological librarianship and the resources we can 
provide any and every field!

With this message, in 2023 we began working closely with EBSCO’s 
marketing team to demonstrate that the databases support the study 
of religion across a campus, not just in a department, and they serve 
theological education in the new ways students want to study it or 
to practice it—often outside congregational ministry. 



Business Reports    9

Atlas PLUS® especially leads the way in providing a tool for students 
and faculty that is interdisciplinary, multilingual, and multireligious, 
that includes a diversity of perspectives and approaches. I hope you 
had the chance to read the June blog by Maria Stanton and the new 
horizons we reach with it. As Maria says, “comprehending the role of 
religion in shaping society is essential,” and Atla has a research tool 
for the “comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted role of 
religion in society” (https://www.atla.com/blog/religion-society-atlas-
journey-and-new-horizons/). In other words, it’s now the database to 
study not just religion but religion and society. A tool like this deep-
ens and broadens the role and context of the theological librarian, 
because you become the guides helping navigate the intersection of 
religion with a variety of disciplines and professions. 

This year the Membership and Engagement staff implemented 
a new membership opportunity—membership bundling—and 67 
institutions, or 22.3% of all institutional members, have chosen to take 
advantage of it so far. One of the goals of membership bundling was 
to increase the number of new individual members, and that seems 
to be succeeding, since 43 of the 109 individual members associated 
with a membership bundle (43%) are newly joined members. Other 
goals of bundling were to give Atla a clear line of communication to 
library staff who are not the official representative for a member 
institution, to increase the number of individuals receiving regu-
lar communications from Atla, and to help them benefit from Atla 
through grant and professional development programs they may 
not have been aware of.

In addition to these product and membership points of emphasis, I 
want to note some other accomplishments this year that involve both 
the Membership and Engagement team and Product Development 
and Production team, often working closely together: the launch 
of the Institutional Repository service, continued indexing and 
transcribing of Day1 sermons for the Christian Media Alliance, and 
both the support and integration into Atla of the Catholic Research 
Resources Alliance programing and its Catholic News Archive and 
Catholic Portal.

This year, too, to support our accountability to members on the 
impact staff is making to achieve the new Organizational Ends that 
the board approved, we distributed a survey in April. This survey was 

https://www.atla.com/blog/religion-society-atlas-journey-and-new-horizons/
https://www.atla.com/blog/religion-society-atlas-journey-and-new-horizons/


10    AT L A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

the outgrowth of goals we set last year toward two efforts: one, pro-
vide data that inform Key Performance Indicators to hold ourselves 
accountable to what you, the members, want Atla to accomplish; 
and second, to work more closely with the board’s Moral Ownership 
Committee to draft the questions so that we understand together 
what members need from Atla. This will become an annual survey, 
so that we can observe trends in our performance as well as new 
challenges and opportunities. 

In addition to the member satisfaction survey, we are also col-
laborating with our international partners on a global demographic 
survey. This survey will support a study of religion and theology 
library trends. It is designed to help understand the environment in 
which theological libraries are functioning, and how librarianship 
is evolving to meet the changing landscape of theological education 
around the globe. This year we collaborated with ANZTLA in Australia 
and New Zealand, and BETH in Europe, to develop the study ques-
tions, and we will work together to analyze and report results on a 
global as well as regional level. Following the survey, we will work 
with In Trust to conduct focus groups in various parts of the world. 
We plan to widen the collaboration with more international library 
association peers next year, particularly in the Majority World.

THE FUTURE OF THE ASSOCIATION

Finally, along with the international survey and study, which points 
ahead to next year, I want to mention two more projects the Atla 
staff is focused on. 

One is something I also mentioned last year and toward which 
we have made good progress. We are in the process of building an 
open and federated discovery platform that cross-searches a wide 
range of materials, including a significant number of open access 
resources, archives and special collections, and institutional histories. 
It will be a federated search solution designed to support theological 
education, interdisciplinary research, preaching, and teaching, and 
especially to make discoverable the at-risk and underrepresented 
histories that fully reflect the diversity of contributions in religion 
and theology on society. Stay tuned for more about this project.



Business Reports    11

Second, we are actively exploring new products that support 
the intersection of religion in professional areas. What appears to 
be most promising is a database for studying the rapidly growing 
field in which Religion and Spirituality intersect with Medicine 
and Healthcare Chaplaincy. We worked with a consultant on a case 
statement and proposal, and we are now in the fundraising stage for 
a planning grant to methodically determine the business case and 
market for such a resource. We are now budgeting for FY2025 (our 
fiscal year begins September 1), and both efforts I just mentioned 
are being built into it.

Thanks for your time and attention. Please feel free anytime to 
ask anything more about this year, our plans for next, or comments 
or concerns. I am at your service.




