Dummy Verbeke, writing on behalf of the KU Leuven Libraries, on the KU Leuven Fund for Fair OA:
The fund is exclusively devoted to the support of non-profit and community-owned initiatives in the field of Open Access and Open Scholarship in general. It is not a library-supported APC fund, which all too often results in channeling money to traditional suppliers without solving any of the three issues raised above. Instead, it is our way of making sure that at least part of the available library budget is safeguarded to support alternatives, fostering diversity of business models in the market of academic publishing and helping those who are willing to try something new.
This is a great model, ripe for widespread emulation. Lots of libraries support community-owned, nonprofit initiatives, but most of the spending seems ad hoc. A formal fund structure, with some budget-percentage set-aside—2.5 percent is good target—would provide legitimacy and a measure of stability to the APC-resistant, community-led corner of nonprofit scholarly publishing.