In 2012 the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) Standards and Practices Working Group surveyed 85 institutions with a mandate to preserve digital content to investigate how such organizations staffed and organized their preservation functions. It was found that for most organizations surveyed, there was no dedicated digital preservation department to take the lead in this area so preservation tasks fell to a library, archive, or other department. Close to half of respondents thought that the digital preservation function in their organizations was well organized, but a third were not satisfied and many were unsure. Addressing staffing levels, organizations expressed a preference to have almost twice the number of full‐ time equivalents (FTEs) that they currently had. While the survey showed that most organizations were retraining existing staff to manage digital preservation functions, questions were also asked about desired qualifications for new digital preservation managers. Having a passion and motivation for digital preservation and a knowledge of digital preservation standards, best practices, and tools were considered the most sought after skills. Other findings from the survey showed that most organizations expected the size of their holdings to increase substantially in the next year with 20% expecting a doubling of content. Images and text files were the most common types of content being preserved. Most organizations were performing the majority of digital preservation activities in‐house but many outsourced some activities (digitization was the most common) and were hoping to outsource more. The survey provides some useful baseline data about staffing needs, and the NDSA Standards and Practices Working Group recommends that the survey be repeated in two to three years to show change over time as digital preservation programs mature and as more organizations self‐identify as being engaged in digital preservation.