It is not clear that our posts here on Steemit have any audience beyond our classmates, @sndbox, and Steemit bots.

I've tried to read as many of your class's posts as I could. I think it's a fascinating experiment, and I enjoyed learning a little bit about PHL history. I've even resteemed a couple posts and/or shared them on facebook. So you have at least an audience of 1. ; -) I'm just more of a lurker than a commenter.

My rhetorical questions are, "Compared to what?" Are cultural institutions currently using wordpress or facebook? If so, what do they get paid to post there? I guess fundamentally the question is, "Is steemit a fundraising model or an employment model?"

I do agree with you that (for most people) it's probably not suitable as a sole source of reliable funding for full time employment - in the cultural sector or any other - but does that preclude its use for fundraising? Couldn't it just be part of someone's routine job duties at a cultural institution - in lieu of or in addition to the facebooking and blogging that they're already doing? I have to imagine that workers in the sector do lots of tasks that might not be easily justified purely by ROI or "financial return on time spent"?

Another factor that you might consider is the potential to recruit and grow your audience. Your class has been here for a couple months, and you'll be breaking up soon, but imagine an art museum with its donors who stay around month after month and year after year. Maybe the ROI calculation would be different for them. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say to your donors,

Instead of giving us X dollars each month, how 'bout giving a little less, but putting some of your money into Steem, and use that investment to delegate to the museum or vote for our posts? Of course nothing's certain, but that way, you might help us with funding and grow your own wealth at the same time.

How much would an institution bring in after a few years pursuing that sort of strategy - especially if their donors start to see some growth in the value of Steem's price?