  Research software is essential to modern research, but it requires ongoing
human effort to sustain: to continually adapt to changes in dependencies, to
fix bugs, and to add new features. Software sustainability institutes, amongst
others, develop, maintain, and disseminate best practices for research software
sustainability, and build community around them. These practices can both
reduce the amount of effort that is needed and create an environment where the
effort is appreciated and rewarded. The UK SSI is such an institute, and the US
URSSI and the Australian AuSSI are planning to become institutes, and this
extended abstract discusses them and the strengths and weaknesses of this
approach.
