The New Media Consortium (NMC) was founded in 1993 by a group of hardware manufacturers, software developers, and publishers who felt that the ultimate success of their multimedia-capable products depended upon their acceptance by the higher education community.
Those 22 institutions initiated a number of collaborative activities, and their working group — then called the New Media Centers — quickly evolved into an independent not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation by early 1994, with headquarters in San Francisco.
In 2002, the NMC moved its national headquarters from San Francisco, CA to Austin, TX.
In December 2017 the organization announced in an email that it was ceasing operations and filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
The statement blamed the closure on "apparent errors and omissions by its former Controller and Chief Financial Officer.