Most libraries know what its’ like to struggle with finding funding.
Getting a levy or tax hike passed is hard work. Living through lean times that
freeze hiring and stifle collection development can be trying. But when the rug
gets pulled out from under you suddenly, it can be even worse. In order to
provide some assistance when eleventh hour budget cuts come knocking,
EveryLibrary, the political action committee devoted to strengthening the place
libraries have at the civic table, is working on a new program with just these
sorts of dilemmas in mind—the Rapid Response Fund, a
pot of cash meant to give libraries facing sudden budget cuts the tools to rally
supporters quickly and fight back.
According to EveryLibrary founder John Chrastka, situations that could benefit
from the aid of the Rapid Response fund come up with troubling regularity in
libraries around the nation. While city councils and other officials who control
local purse strings have a regular order that generally functions to keep
funding levels predictable, there are instances where those groups, or just a
single member, can disrupt that order and call established budgets into
question.
Chrastka pointed to last year’s attempt by a Parish Council member in
LaFourche Parish, Louisiana to divert funds earmarked for the
local library towards the building of a new jail instead as one high profile
example, but said that EveryLibrary was receiving calls for help from libraries
in similar predicaments every month.
Those weren’t the kinds of calls EveryLibrary was initially built to field, though. The
original vision for EveryLibrary was not to respond to these kinds of sudden
funding issues, Chrastka told LJ, saying that the organization has
previously concentrated on building strategic plans in the long term for its
partner libraries. But when he started seeing situations like these crop up more
and more, it became clear that the PAC needed a more nimble arm to offer help to
libraries that needed a quick burst of support, rather than a strategic plan
rethought from the ground up.
While the Rapid Response fund itself is new, it’s based on a model
that EveryLibrary has seen success with in the past in places like Miami-Dade
County, where the mayor announced budget changes that would have severely
impacted Miami-Dade libraries last fall, near the end of the budget negotiation
cycle. EveryLibrary helped to get funds to local grassroots library advocates,
and in the closing days, ran a series of ads on social media that helped draw
attention to the library’s plight and played a role in securing $7 million in
stopgap funding in the budget for libraries. While it didn’t solve the problems
in Miami-Dade, Chrastka said, “putting money in fast helped them live to fight
another day.”
According to Ben Bizzle, a 2013 LJ Mover & Shaker and
director of technology at the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library who also
serves as a strategic advisor to EveryLibrary, intensive marketing on social
media is likely to be one of the main tools used by Rapid Response, as it’s easy
to deploy on the fly and can make a quick, effective call to action. “The best
way to reach people at the eleventh hour these days is from social media,”
Bizzle told LJ, saying its a lesson taken from the good results many
libraries have had goosing attendance with social media reminders in the days
just prior to an event.
It’s also a cost-effective means of getting the word out to voters,
advocates, and stakeholders. ”It doesn’t take a lot of money from our
contributors for us to be able to make big financial differences in these
libraries,” Bizzle pointed out. Rapid Response will be funded by individual
contributions, as well as assistance from corporate sponsors.
To be eligible for Rapid Response help, libraries will have to meet a
series of criteria, proving that their funding crisis was unexpected, that it
can still be averted, that there are more than 100 hours until a vote or final
decision, and that the library has a legitimate advocacy group ready to ensure
the investment of funds will be met with boots on the ground action. It’s also a
one-time-only action that libraries can call on in crisis. “If this is blowing
up in your face every year, we need to do bigger planning,” said
Chrastka.
from: LibraryJournal
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