Talk:From awareness to funding

From LLN

Does success justify funding? (Jamie LaRue)

added 8/4/08 by Walt Crawford

I wrote this column after reading the OCLC study From Awareness to Funding. The column articles a conundrum: we--Douglas County Libraries--seem to be doing everything we ought to be doing, yet have not secured the funding our use and success would seem to justify.

In 2007, we narrowly lost a library election: 49% yes, 51% no. Many of our supporters expressed utter astonishment--and many of them didn't participate in the mail ballot. So one lesson we took from the experience was to more actively register voters and to highlight the "civic engagement" of election participation.

But I think there are other lessons.

There is a profound discovery in the OCLC report's news that use and demographics don't drive library support. My library has invested a lot of time and money in effective PR. But I realize now that most of that PR has been trying to drive use, not support. Right now, I don't know how to do PR and marketing with a focus on support. NPR might be an example.

It is also the case, I suspect, that there's no one formula. There are differences in local communities, and in local politics, and in local economies. But I can think of no more important effort than the one kicked off by this report.