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FRIENDS OF
THE
David J. Langum, Sr., President October 25, 2001 --- November 9, 2006
I. Relationship of the Friends
to the
The Friends of the Birmingham Public Library is a 501(c)(3) support organization, a category of public charity that exists in order to support and render service to another public charity or, more usually, a public entity, such as the Birmingham Public Library. Friends, however, do not always have to agree, and we have disagreed from time to time over the past five years. For example, the Friends’ Board has been much more liberal, or libertarian, over such matters as the internet filter, and is on record by unanimous resolution of the Board as requesting the library not to use such devices. Since this is clearly an internal library issue and since also the Library Trustees are more conservative than our Board, the result is that the filter has stayed on, long past its federally mandated use was lifted. For another example, the Director of the Library has the need on occasion to ask the Friends for funds to pay for some worthwhile project. At times, we have disagreed over the project or the amount of the funding we could prudently provide. In those times, which were not frequent, the Friends have prevailed since the funds were ours, albeit to help the Library but at the Friends’ discretion as to how to do so. However, our instances of disagreement have been rare and always cordial.
Actually, the Birmingham Public Library and the Friends of the
Birmingham Public Library have a curious symbiotic relationship, one to
the other. Approximately 90% of the Friends’ income
is derived from the sale of books at the Library Bookstore.
We supply many of the volunteer salespeople, yet the space and
almost all of the product sold is supplied by the Library.
We receive 25% of the net sales, which is that 90% of our total
revenues. So on one hand, the Friends are utterly
dependent, financially, on the Library. On the other
hand, however, the Friends serve as a source of relatively quick money
for suddenly arising projects which can not be funded through the normal
budget processes or approvals involving the bureaucracy of the City of
The nature of our organization means that it is composed of individuals with a strong interest in and commitment to The Birmingham Public Library. Among the most pleasant aspects of the relationship between the Friends and the Library have been the occasions when the Library Director has asked for our input and recommendations, always merely advisory, concerning problems or situations then currently confronting the Library. We are not library administrators so perhaps our advice mattered little, but it is nice to be asked, and perhaps a friendly yet outside voice was occasionally useful.
At the time I became President of the Friends, our activities were pretty much limited to annual meetings, supplying volunteers for the Bookstore, and paying requests of the Library Director, sometimes after discussion and refinement, for funding some particular project that the Library proposed. It has been my personal goal to redirect this. While we still do fund specific requests of the Director, and should always do so, our primary focus has shifted to specific and definable projects that the Friends pay for and fund on a regular, recurring basis. A discussion of these specific projects comprises the third section of this report.
II. Recommendations for the Future
I have one recommendation, one observation, and one warning. The recommendation is that the next President and her Board devise some methods for giving meaningful volunteer work in aid of the Library for our members beyond the few who serve as officers. It might be after school reading programs for schoolchildren or it might be volunteer gardening in the branches. However, to form a truly cohesive organization we have to find ways to have our membership more involved. I readily admit that as President I have paid a lot of attention to how we spend our money, and what projects can be created, and almost no attention to membership activities. Perhaps it is time to focus our attention on the membership, whose numbers have actually declined during my presidency. Not a good thing. If there is anyone who would like to undertake the job of Membership Activities Coordinator, for want of a better term, please let our officers know of your interest.
The observation is that it appears to me that the administration of foundation and other grants could become much more important for the Friends in the near future. I say this because of the several inquiries I have received in the past six months about projects for the benefit of the Library being funded through grants made to the Friends. It strikes me that there are two major concerns that need to be addressed regarding grants. The first, and most obvious, is whether the proposed project is something the Library really wants. That call is with the Library’s administrators, and I understand the Library has established a grant committee to deal with that. A second concern, however, is creating controls over the disbursement of money, so that we are sure we are paying for what has really been received, either on completion or in carefully defined stages. This is a concern that is the Friends’ problem. We will have to create structures to define and monitor these levels of performance, so that we never get ahead of ourselves in payments to third parties. If there is a disbursement administrator among our membership, help in setting up these structures would be another wonderful volunteer opportunity.
The warning relates to the independence of our Board and the Friends group itself. We should be cautious in having members of the Board who are also employees of the Library. In my judgment, if it were to pass that a majority of the Friends Board were also employees of the Library, the independence of the Friends would be seriously compromised. It is the very independence of the Friends that makes it helpful to the Library. In the essence of the way our two organizations work together, the Friends have to say no to, or at the least pare down, requests for funds made by the Library Director. This would become difficult if the person or persons saying no had to do so to their boss. This has not been any problem thus far, but it has the potential to become one if the majority of the Board is selected from the Library’s current personnel.
III. New Activities and Projects of the Friends, 2001-2006
The
Friends still undertake our traditional activities.
We still provide many volunteers for the Bookstore.
We still hold our annual meetings and include a short program.
We still provide funds for specific requests.
The most recent is a $500 grant to help the Library with its new Local
Authors Festival. Earlier this year the Friends
sponsored an appreciation luncheon for the
1. An annual Jack F. Bulow Award is given to the outstanding bookstore volunteer of the year at our annual meetings.
2. We pay for the honorarium and expenses of the speaker at the annual Staff Day breakfast, where the entire staff of the Library gathers for comradeship, food, talk, and entertainment.
3. The Friends pay the costs of an annual reception held after the awarding of the Langum Prizes in legal history/biography and historical fiction. My modest foundation pays all the travel, entertainment, and lodging expenses needed to bring outstanding authors to our library, as well as their prizes, and the only expense of the Friends is the reception.
4. We began semi-annual luncheons for the bookstore volunteers, where they have opportunity to talk with each other, with the library administrators, and with the Friends officers.
5. About two years ago we began to hold half of our Board meetings in the branches, outside of the downtown central library. This has been well-received by the branch librarians, all of whom have been eager to show us around their buildings.
6. We started the slow accrual of an endowment. I have been pushing for this for awhile, and early this year I persuaded our Board that the time was right. We then purchased a modest $10,000 certificate of deposit with a local bank. Hopefully, this is just the beginning.
7. With no false modesty, as it was my idea originally, I think our most outstanding innovation has been the Beyond the Budget Competition, begun in 2003. The concept here is a friendly competition among the branches and the various departments of the Central Branch. They can submit proposals for projects they feel are needed, yet are, quite literally, beyond their budgets. The Friends funds the winning proposal to the extent of $1500, and we have tended to fund projects that can be completed within the $1500 we have available annually for this competition.
One of this project’s requirements is that the top administrators of the Library, the Director and Associate Directors, review the proposals and if necessary trim them down to the beset 25 for the Friends Board to review. I originally thought there might be many dozens of proposals each year, although that has proven overly optimistic. One of the consequences of the project, and this was fully intended, is that it has helped to facilitate communication of needs from the lower levels of the Library staff up to the highest administrators, always a difficult problem for a large organization. I know this effect is true, because of instances where runner-ups for the grant were encouraged to apply again. When their absence among later year proposals was noted, the explanation was often that the problem had been corrected. In other words, given the information these proposals generated, the administration found a way, the following year, to put the problem’s correction within the budget. I am very pleased with this result.
The first Beyond the Budget Award was
given in 2003 to the North Avondale Branch. This
branch sits on the campus of the
The 2004 grant went to the Read It Forward project. This program purchased multiple copies of a small book, appealing to teenagers, that was distributed without charge. The only request was that after a youth had finished with the book that he or she pass it along to another teenager, with the same duty imposed of passing it along again. This was the basis for the title, Read It Forward.
The 2005 grant, in my opinion, was our most successful to date. We provided a Microtek scanner for staff and volunteers to scan articles and photographs from the South History Department’s vertical file collection into the computer. These then could be searched from anywhere in the world. Judged by its use, this was a terrific success. The Library website, which contains this vertical file material, received hundreds of hits before there was any publicity. After a newspaper article appeared about the project, the vertical file material on the website has been visited by many thousands of users, and by this time probably 20,000 hits or more. In all the publicity that has followed the project, the Friends role has been somewhat obscured, but we did provide the seed money in the funding the scanner.
The 2006 grant will be announced during our 2006 annual meeting, and continues our tradition of providing funds for a very useful matter, the sort of need that leaves one wondering only why no one noticed this need before.
IV. Conclusion
I thank you all for the opportunity to serve as your President for the past five years. It has been a great pleasure, and I have learned more about libraries and their problems than I knew before. It has been the type of service from which, even if I have made some contributions, I know I have gotten more out of the work than I have given. The Board was kind enough to add the position of Immediate Past President to the Board, so I will still be somewhat involved. However, it is time for new leadership. |
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Friends of the Birmingham Public Library |
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