Committee Descriptions

Advocacy—One of the most important responsibilities of the Friends as an organization is to advocate on behalf of the Birmingham Public Library.  This committee will determine, with library staff, how we can do this most effectively.

Administration—Are you good at organizing information, maintaining records, creating reports?  If so, we need your help to create an administrative system that can be run by volunteers even as our organization grows in membership.  Please help.

Fundraising—Under this umbrella committee are the subcommittees that run the bookstore, book sales, bake sales, and our Roving Coffee Shoppe.  Would you like to spend some time on one of these efforts?  There are lots of opportunities to volunteer within a time frame that works for you.

Hospitality/Docents—Providing hospitality and refreshments, arranging flowers for special events, being able to lead groups around the Central library and help them realize all the resources available to them throughout the BPL system—these are a few of the things this committee is involved in doing.

Membership/Volunteer Recruitment—The goal of this committee is to lead the Friends to a membership of 500, then 750, then 1000….  We have a great library system, and our Central library is the flagship library for the whole county, so our membership represents all the communities in Jefferson County and metro-Birmingham, as well as all the communities within the City of Birmingham.  We have doubled our membership this year and we intend to sustain this growth with your help!!

Newsletter Committee—We put out a quarterly newsletter and we want to expand it to include more stories about our library staff and patrons, our BPL and Friends Board members, Friends members, and library volunteers.  Would you like to help?  Become a member of this committee and a Friends’ “reporter.”

Public Relations/Advertising—We work with the Public Relations Department of BPL in multiple ways.  This committee works as a liaison with BPL staff to ensure that the community is aware of our projects, programs and involvement with BPL.

Programming—We intend to work with library staff to develop programs that appeal to our members and that can also be open to the public.  We invite you to join us on the ground floor of this endeavor.