The Circle

Funding Options

Posted by Rick Estep on March 28, 2010 at 6:29 in Administration

I need some ideas on how you acquire new funds for your libraries. Do you only receive funds through the budget of your church, do you have fundraisers, do you receive donations, etc.? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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  • Lynda Harrington May 15, 2010 16:40
    Our church does give us a budget. Good advice given to me years ago was to itemize everything you use in a year - - including pencils and pens. Present it to your financial committee before they begin making the budget for the new year. It helped us get an increase.
    Thus far this year, we have been blessed with many memorial donations. Sunday School classes have begun giving gifts to the library when family members die. We try to be very diligent to send acknowledgments to the family and thank you notes to the class' teacher.
  • Rick Estep April 23, 2010 16:34
    Thanks for all of your suggestions!
  • Carol B. Anderson April 23, 2010 12:09
    At our church Spring Creek Baptist in Rome, Georgia we have a book promotion twice a year.
    We go to Lifeway and pick out quite a few books and take them back to the church and have them on tables for people to adopt the book. They pay the ticket price for the book and the book then becomes part of the library. Then within the month we either pay for those books with those monies collected and take back the ones that were not purchased for credit at Lifeway.
    So, you do not have to have money up front to stock the library. We usually run the adopt the book event for about 3 Sundays and Wednesdays. It has been very successful in increasing our book inventory without spending our budgeted money.
    Hope this helps
  • Michele Bond April 16, 2010 11:23
    Our library is just beginning, I just learned which committee I should send my status reports to! There is no budget, but we do take in donations of gently used books and other resources. To help with the purchase of new books, I am preparing a plan to solicit funds for books to be added to the collection "in memory of..." or "in celebration of..."

    Looking forward to seeing what others do!
  • Deanna King March 30, 2010 23:12
    We have a general budget which we use for supplies, promotional materials, volunteer appreciation, etc.
    We also charge a modest overdue fine (50 cents per week per item) and use those monies to buy new items.
    Finally, we gladly accept donated books and AV materials - the ones we want for the collection get processed and the ones we don't need are given away. People taking them have the option to give a voluntary cash donation, which also goes into our New Purchases special fund.
    I know other church libraries that do book sales 2 or 3 times a year to raise funds. That could work, too.
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