RCLS Professional Collection: Grants, Fundraising & Friends

Written by United for Libraries Executive Director Sally Gardner Reed, the book is loaded with good ideas for Friends on fundraising, advocacy, membership development, and programs. It also discusses how and whether to consider merging with your Foundation, how to start a Friends group (both public and academic), and how Friends can attract new and active members, along with best practices for getting along well with your library. If you have a group that is divided on how to provide the best support for the library, you’ll find a chapter addressing this as well.

Authors Driggers and Dumas have completely overhauled their classic work and present a top-to-bottom toolkit for recruiting, interviewing, training, supervising, and evaluating volunteers, presenting Tips for recruiting volunteers from your community by using social networking, electronic posting, and the library website Principles of volunteer administration, including the rights and duties of volunteers Important legal and risk management issues facing libraries Dozens of sample job descriptions, application forms, parental permissions, sign-in sheets, planning checklists, exit surveys and much more.

"Establishing and maintaining the best possible customer service is essential for every library. Here is a training manual that gives you the 'what to say' and 'what to do' to make that goal a reality. The authors offer guidance for training employees at all levels - from frontline staff to managers. They show you in detail how to integrate a customer service focus and training into a variety of staff and volunteer interactions - job interviews, orientation, employee review, and in-service and out-service training. The book suggests standards for what employees should know on day one, after the first week, after the first month, etc.

Dowd and her team from Library Strategies, a consulting group of the Friends of St. Paul Public Library, share proven strategies that have brought in more than $1 million annually. Believing that private fundraising is a natural for libraries large and small, they start with 12 facts about library fundraising and focus on activities with the highest return.

Written by two experts who have won millions in grants from an astonishing variety of funding sources. The DVD includes the entire text of successful grant proposals plus ten instructional videos to walk you through each step of the grant process cycle: 1: Grant Process Cycle Overview 2: Planning for Success 3: Discovering and Designing the Grant Project 4: Organizing the Grant Team 5: Understanding the Sources and Resources 6: Researching and Selecting the Right Grant 7: Creating and Submitting the Winning Proposal 8: Getting Fund