An Eye for the Future - Part 3

In this series, I am looking at sustainability in our work. The first post addressed some larger issues and thoughts about costs of ongoing projects followed by a post on grant fails   Today, let's consider the sustainability factor of  successful grant-funded  projects.

So what are key components to create sustainability in grant-funded projects?

First don't write it if you can't see a way to sustain the project, keep it fresh or easily make changes to evolve it to meet changing community needs. Taking a pile of money, creating a thing and letting it languish seems to be wasteful. If, in your grant planning, you figure what you need to keep the initiative or service going beyond the grant, it means two things: the grant start-up money is well-used to kick things off and you actually need the service or initiative enough to justify putting future general budget funds into keeping it fresh.

Grant Wins
Here are two examples of sustainability thinking we used in creating and thinking about projects we wanted to continue beyond their initial grant cycle.

2nd Grade Library Stars
Based on meetings with our LMC colleagues who suggested we bring in one grade level for an introduction to the library, we decided to reach out to all second graders and offer a field trip adventure at our Main Library location.  The biggest expense for this was going to be transportation - only one school is in walking distance of our Youth Services Department.

We wrote a Community Foundation grant for buses for $1000 and looked at our program budget for the future to fund the project in ensuing years. If we didn't book three outside performers, we would have that money.

The tours were a huge hit with the teachers, kids and staff. The worth of them was so apparent that the schools funded the buses the second year. Now we are looking at adding seventh grade and kindergarten field trips annually and the schools have agreed to split the bus costs.  This makes these visits sustainable for both organizations.  And because of the impact of the visits and the positives that have resulted, if we needed to fund raise to keep them going, I believe we would have no trouble in gaining support.

Baby Book Bees
We offer our 1000 Books program to children ages 1-5 but really wanted to catch families with their children from birth. So we developed a pre-1000 BksB4K efforts asking parents to read 100 books to their baby before their first birthday.  We decided that offering a little bib at sign-up with the library name and a book as a culminating incentive would be swell.

We wrote a Target grant to fund these two pieces and we received that grant - for twice the amount we asked for! This allowed us to fund the effort beyond a year and get better pricing on the bibs and books.  And how will we maintain this effort beyond this grant funding? We plan to enfold this initiative into the funds for 1000 Books (that original $7000 raised). Once this money is expended, we'll look into using existing programming money to continue or do a special fundraising appeal.

I think, dear readers, you are starting to see how thread of funding for projects needs to be worked into the warp and weave of regular budgets for programs and collections if sustainability is a goal.

Next post, we'll leave special projects behind and look at the sustainability of our programs. See you then!

Part 1
Part 2
Part 4

Graphic courtesy of Pixabay

An Eye for the Future - Part 2

In this series of blog posts, I am looking at sustainability in our work. The first post addressed some larger issues and thoughts about costs of ongoing projects.  Today, let's consider the pitfalls of grant-funded  projects.

It is exciting to plan, write and receive a grant - but the devil is in the details.  What will you do once the funds are expended to maintain, evolve or change the grant-funded project. How will you keep it fresh? How do you build in sustainability?

I have noticed a tendency to create the project or service or kit or thing. And then when it is done, it is done.  There is no money to add, enhance or change what has been created. The grant-funded initiative becomes static, dated and either reluctantly sunset long past it's usefulness or in place forever because it was...grant-funded!

Grant Fail
Two examples of this grant-funded ennui in our library collection were a set of middle grade book discussion kits and "Treasure Boxes"- themed tubs full of preschool books and manipulatives to rotate to daycares. Both were outstanding original ideas, well-executed and did exactly what the grant was intended to do - for a time.

Book Discussion Kits
The book discussion kits had ten books and a great discussion guide in special bags hung in a closet. As the years rolled on and the reading tastes of the target audience changed, the kits became less useful since no new ones were created or old ones withdrawn. Also compounding their decreased usefulness was difficulty in accessing them - both because they were out of browsing view in a closet and extremely tricky to find through the catalog.

The solution?  Let the old kits go. Create new kits of five books each and house them near the fiction collection and accessible to the public. Buy enough bags to ensure we can develop 2-3 new kits each year for ten years and use the existing book budget to fund the purchase of the books. Be prepared to do great PR, withdraw kits that don't move and continuously add to keep content fresh.

Unsustainable was changed to sustainable.

Treasure Boxes
Created almost fifteen years ago, these tubs were stuffed full of goodness - fifteen-twenty books, puppets, cassettes, teacher material, hands-on manipulatives. They rotated in our outreach visits to the daycares we visited.  Each daycare had a box for the month. All good you say?

The problem again was that the content of the boxes never changed. For years, our providers received the same books over and over again.  To me, the message we were sending was that these are the only books we had on popular themes. It was as if we were caught in a Groundhog Day time warp that no one could ever escape. While we are spending ten of thousands of dollars a year on new materials for the general public in YS, the daycares were only provided with the same 100-150 titles.

The solution? Let the Treasure boxes go. Begin new service to the same daycares - Books2Go. Ten books per classroom are selected, bagged and delivered monthly to daycares.  Each daycare then has 40-70 unique titles to share among the classrooms. We use our existing collection and a variety of titles pass through the hands of the providers to the kids.  For teachers interested in particular themes, we encourage them to contact us and pick up a collection of five books matching their theme that we pull on their behalf.

Static morphed into dynamic and the service is sustainable as long as our department aide can drive and deliver and our collection of picture books exists.

Next post, let's look at grant triumphs in terms of sustainability.

Part 1
Part 3
Part 4

Graphic courtesy of Pixabay