Fundraising: It's Not Just About the Money.

Every library where I have worked has held fundraisers, mostly book sales that were sometimes combined with bake sales. In Monroeville, we are lucky to have an active Friends of the Library group that takes care of the annual used book sale, which brings people to us in droves during that weekend. Both of these events raise money, but if we depended entirely on them, our budget would be very small. Perhaps even greater than the amount of money they raise is the value of bringing people into the library. The Library Support Staff.com Web site has a section titled "See what others have done," which offers links to some interesting ideas for library fundraisers. I found that some of the links were not working, but I did successfully follow the link to the Nova Scotia Provincial Library to learn of its fund-raising activities and to see an article in Urban Parks online that discussed "affinity groups" that worked to raise funds for the San Francisco Public Library.