Program
| 10:00am CT / 11:00am ET | KEYNOTE – “Tough Times and Successful Library Fundraising” | |||
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 Peter Pearson will discuss how the economy is or isn’t affecting fundraising and some of the basics to keep in mind for being successful at library fundraising. Peter Pearson is the President of The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library in Minnesota. The Saint Paul Friends group is unique in two ways. First, the one organization acts as both a Friends’ group and a library foundation. And second, the organization is in a fortunate position of having assets of approximately $12 million at its disposal. The 65 year-old organization has a paid membership of 2,500 individuals. Its mission is threefold: to offer adult programming at the libraries; to conduct lobbying activities in support of strong public funding; and to raise private funds for the library’s collections and special needs. The organization uses interest income from its endowments to pay its operational costs and staff salaries. Last year, the organization provided over $1.4 million in total financial assistance to the library from its fundraising activities and lobbying efforts. The organization recently completed raising $6 million for a $20 million public/private capital campaign to renovate the interior of its 80 year-old Central Library in downtown Saint Paul. Presenter Bio >> |
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| 11:00am CT / 12:00pm ET | KEYNOTE – “Grant Writing and Fundraising: It Takes A Team!” | |||
 Kitty Pope, Executive Director, Alliance Library System |
Kitty Pope will speak on grant writing and how in today’s world, it takes a team to plan and implement successful grant writing and projects. No longer is grant writing done by one person; now successful grant projects require the support of the entire organization and staff on all levels with various expertise to see a successful grant from start to implementation of and reporting on the project. Presenter Bio >> |
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| 12:00pm CT / 1:00pm ET | BREAK | |||
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| 1:00pm CT / 2:00pm ET | TRACK A – “Strategies to Secure Private Sector Grants” | |||
 Lisa Valdez, Grant Coordinator, School of Library and Information Science, San Jose State University |
Learn how to develop a grant seeking strategy for your library that includes private sector grants. How can you find private foundations and corporate giving programs that are interested in libraries? How can you identify funders that may be interested in your project? What are the first steps you need to take in approaching a private funder? What makes a grant proposal more compelling to a private funder? How can you tailor each application to target the funder’s specific interests? If you’re intimidated by the grant seeking process or wonder how to get started with private sector grants, this workshop will provide ideas and encouragement. Presenter Bio >> |
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| TRACK B – “Individual and Planned Giving Strategies” | ||||
 Christine Watkins Consultant |
The program will take a step-by-step approach to building a giving pyramid, starting with your broadest base of support and narrowing to your strongest donors. Strategies for engaging your board, expanding your giving circle, building an annual fund, and cultivating planned gifts will be discussed, with examples of successful practices and suggested additional resources. Presenter Bio >> |
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| 2:00pm CT / 3:00pm ET | TRACK A – “Current IMLS Grant Opportunities for Libraries” | |||
 Chuck Thomas, IMLS |
Chuck Thomas will provide an overview of IMLS grant programs and categories of funding for libraries. The presentation will include information on eligibility, the review process, highlights of some recently funded projects, and current trends and areas of emphasis in the competitive discretionary grants programs. Time will be reserved for questions from the audience. Presenter Bio >> |
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| TRACK B – “Fundraising in Libraries – A Panel Discussion” | ||||
| Join experts from academic and public libraries across the country for a discussion of issues relating to fundraising for libraries. Panelists will discuss issues libraries face when developing and implementing fundraising campaigns and programs; sustaining library fundraising initiatives; how library fundraising differs from other fundraising; tips for successful programs; library fundraising in difficult economic times, etc. |
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Joyce Wright
University of Illinois |
Samuel T. Huang
University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries |
Tari Hughes
Nashville Public Library Foundation |
Carolyn Rooker
Omaha Public Library Foundation |
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| 3:00pm CT / 4:00pm ET | BREAK | |||
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| 3:30pm CT / 4:30pm ET | Track A – “Winning Grants for Libraries 101” | |||
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Stephanie and Pam co-authored the successful book, Grants for Libraries, and currently write the Library Grants Blog (http://librarygrants.blogspot.com), which lists grant announcements for libraries in one easy-to-access location. They are currently working on a new book, Winning Grants: A Multimedia How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians, forthcoming in 2010. Presenter Bio >> |
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| Track B – “Project Management” | ||||
 Alison Miller, Internet Public Library |
Alison will share methods and ideas on project management from project start up through project sustainability and evaluation. She will also share information that will help with project success and identify some obstacles and solutions for project fluency. Presenter Bio >> |
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| 4:30pm CT / 5:30pm ET | TRACK A – “Evaluating Grant Projects and Writing Final Reports” | |||
 Tom Peters, TAP Information Services |
Peters will discuss strategies, tips, and pitfalls of evaluating grant-funded projects and writing final reports. The strategy for evaluating a grant-funded project should be formulated as soon as possible. Try to determine which data sources, both quantitative and qualitative, will be need to assess the success and impact of the grant-related activities, outputs, and outcomes. Speak with as many members of the project team, the users, and other stakeholders as possible. The final report should focus on the project, its successes and shortcomings. If appropriate, draw conclusions and make recommendations that highlight how the grant-funded project sits within the broader environment of associated problems and opportunities. Presenter Bio >> |
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| TRACK B – “The Business Side of Grants” | ||||
 Paul SantosDirector of Finance, HR and Facilities, Alliance Library System |
Paul Santos will talk about how to administer a grant – from the business perspective…budgets, recording activity and paying bills, and financial reporting. All of these activities are important and differ among granting agencies, grant sizes and specific grants. Presenter Bio >> |
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Presenter Biographies |
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| Mr. Pearson has a master’s degree in educational administration from the University of Minnesota. He has been a classroom teacher, school principal, and executive director of two non-profit educational programs prior to taking this position as President of The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library. Mr. Pearson currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Association of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends and Foundations (the merger of ALTA and FOLUSA) and was the Board Chair of Libraries for the Future (LFF) in New York for three years. Mr. Pearson is also a Trustee of the Metropolitan Library Service Agency, which is the Twin Cities’ regional library system. In June, 2005, Mr. Pearson was inducted into the American Library Association’s Advocacy Honor Roll as an outstanding library advocate in Minnesota and the U.S. He is a frequent speaker and presenter at state and national library conferences. A native of Chicago, Illinois, Mr. Pearson has lived in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area for the last 39 years. | ||||
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| Kitty Pope has been Executive Director of the Alliance Library System since January 2004. She earned her MA in Library Science from the University of Western Ontario. She has worked in a variety of library settings all over the world. In 2007, Ms. Pope was named the winner of the ALA/Information Today Library of the Future Award for her coordination of libraries in the virtual world in Second Life. She and co-worker Lee Logan were also winners of the ALA ASCLA Leadership Award in 2007 for the multitype library system certification program they developed. | ||||
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| Lisa Valdez has nearly two decades of proposal development experience in education and health care settings. She developed numerous successful proposals for multi-year government contracts valued at up to $50 million annually on behalf of a large national health care corporation. She also developed successful grant applications on behalf of universities and non-profit organizations, including the University Library and the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University. Her funded grant applications include three IMLS grant awards totaling more than $1.7 million. Lisa also has experience in a broad range of business development and fund development activities. They include contract analysis and negotiations, outreach communications, event planning, and client education initiatives. | ||||
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| Christine Watkins is a Chicago-based consultant, working with libraries and other nonprofit cultural and educational organizations. Areas of activity include major fund development; donor relations; foundation and corporation support; project design and implementation; partnerships and collaboration; audience development and community involvement strategies; individual and planned giving strategies; event logistics. | ||||
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| Chuck Thomas is a Senior Program Officer with the Institute of Museum and Library Services. He currently works with the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian program, and the “Library and Museum Collaborations” category of the National Leaderships Grants for Libraries. Prior to coming to IMLS in 2008, he worked for over a decade in building local and statewide digital library programs, and has extensive experience with archival information systems, institutional and disciplinary repositories, and retrospective digitization of special collections. He has served as Principal Investigator or Co-PI on seven grants totaling more than $1.1 million. Chuck currently is a doctoral candidate in Florida State University’s College of Information, and is writing his dissertation on evaluating scholarly communication tools. | ||||
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Stephanie Gerding (http://stephaniegerding.com) is a librarian, author, and library consultant. She presents workshops around the country and online on library grants, train-the-trainer, and technology topics. She became an independent library consultant in 2007 after working for the State Libraries of Arizona and New Mexico, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, SIRSI, two University libraries and a corporate library. Stephanie wrote The Accidental Technology Trainer, published by Information Today. She is a writer, blogger, and trainer for TechSoup for Libraries. Contact Stephanie at stephaniegerding @ gmail.com. |
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| Pam MacKellar is an author and library consultant who has been a librarian for over 25 years. She has held positions as a library director, assistant librarian, health sciences librarian, newspaper librarian, cataloger, technology consultant and independent consultant in libraries of all kinds including special, school, public, post-secondary, tribal, prison and state library agency. Pam is author of The Accidental Librarian, she has presented at national and state conferences, and she has taught classes and workshops on grants for libraries and non-profits. | ||||
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| Alison has been actively involved in many projects. She has written and received grants and implemented programs, received grant funding for technology and purchased hardware for her former library. She has also been involved in a variety of virtual projects including Conversants and Info Quest. Alison will share best practices on Project Management, including project planning, implementation and sustainability. She is currently the Researcher in Distance Education with the Internet Public Library where she sets up courses for IPL projects and supports students and faculty on IPL-related coursework and projects, among other things. | ||||
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| Tom Peters is the founder and CEO of TAP Information Services (www.tapinformation.com), which provides a wide variety of services supporting libraries, library-related organizations, government agencies, technology companies, publishers, and other groups and organizations. Tom has worked previously at the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC, the academic consortium of the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago), WesternIllinoisUniversity in Macomb, NorthernIllinoisUniversity in DeKalb, Minnesota State University at Mankato, and the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Tom did his undergraduate work at GrinnellCollege, where he majored in English and philosophy. He earned his library science degree at the University of Iowa. His second master’s degree (in English) was completed at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. His library experience includes reference service, library instruction, collection management, and administration. His current interests include downloadable digital audio book services, mobile libraries, ebooks, library services in virtual worlds, and online programming using web conferencing software. Maxito Ricardo is his avatar in Second Life. | ||||
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| Paul Santos is Director of Finance, Human Resources and Facilities at Alliance Library System. He received his MBA from Bradley University and has worked at ALS since 2006. | ||||
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Conference Organizers
The Art of Fundraising and Grant Writing Online Conference is brought to you by Alliance Library Systems and the producers at LearningTimes, bringing education and library professionals together online for over ten years.
