The Montana Library Legacy Fund: Planting A Money Tree Today for Tomorrow’s Library Users
Bruce Newell, Helena
“He plants the trees to serve another age.” [1]
(Cicero’s advice about believing in and acting for tomorrow.)
This is the second in a series of brief essays about funding libraries. In February I outlined what Montana libraries spend each year and where that money comes from. This month’s essay relates how Montanans, via The Trust for Montana Libraries, are planting a metaphorical money tree for our great-grandchildren to read under. Our story begins well over a decade ago, where we find several State Library staff members …
… Staring out at Montana through a State Motor Pool windshield. The conversation turned to library funding — or more precisely, the lack thereof. Wouldn’t it be great, we mused, if in addition to traditional governmental funding and the occasional grant or fundraising assist, there were significant and consistent private funds available, especially for funding statewide projects? This attractive idea just wouldn’t go away, and after several years of discussion within Montana’s library community and a fair amount of elbow grease, The Trust for Montana Libraries made its appearance in the spring of 2019. https://www.mtlibrarytrust.org/
After a bumpy start the Trust is now working closely with Montana’s library community, primarily through developing strong partnerships with the Montana Library Association (MLA) and with local public library foundations. Currently the Trust’s two most visible projects are (1) working with MLA on statewide library advocacy, and (2) The Trust is installing Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) in twenty-nine Montana libraries. In addition to these two endeavors, The Trust has begun building an endowment.
From its onset The Trust has aspired to create an earmarked Montana Library Legacy Fund, that is, an endowment from which interest accrued could be tapped for statewide projects. What kind of projects? Today’s projects might well include the Shared Catalog, statewide e-books, and the Montana History Portal. Tomorrow’s projects will reflect future needs and opportunities. We’ve long envisioned a large endowment, say $60 million, that could spin off (for instance if at a 5% return) $5 million a year to support library projects that benefit all Montanans. The Legacy Fund’s private funding would supplement or augment local funding, and serve as a revenue tide to raise all libraries’ ships.
The Trust has just this month received two $10,000 donations to establish this endowment. $20,000 is but notionally in the same universe as $60 million, but it is a beginning. It’s the tiny acorn that will hopefully, in time, grow into a towering library tree, under which future Montanans will find great Montana libraries.
The Trust for Montana libraries believes that libraries are an enduring public value. With the Montana Library Legacy Fund, for Montana libraries and the Montanans they serve, The Trust is building a more robust foundation for Montana’s best days — days which we believe are still ahead of us. If you have questions about this fund, please contact The Trust at: https://www.mtlibrarytrust.org/contact
[1] Cicero, in ‘Cato Maior De Senectute’ (trans. ‘Cato the Elder on Old Age’), 44 BCE, quoting a lost play by the Celtic comic poet Caecilius Statius 220—166 BCE. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/thayer/e/roman/texts/cicero/cato_maior_de_senectute/text*.html]
Bruce Newell is a retired librarian, who served Montanans at Helena’s Lewis & Clark Public Library and at the Montana State Library. He is a Trust for Montana Libraries board member.