Libraries need our help, now more than ever.
Help us ensure our libraries remain strong, so they can continue providing essential services to our community.
Libraries Need Our Help
Libraries are essential to the health of our community. More than just books, libraries provide free access to innovation, support and a wealth of information that can change a personโs life.
As the Library Foundation for Sarasota County, our goal is to raise private donations to supplement public tax support and keep our libraries on the leading edge of technology and services - ensuring they have the ability to serve our growing community.
How We Impact Change
As part of our mission, the Library Foundation has undertaken several campaigns and projects to supplement our librariesโ offerings. Below are just a few of the ways weโve helped expand our librariesโ services over the years.
Community Advocacy Team
Our Community Advocacy Team (CAT), composed of committed citizens and Library Foundation Board members, works to keep the Sarasota County Commissioners and the public informed about the value of our libraries and the critical need to secure their future. Click here for a copy of our 2023 position paper presented to the Board of County Commissioners.
We strive to create a partnership with the county and give a voice to the community to secure adequate and sustained public support for our libraries.
Recent Advocacy Accomplishments
Designation of county surtax funding for increased books and materials.
In response to Library Foundation advocacy efforts, the County Commission voted in 2022 to designate $1 million of anticipated surtax funding to increase the books and materials available in our libraries.
Increased statewide funding of libraries.
In 2022 members of the foundationโs Community Advocacy Team spoke with our elected representatives in Tallahassee to encourage restoration of statewide library funding to previous levels, resulting in a $2 million funding increase.
Supported the libraryโs recommendation of eliminating library fines to ensure that all residents can access materials from the library, especially those most impacted by fines, like children.
Eliminating fines increases the number of people using the libraries, reduces the staffing cost of collecting and managing fines, and encourages cardholders to return overdue items.
Increased spending on collections to help meet the need of our growing community.
In the 2019 Libraries budget, the County Commission allocated $150,000 for additions to the collections at the request of Sarasota County Libraries and the CAT.
Return of Sunday hours at Selby and Jacaranda libraries, including Creation Station programming.
At the request of the Library Foundation, commissioners allocated $230,000 in the 2020 budget for this purpose. In January 2020 patrons were welcomed back on Sunday afternoons for the first time in nine years. We look forward to these hours being restored post-COVID.
Successfully advocated for a county budget that avoided reduction in library services.
In 2018, the Library Foundation advocated for a budget that avoided cuts to the 2019 Libraries budget. The County Commission adopted the budget championed by the foundation, ensuring adequate funds to keep all libraries open on Mondays.
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Feel passionate about our public libraries?
Then join us!
Let us know if youโd like to become a member of our Community Advocacy Team
by clicking on the button below or emailing hello@SarasotaLibraryFoundation.org.
Initiative Highlights
Creation Stations
Creation Station visitors can learn how to program a robot, design and build a product on the 3-D printer, digitize old family photos, learn how to code, sew with a grandparent, create materials to start a small business, launch a podcast โฆ and anything else their creative minds can imagine.
The Childrenโs Literacy Endowment
To support parents as their childโs first teacher, and to ensure our most at-risk children have access to books in their home, the Library Foundation has partnered with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, a book-gifting program that mails free books to children from birth to age 5.
