Everyone Needs a Little Help from Their Friends!

I’ve often written on here about the importance of Friends of the Library groups, in particularly our own hard-working Friends of the Berryville Library, Inc. And that importance can’t be overstated now, especially since we launched our fundraising campaign for a new library facility six months ago.

We’ve raised an amazing amount of money in that time (nearly $985,000–39% of our goal), and we have continued to grow our Friends membership to a record 175 people.

It’s more important than ever that we continue to raise money for the library and that we continue to recruit new members to the Friends (as well as retain our current members.) Numbers count in all ways!

As we move further along in the fundraising process, we will be talking to foundations, and one of the key things they want to see before providing their own financial assistance to a campaign like ours is ensuring that there is community support.

The large amount of money we have raised in just a few months is a great sign of how tremendously supported the library is in our community and how much we want and need a new building.

But a robust Friends group is another important metric that also indicates community support. To have that, we need members, and we also need active members. We can use volunteers for everything from working events to serving on our board and committees.

Fortunately, it is easier now than ever before to join, volunteer, and donate to the Friends. You can also easily stay up-to-date with the Berryville Library Building Project and the Friends in general on their Facebook group.

We’ve had a pretty good year for the Friends–and an exciting one. In addition to launching the fundraising campaign officially, we’ve also hosted our first annual Storywalk during the summer and published our first cookbook in years.

And to quote The Carpenters, we’ve only just begun! For the rest of 2021, we have more planned, including our now annual raffle ticket sale tradition and a retreat scheduled for this Saturday for those interested in being more involved with the Friends.

Have you joined the Friends? Interested in being more involved with the Friends? Interested in attending our retreat? Tell us in the comments!