2010 Money
Managers at ALA have just received budget instructions for preparing their piece of the draft ALA budget which will go through channels to become the budget approved for the fiscal year beginning September 1, 2008. For the most part these budget requests will be “no growth”—as they have been for the past few years.But ALA has continued to grow, with the new initiatives that will help us meet the challenges in the strategic plan, Ahead to 2010, being met through reallocation of existing budgets, but also two relatively small strategic funds, the Growth Fund and the 2010 funds. The Growth Fund is a small piece of the ALA General Fund designated as “start up” support for projects that are intended to provide a return on the initial investment in a 2-3 year time-frame. The 2010 funds come from a variety of net asset balance and budget lines and provide the one-time funding to accomplish a project that will enable ALA to meet the strategic goals of the Ahead to 2010 plan. (See the Treasurer’s blog for more information.)We’re taking this space to list all of these here so you can see the scope of these initiatives. Some of them will just be part of the ALA fabric; others, such as the website redesign or the Big Game, will affect you much more directly.
Growth Fund projects:
Magazine for the public to be distributed through libraries. The goal is to have a magazine, to be distributed directly to the public, and to be supported by advertising, that will answer the question “What is in the library for me?” It will be supported by an interactive website and an e-newsletter. A portal is under development to present the concept to potential advertisers, presenting the extensive focus group and other research that indicates that the magazine is needed. The hoped for launch is in about a year (late 2008, early 2009).
Strategic Marketing Collaboration. ALA will examine ways in which the general fund units of the Association can work together better to stop duplicating effort, especially with regard to promoting conferences and membership, approaching vendors for advertising/exhibits/donations, and creating and marketing publications and services. A practical set of goals will be developed by the consultant in cooperation with the Marketing Group, and these goals will be designed to improve value of membership and ALA’s organizational excellence, in accordance with ALA2010.
Member Development. Cross-unit focus on member retention, specifically student retention with targeted outreach.
Expanding Planned Giving for ALA. Promotion of opportunities for members and friends to make legacy and other forms of planned giving arrangements to ALA. The first phase was to create a new and expanded brochure which highlights the benefits of giving a planned gift to ALA. The next phase is to work to discover individuals who might be interested in learning more about how making a planned gift at ALA, a gift that will make an impact no matter what the size. This new brochure will have a soft launch at the Midwinter meeting, with a bigger launch for planned giving opportunities at the Annual Conference in Anaheim.
2010 projects
ALA Web Site Awards Database. Support development of a database to address usability issues with finding information on ALA’s 200+ awards on our website. The database would improve ALA’s ability to meet the specialized information needs of members and others seeking information on ALA’s awards: description of the award, sponsoring unit, past winners, application/nominations process and criteria. It would be searchable by unit, type of award (recognition, media, etc.), name of award, year. Output from the database would be displayable on ILoveLibraries.org, unit pages as appropriate, the ALA Awards page, ALDirect.
School Libraries/Youth Services Advocacy Statistics Project. Making the reports containing relevant statistics to help make the case for school libraries easier for an advocate or member in need to access quickly. The Advocacy Statistics for Youth initiative will allow partners to hire a researcher to pull statistics from these lengthy reports and create a web-based tool for members and advocates to use. It will be categorized under headings such as early literacy, closing the learning gap, relationships between school libraries and academic success, and relevancy of 2.0 tools. This will be positioned on the Advocacy University resource, but can be multipurposed as needed. It will serve as a template for similar projects through ORS and for Advocacy University. The goal is for it to launch in time for ALA’s 2008 National Library Legislative Day.
Enhancing Grassroots Advocacy. The Capwiz XC Affiliate Program allows ALA and Chapters to work together to mobilize grassroots support. It allows a coordinated effort between ALA and Chapters and other allied organizations to reach beyond the profession to tap into thousands of library users to advocate for libraries and library funding. Capwiz XC expands the universe of contacts for everyone, and allows for us to finally transform individuals who believe in libraries and library issues into advocates through easy to use technology that allows them to contribute to local, state and national efforts. In the first year, 25 Chapters joined in. These funds will allow ALA to offer all of the Chapters to join from June 2008 to June 2009.
Federal Legislative Advocacy Brochure. Development of a promotional brochure for ALA’s legislative and advocacy efforts. The brochure’s purpose would also be to encourage new members join the advocacy network, to inform members about Federal advocacy efforts, to increase National Library Legislative Day attendance, and to show outside groups and coalitions how ALA’s efforts have helped the library community, including a tie-in to “I Love Libraries” and the activities of the Office of Advocacy and Chapter Relations.
Electronic Manuscript Management System. An Electronic Manuscript (Editorial, by another name) Management System enables member editors and reviewers to manage their workload more efficiently by having one document flow through the process from submission to publication. Authors and copy editors have one document to revise and re-submit. This document handling process greatly increases the efficiency and timeliness of the journal article review process and the production process, as just one document is handled through the entire process. Since the systems can deliver files in many formats, it also means that Production Services can utilize the file format they need.
YA Diversity Campaign. The results of ALA’s Diversity Counts study show that recruitment of persons of diverse backgrounds (including race, ethnicity, language background, sexual orientation, education, age, disability and economic status) to our profession is critical. Studies show that diverse youth want—and benefit from–interaction with mentors and adults from diverse backgrounds. The goals of the YA Diversity Campaign is to increase the number of librarians with diverse backgrounds who serve adolescents through both retention and recruitment. Although just one year is funded, there is a 3-year timeline. For FY08, the projects are to support an official Young Adult Services Spectrum Scholar; establish a new conference scholarship to a member from a diverse background (possibly with an ALA Affiliate); send member leaders and staff to REFORMA, BCALA and other conferences to recruit individuals to serve young adults; and collaborate with HRDR to create a Teen section of the LibraryCareers.org web site.
Website redesign. This represents additional funding needed to complete the redesign of the ALA Website. Some of the redesign activities to be completed are graphic design, completion of the content inventory begun last year, development and validation of the information architecture, and the implementation of the redesigned site. Two clickable graphic designs will be shown to members and non-members at ALA Midwinter and over the Web with a survey to collect their feedback. The survey results will be analyzed and a final design will be chosen in February. Implementation of the new design will begin in February/March.
Conference “Big Game.” The Great ALA Anaheim (ALAneheim) Mystery (prototype) A big game is a large-scale game that takes place in the real world. In essence, the environment around you becomes your gameboard, and things in it become props in the games. At the ALA 2008 Annual Conference, the game will be more of an information quest and clues will be hidden all over the conference campus - in meeting rooms, on the exhibit floor, in CogNotes, etc. Attendees will be able to sign up for a team on the conference wiki to play the game. Prizes will be awarded to the winners. The big game is a great way for our attendees to play and to create socializing opportunities at conference.
