The Library Board met 03/15/2022 and received a presentation from Karen Rose of K Rose, LLC on the Appleton Public Library Campaign Feasibility Study. K Rose, LLC was engaged by the Friends of the Appleton Public Library to conduct the feasibility study.
Karen explained that a feasibility study tests the idea of a campaign with potential donors and tries to determining what their willingness and interest is in potentially funding a campaign for the library. It was an important step that told them a lot about their donors, what the donors felt about the library, and what potential funding might be available should they launch a campaign. She reviewed the results of the study, provided some recommendations, and took questions.
Kara Sullivan, the Executive Director of Friends of the Appleton Public Library, worked with K. Rose, put together a pool of potential donors, and asked those donors to participate in the study. K. Rose typically tries to interview between 25 and 30 people to give them a really good snapshot of the donor base. Karen noted that usually a campaign’s success is determined by 20 to 30 top-level donors and what they are willing to do, so they want to speak to those people when they conduct feasibility studies.
For this study, the interviewed 30 individuals. 24 were potential individual donors, and 6 were representatives from institutions that were potential funders such as financial institutions, foundations, and corporations. The interviews were conducted in person during the months of December and January. 22 were in-person, face-to-face conversations, and the others were conducted via Zoom or telephone.
PERCEPTIONS OF APL AND FAPL
One of the first things they were trying to find out was what people thought of the library and the Friends of the Library. What did those individuals feel about those institutions? Everyone they interviewed had a very high regard for both the library and the Friends. No one said anything at all negative.
Karen said that many of the potential donors were not active library users and a lot of them had very outdated ideas about libraries. They were still picturing the library they went to when they were in school that was focused on housing books. There were a lot of comments asking why we needed libraries and pointing out that everything was online now.
She said that that provided an opportunity to have a conversation with potential donors about what libraries can provide. The donors would then either respond positively to that more contemporary view of what libraries do or they dismissed it as not being relevant to them. She shared two ideas that were representative of the feedback they received from donors.
- APL is perceived as a leader among public libraries in the area; it sets the standard and is the most active.
- There is a divide within the community where the library is concerned. People either use it and appreciate the resources it provides or don’t use it and feel it is a waste of money.
Regarding that second representative comment, she assured the Board, “Not to worry; that is a very common response in a community regarding libraries.”
NEED FOR INVESTMENT IN THE LIBRARY
They also talked about what donors perceived as the need for investing in the library. “Most believe that the investment in the library is long overdue.” There was a repeated sentiment that it was the library’s turn.
There were three typical viewpoints.
- No one uses libraries anymore; they house books which can be accessed online.
- Libraries are necessary to address the access divide by providing resources to low-income individuals who don’t have access to technology or other resources.
- Libraries are a place for community building and provide education and skill building services such as English as a Second Language classes, etc.
VISION FOR DOWNTOWN REVITALIATION
For this particular project, Karen wanted delve into the idea that the library could be a catalyst for downtown redevelopment and find out how that concept sat with potential donors. Most interviewees were optimistic about that vision. They saw that the city was focusing on revitalizing that area and they understood that the library could be a central part of that.
There were some potential donors who had really liked the bluff site that the city had been considering building a new library on, but most, although not all, came back to the idea that it was important to use an existing building and that the library’s current central location made sense at this point in time.
There were two representative ideas that came up in regards to Downtown revitalization.
- The Library will be a catalyst for DT development; it’s an anchor and will have a multiplier effect. However, that is not the reason donors will fund this. Donors will give because of the access divide and the need to provide access, tools and resources to bridge the economic divide.
- “The new vision is not very well-known and it has been such a long and winding story that it’s hard to keep up. I’m very involved and aware and even I’m sometimes confused.”
Karen thought that second comment was really interesting although not surprising and she thought that it was important to keep in mind during the process of casting a new vision, because the library has tried a couple times to get a new building project off the ground and they needed to be sensitive to that history moving forward.
BUILDING DESIGN
They showed the architectural renderings of the potential library to the people they interviewed, and everyone really loved the design and were amazed at what could be done to the existing building. Everyone felt that reusing the building was the responsible thing to do and liked the idea of having a sustainability message.
The perceptions of the overall design were very positive, although interviewees were split 50/50 on whether pursuing LEED certification was worthwhile as opposed to just pursuing energy efficient options without pushing for certification.
CAMPAIGN POTENTIAL
After laying that groundwork, they talked with donors about potential funding. They talked about the library being a public/private partnership for which the city was investing some funds and that they were looking to see if private funding was available for this joint effort.
She noted that she had also conducted the campaign feasibility study when the bluff site had been considered, and the feeling had been very different then as compared to now. At that time there was a little hesitancy and the feeling that the amount needed was large and they weren’t sure they could do it. This time, however, she felt a lot more positivity around the project itself and around the ability of Appleton to provide funding for it.
The study tested whether Appleton donors could support a $12 million capital campaign. Some interviewees felt that was a stretch, but most felt that Appleton had a very strong philanthropic culture and did have strong capacity among some of its households and families.
A couple interviewees raised concerns about attracting donors for a municipal project and there was a common comment that libraries should be funded by tax dollars. She said that people like that are sometime really hard to get onboard but sometimes they come to the table at some point.
She was excited to report that “in the course of the study we identified a significant lead gift of three million dollars.” They had been hoping to find a gift of $2 million, so finding $3 million was a game changer. She also noted that when asking the other people about the $12 million goal, they didn’t tell them about the $3 million donation. A donation of that size really changed the scheme and made getting $12 million seem much more attainable.
Another exciting thing was that 21 of the 30 people they interviewed indicated they would likely give. She added that didn’t mean that the 9 others wouldn’t give. “It just met nine weren’t ready to tell us where—how much, or what level of giving. They wanted more information.” She didn’t think they got a single definitive “no”.
Including the $3 million donation, the study identified $9 million in support, or 80% of the $12 million goal. 80% was the magic number they wanted. Sometimes, depending on conversations, they might give the go ahead for a campaign after a study identifies only 70% of the goal. She had even done 65% while holding her nose, but “this 80% is a really strong indicator of potential success and we were excited to hit that number.”
She said another interesting and exciting thing was that 4 potential major donors indicated gifts of over a million dollars. Donations from just 9 households got them to a little over $9 million which, she said, was how a really ideal campaign should look. Those 9 households would make or break this campaign.
She asked if there were any questions thus far.
A Board member asked what Karen meant when she said “9 households”. Were those individual donors, institutions, or a mixture of both?
Karen answered that one donation was an institution and the rest were individuals or family foundations. Family foundations could perhaps be called institutions but donations from them were generally decided by family members.
There were no other questions at that point, so she continued on with her presentation.
POTENTIAL CHALLENGES
They asked potential donors if they saw any challenges ahead for the library if a campaign was launched. Sometimes campaigns run into conflict because of another campaign happening at the same time. Although, campaigns are always happening, it didn’t seem like there were any significantly competing campaigns in town.
She went on to say, “The only really challenge—and it’s just something that’s out there—was concern about the transit center.” There were concerns about security, safety, and questions about what was going to be done to solve that issue.
CAMPAIGN LEADERSHIP
They also asked potential donors if they themselves would be willing or could identify good people who would be willing to serve as campaign committee members and campaign chairs. They were looking for people who were passionate about the library and had demonstrated their philanthropy before, could articulate the vision, were highly respected, able to drive solicitation of top donors, could serve as ambassadors in the community, were willing to work on a team collaboratively, and were able to follow the campaign plan and not go rogue. They did identify a number of those potential campaign leaders, and the Friends of the Appleton Public Library had that list.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Throughout the interviews, they were gauging a number of things that would indicate the chance of a successful campaign.
- Favorable views of the institution(s)
- Compelling case for support
- Adequate source of contributable funds
- Strong and enthusiastic institutional leadership
- Influential campaign leadership
- Sense of urgency
- Campaign timing
In light of the feedback they had received from the potential donors, they were recommending that the Friends of the Appleton Public Library proceed with plans to launch a $12 million capital campaign.
The lead gift of $3 million had been identified and confirmed. That donor had stated, “Count me in on that.” They also identified another $6.5 million from other individuals and institutions, so 80% of the goal was potentially available to the library.
They were recommending that the library define a compelling case for giving that encompasses the library’s multi-dimensional role in the community. She thought that what makes library campaigns so interesting is that different people have different perspectives of the library, sometimes they’re driven by nostalgia, or social justice, or community revitalization. They needed to craft that mission in a way that incorporated and communicated that. She said that equity and inclusion was important to some, but catalyzing downtown revitalization was important to others.
Additionally, “We’re recommending creating a marketing plan to update the library’s brand so that you expose people to what contemporary libraries do and how all those spaces can be utilized by the community.” Some interviewees had wondered if the library really needed all those meeting spaces. Yes, they did if they wanted to host ESL classes, corporate meetings, recitals, and all the different things that can be doing in a community center. She thought they needed to rebrand the library because people have old ideas about libraries being where poor people go, and they didn’t want to reinforce that. “They do provide resources to under-resourced people but they do a lot more.”
She said that the library also needed to provide a solution to the transit center so that at least it looked like the city was hearing those concerns and paying attention. She threw out a walkway or a buffer of some sort as possible responses. “I think we need to address that somewhere in the project design.”
[I’m sorry, but years of not dealing with the problem culminated in a firefighter being murdered by a transit user. Installing a walkway or a buffer seems less than adequate and more than a little tone deaf. Additionally, if a fire fighter being murdered by a transit user wasn’t enough to prompt the city to act, then I have serious doubts that anything will prompt the city to fix the problem.]
They were recommending that the library adopt a 12–18-month campaign timeline, although she explained that the diagram on the slide only showed 14 months because they “ran out of room.” [How hard is it to format your Power Point slide to give a little extra space?]
The first four months would be spent putting the campaign together, writing the case for giving, creating collateral pieces, developing communication plans, hiring some part time staff for administrative work, finding a place to meet every month, and just dealing with the logistics to get ready for a campaign. Getting the right people to serve on the campaign committee was important and would also take some time, as would material development.
After that, they would start what she called “donor mapping”. They had already identified 9 donors, but they would need to identify the rest of them, then map the donors who could potentially give at those levels. They would figure out how many gifts they needed at which levels to get to $12 million then map people they thought had the potential and capacity to give at those levels. They would not ask these people to give whatever they wanted but would instead intentionally approach these people to be a part of the campaign at a specific gift amount. There would be some training with the campaign committee on how to solicit donors for that specific ask.
Meanwhile, the library would also be working on the rebranding effort and on creating visibility around the library. They would have the campaign committee meet with individuals and groups to cultivate awareness and connection with donors.
The noted that the Library Board would be asked to give up front. That was very important because some donors will look to see if there’s 100% participation from the board. She said that often they don’t ask board members to give at a certain level, but rather just make sure that they are all giving at some level that is meaningful to them. [Remind me to never serve on a library board.]
The best discipline was to solicit those top gifts first and not get distracted by the smaller gifts. They wanted to go through their process and deliberately get those lead gifts first because lead gifts sometimes leverage the next level of gifts.
On the map, she had that happening in the summer. She said it was hard to do stuff like that in the summer, but she thought because the feasibility was so strong in identifying those gifts that they felt they could do that.
After soliciting the top-level gifts, they would have to make a big effort to solicit the next level of gifts. They had not necessarily identified those yet, so those would take a little longer. Once they hit 80-90% of their goal from those individuals giving, then they would launch a public giving phase in which the community would be invited to participate in the campaign with their smaller gifts.
She asked if there were any questions.
Library Director Colleen Rortvedt asked how the fundraising timeline would work with the construction timeline given that work on the library was starting fairly soon.
Karen said that a lot of major donors would give over a pledge period, usually three years, sometimes give. As a result, they would likely ask a local financial institution for a bridge loan. A lot of financial institutions will provide those loans interest free. That loan would be used to fund the construction while they worked to realize the pledges.
Another piece was the optics of it. The library was going to break ground in a month or so, and the fact that the city already committee certain funding meant it wouldn’t look odd to anybody. “But the campaign will need to be active. What you don’t want is the building to be finished and then be still asking for money.” If that happened it would look to donors like their money wasn’t really needed.
She went on to say, “But at this formative time it adds a sense of urgency—the fact that we are on a timeline. And the other thing that’s really interesting right now these days is, you know, the longer this goes out everybody knows about inflation and what that’s doing. So, I think everybody agrees that the time is now and that we’re gonna fundraise as hard and fast as we can to provide the funds needed for that for that building.” If they hadn’t hit their goal by the time they got to the point of installing the furniture, fixtures, and equipment, that was where something would have to shift. But she didn’t think they would have to do that. “So, it’s a little bit of a dance in a public—in a library campaign that’s going on while you’re fundraising. Happens all the time.”
Director Rortvedt wanted to make is clear that there had never been a conversation about the city loaning the funding or fronting the money that the Friends of the Library were going to raise. When the Friends committed to a capital campaign of $12 million the goal would be to look for a financial institution to provide the gap with a bridge loan.
Karen continued with the remaining recommendations. She said that a lot of people had been asking about naming opportunities, and “there will be a lot in this building.” They were going to map those naming opportunities with the gifts they thought were out there and the gifts that they needed to get to $12 million. She said that was going to be a fun project because there would be some really exciting and new spaces in the library.
An important question was who was the best person to solicit those donors, and they would be working on figuring that out. There was a lot of preparing and planning ahead of time.
They had not yet identified the mid-level donors, and soliciting form them would be its own mini-campaign. They would make individual asks for those donations but also probably do some small group asks, perhaps hold some house parties, talk to affinity groups, and make some presentations. At the end of those they would ask for specific gifts.
They also needed to form their policies and procedures. How were they going to accept pledges and letters of intent? Would they accept designated gifts? How would they handle naming rights? What would the duration of give periods be? If someone wanted to do a 10-year plan, would they let them? Would they accept stocks? All of those things had to be decided up front.
She also stressed that this was an opportunity to develop deeper relationships with donors in the community who probably have never given to a library before. They had to make sure that they had a plan that all staff and volunteers were in alignment with to keep those donors engaged, to acknowledge them appropriately, to show them the impact of their gift in the future and on the individual lives of the people that use the library. That could not just be a sidebar or an afterthought. To her it was a really important piece of the campaign planning.
She briefly recapped again the fact that they had checked off all the criteria for a successful campaign.
- Favorable views of FAPL and APL
- Compelling case for giving
- Adequate contributable dollars
- Strong and enthusiastic institutional leadership
- Influential campaign leadership
- Sense of urgency
- Campaign timing
“This study revealed a strong support for this public private partnership in the way that is presented. We identified $80 of the campaign goal, and that’s a really strong indicator of success. For a $12 million campaign that’s the number that we feel really good about. The Friends, APL, the city have done a lot of ground work to prepare the community for this campaign. […] We feel that the timing and the scope of this campaign is right on target for Appleton at this time.”
She offered to answer any further questions. There were a couple Friends of the Library board members in attendance.
Jeff Knezel was a member of the board and asked about the assertion that there were no other major competing fund drives going on. He pointed out that the Appleton Area School District was holding a referendum as were a couple of other area districts. He was concerned about where the library would be with their campaign at the time those referendums were voted on, which would probably be in November of this year.
Karen said that was a really interesting dance. Most people that they talked to recognized that the library campaign was a private capital campaign in that the city had already provided funding and it was important to align with the city in funding it. She didn’t know that a school referendum would affect that perception any differently. Beyond that, in November, they should have already been in front of most of their major donors and would be meeting with the $25,000-$100,000 level donors.
In some cases the referendum might come up, but she didn’t know. Some donors hold the idea that their tax dollars and philanthropy dollars are two different things, but some look at them as all being the same pot where their money to other people comes from.
Another meeting participant wanted to clarify that when Karen talked about donors she was talking about both individuals and local or state corporations. Karen confirmed that was correct.
John Keller thought that being at 80% of their goal was phenomenal. He asked what other campaigns had Karen been involved in during 2008 or 2009 or even during the last couple months when the markets haven’t been as stellar as they have been. Had it affected those 80% individuals or were they going to follow through on donations regardless of the market performance?
Karen answered that that was unique to each individual donor to some degree. “I don’t think it will impact those million dollars and up—and we need to get in front of them soon—but it might depress some of our next level donors’ ability, or at least perceived ability, to give.”
Covid affected each industry so differently, and some people made a whole lot of money during that period. She didn’t think the top-level donors would change their tune.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=920147&GUID=DFBE4C3E-603F-4A30-A70F-3E49392DD4A5
One thought on “Library Board Receives Presentation On APL Campaign Feasibility Study – Consultant Recommends Moving Forward With $12 Million Library Project Funding Campaign”