Fund Raising by Volunteer Libraries

Public Libraries News has a short piece explaining that the fund raising by York's library mutual has been somewhat disappointing.  The number of donors is small, with some from the Mutual's own staff.

This seems to confirm the pattern in Brent where the amount of money privately raised appears to be be very small.  Most of the funding for the extant volunteer library groups, despite what they say, seems to come in the form of Council grants.

This does suggest that the vision of David Cameron that there was something called the "Big Society" that would make up for the massive cuts created by his government is simply wrong.  Even some people in local government fell for this idea by imagining that these voluntary groups might be able to access grants in ways that Councils could not.  Indeed, it seems that the Green Party fell for this line as well.

It really brings into question the whole long term sustainability of the "volunteer library" movement if effectively they are funded through one off Council grants.  One off grants are a lousy way to pay for things if you are incurring ongoing costs, like paying a member of staff.  Firstly, the member of staff does all their work under threat of a budgetary axe.  Secondly, if they are a genuine temporary member of staff, their expertise is lost at the end of the discrete project (which is something I have seen a number of times).  It would surely be far more sensible to simply give these grants to staff on the payroll as capital investment for the Libraries service.