On the heels of last month’s announcement of a unique public-private partnership between the City of Mill Valley and the Mill Valley Library Foundation, under which the city released $350,000 – nearly half of a $661,419 donation in 2016 from the Zimmer Family Living Trust – to MVLF, the nonprofit foundation’s board says it has reached a capital base sufficient to initiate an endowment.
“Our foundation has historically funded library programs through yearly donor support of our annual campaigns and event fundraisers such as the foundation’s Storybook Ball and Beyond The Book Bash,” said Andrew Shapiro, the board’s president. “Prior to the creation of this endowment, funding amounts have been varied and unpredictable. The goal of this endowment is to perpetually and dependably support the library’s free, award-winning programming.”
Shapiro says the board determined that a starting endowment balance of $2.3 million was needed to perpetually provide consistent grant amounts to the library at levels approaching some of the foundation’s most successful fundraising years.
”A successful reprise of our Storybook Ball this past year and a record-setting 2018 annual campaign that yielded over $100,000 raised our endowment account to near $2 million,” Shapiro says. “Our unique partnership with the city enabled our foundation to cross-over and adopt its endowment spending policy roughly two years ahead of our projections. This is a noteworthy milestone in the foundation’s 36-year history.”
As a result, the endowment begins distributing annual program grants to the library with an initial grant of approximately $65,000 this July.
Foundation officials says they plan to continue building the endowment targeting the next interim goal of $4 million, allowing an increase of the perpetual annual payout to more than $100,000 per year “to help sustain–and even grow–an extraordinary array of award-winning programs that tax-based city funding does not provide for, including After Hours, teen and children’s programs, a technology lab and instruction.”
To celebrate the occasion and to continue to grow the endowment, the foundation is reprising its “Beyond The Book Bash” fundraiser on September 7 at the Throckmorton Theatre. The foundation also plans to begin a Legacy Giving program this year so it can directly accept and manage estate and planned gifts.
MORE INFO ON THE MILL VALLEY LIBRARY FOUNDATION.
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