“We’re encouraging each family in Mill Valley to make a gift in support of our treasured public library,” says MVLF Board Member Kris Malone Grossman, noting that the foundation’s end-of-year appeal letter arrives in mailboxes this week.
The appeal comes backed by the foundation’s first-ever Matching Gift Challenge Grant, in which the Ken and Jackie Broad Family Fund, together with the participation of the entire Mill Valley Library Foundation board, will match the first $25,000 in gifts received.
The appeal comes on the heels of the 2019 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 move allowed the nonprofit foundation’s board to reach 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,” Andrew Shapiro, then the board’s president, said at the time. “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 and other services.”
Shapiro said 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. The endowment began distributing annual program grants to the library in 2019, and its 2020 program grant was for $76,500,
In an effort to continue to grow the endowment, the foundation reprised its “Beyond The Book Bash” fundraiser in September 2019 at the Throckmorton Theatre, and also launched a Legacy Giving program to directly accept and manage estate and planned gifts.
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