The Final Chapter

[This is also published in the September All Point Bulletin]

Here we are at the Final Chapter of Fundraising for the new library.  But first, a little catchup on where we’ve been the last few months.  

Back in February, our State Senator Doug Ericksen agreed to put the Point Roberts Library on his list of capital projects.  These are projects that, if they are included in the final state budget, are guaranteed a certain level of funding.  (We used to call them earmarks.)  But in the months-long process that is how the legislature now creates budgets, the new Point Roberts LIbrary fell off the list.  But we didn’t know that until July.  

Our funding goal is $538,000.  In July, we had $445,000; short by $93,000.  We put together the list of everyone who had previously given at least $1,000 and set about asking them whether they could possibly pledge an additional $1,000 by the end of this year.  Twenty-six people/families have said “yes!” as of August 15.  

We have also received other donations during this period, including a generous $2,000 gift from the new owners of the Marina.  They hope to follow-up on this gift in the fall.  What with Saturday Markets and used book sales and quilt raffle tickets, we are now in need of about $60,000.  

We know that everyone can’t make $1,000 donations.  YET, we need to get this fundraising done in 2015 so that construction can begin in the Spring of 2016.  We need to get this done because it’s time to get it done, for you and for us and for the library.  There are no more possibilities of foundation grants or state gifts: it’s simply up to us, to the caring members of the Point Roberts community.

And if you can’t donate a thousand dollars, can you please make a first or final contribution of whatever you can afford?  Between group and individual donations, we’ll be done in the next few months: we’ll have that $538,000 in the bank.  We can then close the book on the fundraising segment while the much more important history of the new library begins to arise before our eyes.  

We need a bigger library; the community and its friends have responded generously to this need over the past 3.5 years with over a thousand individual donations, so it’s clear that they want this to happen. We began with a belief that it takes a community to build a library.  We will be finishing knowing that the community has risen to the need.

---Judy Ross for the Friends of the Point Roberts Library

To Donate:  Make out checks to FOPRL (a tax-exempt organization) and leave at the library or mail to PO Box 970, PR., WA 98281