Bookmobile News

Our friends and partners around the county help make our program possible, and we have been blessed since last September to have grown our relationship substantially with the Friends of the Sonoma Valley Library (SVFOL), a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to enhancing the presence of their library in the community and supporting its efforts to bring the pleasure of reading, listening, and viewing to their population through traditional media, technological innovations, and diverse programs. Since the Free Bookmobile’s start in 2009, SVFOL stalwart Dave Dobbins has graciously offered us books from their periodic sale leftovers, many of which ended up on our shelves in those early days.

More recently, powerhouse SVFOL volunteer Tony Pisacane reached out to see if he could find a good home with us for even more material that was coming in between sales and overloading their storage capacity. Tony is no stranger to building community relationships: he’s the force behind SVFOL’s local Books to Schools program, which affords area schools the opportunity to request certain types of titles and then have them delivered with a smile, completely free of charge!

Over the past 15 months, Tony’s customized loads for the Free Bookmobile have significantly boosted our overall quality and filled gaps in certain key categories. By October, he had contributed 2,000 books to our program — thank you! Tony’s efforts highlight both what can be accomplished when non-profits work carefully together, and the joys of those kinds of collaborative relationships. If you are a Sonoma Valley-area school or human services provider in need of books, please click here to be in touch with Tony via this web form.

We love working in Healdsburg and Geyserville, and our good friends at Healdsburg Forever feel we are bringing good value to those residents. Their confidence in our north county services has been extended in the form of grant support for the sixth year running. Far from idling through the same set of stops month after month, the Free Bookmobile diligently seeks out the most effective partners and locations toward delivering maximum impact with our award-winning service. Recent additions to those routes include Alliance Medical Center, Fitch Mountain Summer Camp, and West Side Elementary School after we learned they had lost their library. Free Bookmobile to the rescue!

Healdsburg Forever (formerly the Healdsburg Area Fund) is a community endowment created by local citizens in 2003 to provide a dependable income stream for annual grants to support nonprofit organizations serving community needs in Healdsburg and Geyserville. An affiliate of Community Foundation Sonoma County, the Healdsburg Forever Fund has grown to over $1 million and secured pledges that will sustain their mission for generations to come. To date, they have granted more than $630,000 to over 50 applicants to help manage program and operational costs for nonprofit organizations. Huge thanks to the thoughtful philanthropists and board members who make this enrichment possible!