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Big news today: Bread for the Journey Sebastopol has made a $1,000 pledge to our mission, and specifically to kick off a fund-raising drive to purchase a covered, walk-in style Bookmobile. Bread for the Journey is a fantastic group that nurtures neighborhood philanthropy by raising money locally and then offering relationship centered micro-grants. They have volunteer chapters across the nation and after meeting with us, the Sebastopol board members became very enthusiastic about funding our quest for a more suitable vehicle. They are quite literally putting up bread for our journey around the county!
Now that’s where you come in. Theirs is a matching grant: it is cash that will match your investment dollar for dollar. A $10 donation becomes $20, a $25 donation becomes $50, and so on. They are going to double the power of your investment. And what are you investing in? Expanded services, selection, and long-term sustainability. The Free Bookmobile has been welcomed far and wide, everyone goes home happy, and the question we now hear more than any other is “When are you coming back?” Unfortunately, the current trailer is our limiting factor. It was a great way to get started but the heavy book carts must be maneuvered up and down a steep ramp – it’s physically demanding work which I can’t reasonably ask other volunteers to perform. Volunteers could, however, easily drive a box-truck Bookmobile and open the door for patrons. This would mean a significant expansion of events as we recruit folks to give away books on additional days. Our goal is to visit each in the core group of twenty locations at least once per month, and to add schools with closing libraries to our routes. The latter is a crucial gap that needs filling as schools all over the county struggle with vanishing budgets.
There are other substantial benefits to the upgrade. Currently we are able to carry about one thousand books at any given time. A specially modified box-truck would allow us to offer tens of thousands of titles! With proper categorization, we are talking about a real mobile library. The self-contained structure would also permit us to run events in any type of weather and lighting conditions. We have been caught out on a number of occasions by rain and darkness.
Please take a moment right now to click over to the website and contribute to our efforts on the “Help Us!” page. It’s fast, easy, and your donation is tax-deductible through our new partnership with the Literary Arts Guild. Even $10 or $20 will make a big difference.
http://sonomacountybookmobile.org
If you prefer to mail in a check, you can do that! Please make it payable to “Sonoma County Free Bookmobile” and send to:
Literary Arts Guild
PO Box 159
Santa Rosa, CA 95402
Thank you so very much for your support of Sonoma County’s only public-access Bookmobile!
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