Catching up
The Entrelib (ELC) fall mini-conference happened last week: Refresh & Refocus: Libraries’ New Trends in Supporting Entrepreneurship. The speakers hailed from Australia, Canada, Madagascar, Nigeria, and USA, even though this event was not branded as “international”. I think that’s telling about the ELC. The speakers also represented public, special, and academic librarians. Inspiring content! The video is now posted.
Kellee Forkenbrock (North Liberty Library, Iowa) and Céline Gareau-Brennan (University of Alberta) were the fearless leaders of our diverse planning team. Many thanks to them, as well as the speakers and attendees.
Angel Truesdale (UNC Charlotte) and I are working on fundraising for another spring ELC pitch competition. And next spring, we will invite some friends to begin brainstorming the fall 2024 event. (If you have ideas, please let us know.)
Today’s topic
A friend at the NCLA conference last month asked if she could talk to me later this school year about how to get funding for librarian socials. We haven’t had that conversation yet, but I have started to think about what I would say.
I never been a professional fundraiser, nor served on a committee in RUSA or elsewhere to help raise serious dough. I have worked with vendor partners to fund socials and meals at conferences like ACRL, Charleston, and NCLA, and to fund ELC programming.
Those social events were usually not listed in the conference program. Being “unofficial” allows for flexibility and keeps the planning process efficient. KISS principle.
Being an unofficial event also allows us to be inclusive regarding who gets to attend. For example, you could invite local library workers who aren’t attending the conference due to lack of funding. Local library science students, too. And you aren’t limited to conference attendees from a specific section or committee.
Most of the sponsors I’ve worked with have been library vendors (publishers and database companies), so I’ll use the word “vendor” to mean “sponsors” most of the time. ALA did help fund the ELC pitch competition last spring, but Megan Janicki of Libraries Build Business fame offered that funding. Hmm that scenario is worth covering too.
Here are some strategies. Some of these ideas might seem pretty obvious.
Leverage an existing relationship.
The title of post #3 at this blog, way back in 2011, was “Vendors v. Librarians as False Dichotomy”. Sometimes old posts are embarrassing but that message is still useful. Avoid the “Us versus Them” trap. It’s hard to solve any problem in life and society when stuck in that binary mindset.
Approach a vendor sales rep or manager you already know. Take advantage of your previous networking. I’ve never asked for funding from a vendor person I didn’t already have a connection with. Certainly fundraising with a stranger could be successful, but it would probably take more work to get to “yes, we can fund this”.
This is yet another reason to embrace networking. Even if you don’t have a funding need coming up. So, work the exhibit hall. On the phone or in Zoom for a sales chat, ask the vendor rep something about themself. Find a geographic connection or shared interest.
Make a strategic connection.
Is the target population for your event relevant to the vendor? The obvious example is approaching a business information vendor about sponsoring an event for business librarians. But besides subject matter, the connection could be formats like data or archival primary sources or causes like diversity or sustainability. Find the mutual interest between the proposed attendees and the proposed vendor.
It’s not an exaggeration that sometimes these events become a collaboration, a mini-partnership, between the attendees and funder. Both can benefit.
Be reasonable.
Don’t ask for too much. If you aren’t sure how much money is needed, suggest a range and see how much the proposed sponsor offers. We did this when asking SimplyAnalytics and PrivCo to help sponsor keynotes and pitch competition consultants for the ELC.
And it doesn’t take a lot of money to create a fun social event. When ProQuest got a big, 6-year contract with NC LIVE, BLINC reached out to PQ business content manager Jo-Anne Hogan for some training and product development discussion. At the next NCLA conference, we asked Jo-Anne if PQ could sponsor a happy hour for BLINC at a brewery. Total cost was only $125.
Be efficient.
A long-time sponsor of a BRASS award recently stopped its sponsorship. The vendor had issues with working with RUSA, we heard. (BRASS awards are managed through RUSA, its parent association.) While there could have been other issues involved, one takeaway is to keep the process as simple as possible. If the event is easy to work out, the vendor is more likely to sponsor it.
Paying for socials is usually easy to manage when the sales rep can attend too. At the end of the event, the vendor rep can flash their work credit card, and the process is finished.
Thank the sponsor when you promote the event.
Make sure the sponsor gets credit for the event. You can do this in your invitations without kissing the vendor’s feet. “We thank XXX for sponsoring this event.” Include a link to the vendor homepage and maybe their logo. That’s enough.
At ELC events, we mention the sponsors at the beginning and usually ask a sales rep to introduce themselves for up to one minute. Good sales reps know that the people attending the workshop or mini-conference aren’t there for a long sales pitch. The reps say they are happy to help sponsor the event and support its goals (like libraries supporting local entrepreneurship); the Zoom host drops the vendor URL and email address into Zoom chat, and we move on in the agenda.
For socials at conferences, if I am sharing the invites, I ask the librarians who RSVP to stop by the vendor booth (if there is one) either before or after the event, thank the vendor rep, and pick up the latest brochure.
Be inclusive.
Try to invite a diverse group, including people of color and early-career library workers. Early career librarians in particular are less likely to get invited to socials and other special events than us more veteran librarians, with our bigger networks.
Vendors appreciate diversity too – and they like and need to meet new librarians, friends, and potential future customers. Being extroverted people, sales reps enjoy making new friends.
And business librarian socials are always better when there is a mix of public and academic librarians. Special librarians too.
Be at the right place at the right time.
Well, this is passive, so it’s not really a strategy. I wanted to include this possibility because it does happen. I mentioned Megan Janicki above.
An earlier example: EBSCO was the original sponsor of the ELC pitch competition, and it was their idea. Duncan Smith of EBSCO (founder of NovelList and a former public librarian here in North Carolina) approached the ELC leaders to suggest we do a pitch competition for libraries, which his company would provide $5,000 for.
I can’t remember if Steven Swartz or I first asked about SimplyAnalytics sponsoring a BLINC dinner at NCLA. Might have been Steven. That was many years ago. David Turner of Data Axle has long offered to sponsor BLINC socials too.
Maybe the lesson there is, have an active group that vendor friends know about.
Okay, here is a revised header for this section:
Make sure vendors and other potential sponsors know what is going on.
“Are you attending X next year? Sounds like there will be a lot of [fill in the blank] librarians there.”
Likewise if your group is planning a workshop on a topic that a vendor is interested in or offers content for. Spread the word. Emails to BUSLIB-L (and sometimes, blog posts) have attracted vendor attention before. Then a vendor might reach out to you about a social. Or you might bring up the idea. Don’t be shy.
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