29 May 2003
To Members of the Laura Bush Foundation Advisory Committee:
I am writing this letter to make a suggestion about the Laura Bush
Foundation review process. This year, I was one of the thousands of
librarians who applied for a grant from the Laura Bush Foundation. My
school library was not awarded a grant.
I appreciate the opportunity that the Laura Bush Foundation provided. I
am always looking for opportunities to improve my library program. In my
three years as the librarian at King Middle School in Portland, Maine, I
have applied for eleven different grants and awards; I have received
seven. When I do not receive a grant or an award, I call the sponsoring
organization and request information about the winner(s) and/or comments
from the reviewers. This information is provided either in the form of a
letter or through speaking with someone. The comments are always
valuable. They provide the basis for revisions to the original proposal.
When I called the Laura Bush Foundation to ask for reviewers’ comments, I
was told, “We received over 6,000 applications. We are not able to
provide comments about them.”
The sheer volume of applications received by the Laura Bush Foundation is
staggering. Even with twenty reviewers – and each application being
scored by three reviewers – each reviewer would need to read more than 900
applications. That is unimaginable. Six thousand was probably much more
than the Foundation expected to receive. Unfortunately, thousands of
school libraries are struggling with meager book budgets and aging
collections. It is unfortunate that the Laura Bush Foundation was able to
provide funds to only two percent of the needy school libraries that
applied for funds.
Thousands of librarians applied for grants. Three of the librarians in my
school district applied. We met two evenings for four-hours to brainstorm
ideas and review the application. In addition, we each spent 8-12 hours
of our own time writing and revising our applications. If every librarian
who applied spent as much time as we did preparing her or his application,
that’s 20 hours times 6,000 librarians. That’s a lot of time and energy.
Many of us who were not awarded grants during this first cycle would like
to resubmit our applications. We want to know how we can make our
applications more competitive. We need the reviewers’ comments.
If the Laura Bush Foundation is concerned about receiving thousands of
applications during future funding cycles, I have a suggestion that would
focus the process and distribute grants to a greater range and diversity
of communities. The following suggestion does not require that the
current Laura Bush Foundation application be changed, but rather that the
eligibility for funding operate on a six-year cycle. Divide the 6,000
applications received into six equal parts and solicit applications from
one group the first year, another group the second year and so forth
through six years. The division could be based on geographic region,
community population or types of schools, for example. If the application
process cycled in one of the ways suggested above, 1,000, rather than
6,000, applications would be expected each year. Librarians would apply
only once in the six-year cycle. All applications could be read, reviewed
and scored. This revised application process would maximize everyone’s
time and energy and these generous grants would be more evenly and fairly
distributed across the country.
Thank you for your consideration.
Note: I will post this letter to the following library listservs: melibs
and lm_net. There are two reasons that I am sharing this letter with the
library community: 1) Based on the fact that 6,000 librarians applied for
Laura Bush Foundation grants to update their aging collections is a clear
indication that school libraries are in a funding crisis. As a community
of librarians, we need to hold public dialogues about this crisis and
discuss what we can do to better advocate for financial support.
2) I know four individual librarians who applied for Laura Bush Foundation
grants this year and did not receive them. I want them, and any other
librarians who may feel frustrated by the lack of return for their
efforts, to know that their efforts in advocating for their libraries were
not wasted.
Kelley McDaniel
Librarian
King Middle School
92 Deering Ave.
Portland, Maine 04102
207.874.8140 phone
207.874.8290 fax
mcdank@fc.portlandschools.org
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