Try Food for Fines Monthly to Support Your Community

Lots of libraries do a Food for Fines week, especially during National Library Week.  But consider collaborating with a food pantry in your community, to offer a Food For Fines day on a more frequent basis.

Not only does it …

• help people in your community, but it also
• brings you closer in collaboration with other nonprofit groups in the area,
• can inspire other groups to hold food drives, and
• gives your library an opportunity for more media exposure.

Here’s how it works at the Jefferson County (MO) Library:

• At first we ran it for several weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Later, after talking to people at some of the food pantries, we realized that there was a great need for food donation all year round, so we made it a monthly program. This occurred just before the recession hit in 2008. A lot of families in our county have been very hard hit by the recession and still are; this project just struck a chord with the community. Our annual donations have basically doubled since 2008. Since then many other local organizations and businesses have started hosting food donation events. I like to think that we helped show them the way.
• The library now runs the program for a full day on the last Friday of each month. The amount of food they receive each month varies, says Klipsch, “but the statistics we’ve kept since we started show that in the last seven-and-a-half years we’ve collected 46,525 canned food items.”
• Building public awareness about the Food for Fines program has been pretty easy according to Klipsch. “The local media has been very supportive. We send out a press release every month to newspapers, radio and community cable channel, and online news media, and we always include how much was collected the month before, and the total year to date. At the beginning of the new year we send out a press release that includes the totals for the year just completed and the media have done some nice feature stories using that information. We also have a “Food for Fines” page on our web site, and we activate the graphic in the front page slideshow that links to the FFF page about a week before the monthly event.”

Hat tip to Jefferson County (MO) Library uses Food for Fines program to support local community at the I Love Libraries blog
Photo credit: Food for Fines by Lester Public Library (Two Rivers, WI) via Flickr

Let Kids “Read Down” Their Fines

If you want to encourage kids to read, but their cards are blocked because of fines, consider trying a “read down” your fines project at your library.  Here are some success stories you can use as models for your library’s program:

• Children and Teens: Start a New Chapter at Queens Library
  “… we’ll take $5 off of your fees for every half hour you read inside the library. If you prefer reading at home, bring in a short book review or report and we’ll take $5 off your fees for each report you write.”
• Jackson-George Regional Library System:
  • Does Your Child Owe Fines? Read Down Fines
    “… children may read-down their fines by reading to themselves or to another child in lieu of paying the fine owed. Children will get $1 taken off of their fines for every 10 minutes that they read. Any print media will be accepted, including children’s books, magazines, or even newspapers.”
  • Library system offers read-down fines program for adults during April
    “The purpose of this program originally was to empower older children to do something about fines owed to the library. Due to the success of that program, we will be offering it to adults during the month of April in celebration of National Library Week.”
• Summer Reading: Read Down Your Fines (New York Public Library)
  “… participants in NYPL’s Read Down Your Fines program can erase all their library fines just by logging their books and reading time …”
• Children allowed to ‘read down’ their library fines
  examples include Salt Lake City Public Library System and Scottsdale Public Library System

2 Ideas for More “Likes” for Your Library’s Facebook Page

Do you have a Facebook page for your library?  If so, these 2 ideas tweeted by Kimberly Brosan look like good ideas to try:

• “For Random Acts of Kindness week, will waive overdue fines of students who become a fan of library on Facebook” [http://twitter.com/KimberlyBrosan/status/37134687717695488]
• “just reduced max fines to $1 for HS students. Going to ask them to like us on FB and I’ll waive fines. Hope it works!” [http://twitter.com/KimberlyBrosan/status/35703458610946048]

What methods have you tried to encourage people to “friend” your library’s Facebook page?  Please share them in the comments so others may benefit from your ideas. 

Food For Fines at your library

If you’re thinking about trying a “Food For Fines” program at your library as an opportunity for the library to give back to the community, here are recent posts from the Publib discussion list that offer food for thought:

• [Publib] Food for fines revisited Melissa K. Davidson
• [Publib] Food For Fines Revisited Becky Tatar
• [Publib] Food for fines revisited Karen Mahnk
• [Publib] food for fines Elizabeth Fraser
• [Publib] Food for fines revisited Patrick Sweeney
• [Publib] Food for fines revisited Mary Soucie
• [Publib] Food for fines revisited Bonnie Mendes
• [Publib] Subject: Re: food for fines Marje Doyle

If your library has done a “Food For Fines” program and you have tips to share, please leave a comment!