WebJunction - Funding Strategies

Having mapped out your strategic assessment of the most convincing ways your library impacts your community, you now need to gather evidence to show that your library actually is, or will be, making the impact you claim. The purpose of this phase is to support you when you make your case. Here are some approaches to quantification:

Traditional library statistics

Libraries have traditionally evaluated their performance based on metrics such as collection size, circulation, number of patrons, reference interviews, and so on (see the analytical tables on this Texas State Library site for examples of this type of data). These statistics can be vital for demonstrating a base level of services to funders (read this vivid cautionary tale from Tennessee). But necessary as they are, bread-and-butter library stats often don't speak very powerfully to your audience of funders. It's best to combine these traditional measures with other forms of information that more directly address community value and social and economic impact.

Outcome-based evaluation

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has placed heavy emphasis on outcome-based evaluation in its grant distributions (particularly useful is this definition of outcome-based evaluation and the PowerPoint presentation “Libraries Change Lives — Oh yeah? Prove it.”, downloadable from the IMLS list of resources).

There are excellent, deep, and adaptable examples of outcome-based evaluation projects by the St. Louis Public Library, Colorado's Library Research Service, and the Outcomes Toolkit 2.0 developed as part of the How Libraries and Librarians Help project conducted jointly by the University of Michigan and the University of Washington with IMLS funding. See also Joan C. Durrance and Karen E. Fisher’s new book, How Libraries and Librarians Help, which offers a comprehensive methodology for defining and measuring library outcomes. We’ve got an excerpt right here.

Summer reading programs are a focal point for many libraries: here's a collection of summer reading outcome research resources (including good hard data) put together by the New York State Library.

Return on Investment

This groundbreaking report, also from Florida, lays out a framework for determining return on investment in Florida libraries. It’s an instructive tool that can help shape your own thinking about quantifying your library’s value.

Anecdotal evidence

Stories are a powerful way of communicating. The Iowa State Library has put together an excellent Web site using a comprehensive storytelling metaphor as a way of demonstrating impact (for more information about this project, see Karen Burns' WebJunction article on Telling Your Library's Story). But collecting individual stories from patrons and supporters is also an important part of demonstrating your impact. Here's a Patron Stories page from the Juneau (AK) Public Library that moves the collection of patron stories on line! Important as they are, don't rely on stories alone: they are most effective when you use them to humanize and add impact to your factual hard evidence.

Data from peer libraries and the industry

Sites like the National Center for Education Statistics' Compare Public Libraries statistics program can help you find libraries similar to yours, and general library industry data is also available (for example, in OCLC's Libraries: How They Stack Up brochure). But be cautious about relying too heavily on analogies with other libraries or national trends. “All politics is local” goes the adage: your best and most powerful arguments will come from information about the realities of your own community and your own library.

Determining what data you need to support your argument

Given your limited time and resources and the wide range of possible data to collect, how will you prioritize your efforts?

Use your Demonstrating Impact strategy as a guiding principle: what level of factual detail will you need to establish your library's value in the eyes of funders?
Second, assess the difficulty of obtaining data. It's easiest to simply repackage existing data so that it directly addresses your audience's concerns (more on presentation in the section on Making Your Case). It's more difficult to compile and analyze data you've already collected. Most challenging is to collect fresh data through library-user surveys or other means.

The approach you take depends on the time you have, the receptivity of your audience, and the nature of the case you are building. For more on prioritizing data collection, see the Southern Ontario Library Service's workbook, The Library's Contribution to Your Community (print copies are available).

And here are some questions to consider about data collection, from Mark Smith’s Collecting and Using Library Statistics.

Data collection methods

If you determine that you need to collect new data to support your case, here's a set of resources to help make your task easier:

The multi-year Public Library Benefits Valuation Study conducted by the St. Louis Public Library and others applies cost-benefit analysis to library programs. See also this more in-depth project description.
The Library Research Service's Counting on Results project includes a complete methodology and instructions for conducting patron surveys based on the PLA's “Planning on Results” outcomes. The “Outcomes” tables on this page link to very useful survey results spreadsheets that can easily be adapted to other uses. Also contains information about collecting survey results using Palm PDAs.
The IMLS funded University of Michigan/University of Washington How Libraries and Librarians Help project led to the development of the Outcomes Toolkit 2.0 now available on the Information Behavior in Everyday Contexts research project website. The toolkit includes guides to using focus groups, interviews, observations, and surveys. It includes how tos, strenghts, weaknesses, and examples for each of these data collection methods. The toolkit also includes an excellent section on qualitative analysis techniques.
The Gates Foundation's Staying Connected Toolkit includes a short chapter on collecting data specifically related to technology needs.

If your demonstration of impact emphasizes use by virtual patrons, then Web-based surveys can be an efficient, cost-effective way to collect data. For the latest word on online surveying tools, see Yann Toledano's article, "Use Online Surveys to Get the Feedback You Need: Tools and best practices for conducting Web surveys" on TechSoup . Here are two popular inexpensive survey tools:

Finally, Florida State University’s E-Metrics project is a useful tool for measuring one highly significant but hard-to-quantify element of library impact: patron use of online resources.

When you have determined what data you need to collect and how to collect it, the next step is to make your case.