Providence Public Library

STRATEGY

IDENTITY

BUSINESS PLANNING

FACILITIES

Since 1998 Synthesis partnership has been retained by the Providence Public Library for a variety of planning services.

Despite its 130-year history as valued institution, despite the popular roots of the 10-branch system in community development, and despite imaginative programming that has delivered a wide range of services across the entire socio-economic spectrum, the Providence Public Library has not been a well understood or adequately funded institution. Very few people had reason to encounter more than a handful of its 61 programs and services, or to see its full impact on the community. Few knew that while the Library serves as both the municipal and the state library, it is privately governed and endowed. Least known was that earnings from the endowment, which the Library feels should be used to enhance collections and to fund innovation, must be used to supplement comparatively modest operational appropriations from the city and the state.

The Library asked Synthesis Partnership to help it prepare for a campaign of public awareness and capital, endowment, and public-sector fund raising. We were asked to review facilities needs and institutional resources, and to find ways to bring the issues to light most vividly for the library board, for the library’s larger pool of prospective donors, and for government decision makers.

Through discussion with staff and board members, examination of all of the library’s facilities, and review of research, planning, budgetary, and communication materials, we identified critical issues of institutional identity, funding, and coordination.

As part of our development of an identity concept, we organized library services into eight program areas within four broad categories (Access to Information, Support for Education, Economic Advancement, and Community Enrichment), and then helped to guide the further development of the identity plan through both graphic design and architecture.

We also provided the Library with both a tagline (“It’s more than you know.”), a message (“The essential resource for learning, advancement, and enrichment for Providence and all of Rhode Island.”), and extensive written material for use in the fund raising case statement and publicity materials.

We developed a program and construction budget for each of the Library’s facilities. We then worked with the staff on operating budget scenarios and with the development office and the fund raising consultant to create revenue projections.

By assembling all of this financial data into a flexible and dynamic economic model, we provided a tool for the administration and governing board to use in coordinating expenditures with revenues. An accompanying timeline identified myriad, interrelated efforts needed in organizational infrastructure, communications, fundraising, projects, and finance. Together these tools gave the governing board the confidence to proceed with a very ambitious program, knowing that there were frequent check points at which expenditures could be paused while revenues were allowed to catch up.

With this extensive preparatory work providing a solid foundation, we guided the Library through a selection process for an architect: suggesting firms, creating a Request for Information and Qualifications and a Request for Proposals, evaluating responses, and advising of the creation and negotiation of contracts. We continued to assist the Library in establishing design and construction process management policies and procedures and in monitoring the process.

In the fall of 2005 we were selected by the Library by way of a national Request for Proposal process to guide the Library and its major stakeholders (the City of Providence, the neighborhood communities, and the State of Rhode Island) though a comprehensive, six-month strategic planning process. The objective of the strategic plan will be to identify resources, acknowledge constraints, and reconfigure funding and services to align with community needs for a sustainable future.

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