AMHERST — The Friends of the Jones Library Inc. is being called on to continue serving as a fundraising arm for the library, amid pressure on the Jones Inc. endowment to support annual operations and a shortfall in the capital campaign to expand and renovate the library building.
During a discussion at a meeting Thursday, the board of trustees voted to express gratitude and support to the Friends for building the fundraising platform, to ensure the capital campaign finishes strong and to lay a solid foundation for the future of the library.
The library’s endowment has $9.47 million, a portion of which is withdrawn each year to supplement the appropriation from the town.
While Trustees President Austin Sarat questioned whether the Friends was the best vehicle for this fundraising, Library Director Sharon Sharry said it doesn’t make sense to backtrack. Sharry said the Friends can still raise $150,000 for the annual fund each year and $1.6 million for the capital campaign toward the $46.1 million total project cost.
Sarat praised what the Friends have done but said he wants trustees to think about how to fund the library going forward.
“They’ve done a fabulous job. We’re in their debt,” he said. “Before signing onto any agreement which offshores the future of the library to another group, I think we need to understand what we’re doing, we need to ask the right questions.”
One question is whether staff could be doing some of the fundraising.
Trustee Lee Edwards said part of the reason the Friends were chosen for this work is that the library doesn’t have a foundation. The only other way to do serious fundraising would be for the library to pay its staff for this work, Edwards said.
“You need to have someone whose job it is to oversee fundraising,” Edwards said.
There is no money in the budget to pay for such a position, according to Sharry.
Sharry said the Friends is going to have to raise a lot of money to replenish the endowment and the annual fund.
In other business, Sarat and Town Manager Paul Bockelman signed a memorandum of agreement that assigns the Civil War tablets to the library’s custody and stipulates that, should the need arise, the town would consider additional staffing.
The Civil War tablets will be licensed to the library for 99 years.
The five plaques each weigh between 600 and 800 pounds and are inscribed with the names of the 300 Amherst residents who fought for the Union, including African American residents who were members of the famed 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment and 5th Cavalry.
“As part of the project, the walls are fortified so they will handle the weight of the tablets,” Sharry said.
The town will also pay to install them near the special collections, in a room that will be named after Debora Bridges.
The plaques were located starting in 2021 in the Pole Room at the Bangs Community Center, where Bridges is curator. An exhibit focused on Black soldiers was closed earlier this year as part of renovations to the building.
