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Library Lines

April 30, 2025
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by Joe Miller,
Director of Development

The column you’re reading now was published on the last day of my first year as the library’s Director of Development.

It’s been a tremendously rewarding year – and also a year with unexpected challenges.

On the positive side:

The Pocahontas County Commission has continued its long tradition of robust funding for the county’s libraries. The commission directly provides just under three-fifths of our total budget. Another 10% comes to us indirectly, passed through from other county-funded organizations.

All of us at the Pocahontas County Libraries and Visitor Information Centers remain humbled by the trust that the public has placed in our institution.

Speaking of which – you, dear readers, have also provided considerable financial support. We increased our goal for donations by 11% this year. We met that number halfway through our fiscal year. 

We are grateful to each and every one of you for your support. 

Libraries exist to serve the public. Just over 3 in every 4 county residents have a library card, and you visited more than 34,000 times last year. Those figures are the envy of counties with far higher populations than ours.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.

A combination of large bequests from dedicated patrons and overfunding during a few boom tourism years have left the library with a substantial endowment. We have invested those funds, and we use the growth from those investments to partially fund our operations.

The recent downturn in the market has erased all of this year’s growth and a not-inconsiderable portion of the principal.

The next year promises to be a difficult one for grant writing, as well.

Three federal agencies – the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) – either directly or indirectly fund many of the grants available to libraries.

Both IMLS and NEH have had their staff and budgets cut to around 25% of their 2024 levels. The NEA – which funded our ongoing artist-in-residence pilot project – appears next on the chopping block.

We are already feeling the effects of those cuts. We abandoned two in-progress grant proposals when the NEH and the West Virginia Humanities Council (which is funded by the NEH) canceled all grant programs for the coming year.

Current budget proposals show IMLS funding to states reduced by 50%. Here in West Virginia, IMLS funds are used to provide internet access at public libraries. The loss of that support would add thousands of dollars per year for each of our branches.

Our medium-term goal has been to reduce funding from the county commission to around 40% of our bud-get. Those funds would be replaced by growing the interest from our endowment and by grants from public and private sources.

Both of those goals appeared attainable a year ago.

Today, markets are volatile, with many economists warning of a growing possibility of recession in the next year.

And private philanthropies are simply too small to replace federal grantmaking. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – the largest US grantmaking foundation – distributed $7.75 billion in funding in 2023. That’s about the amount distributed by the National Cancer Institute alone.

The National Cancer Institute is just one of the 26 federal grantmaking agencies administering over 900 grant programs.  

The PCL & VIC board has wisely insisted on running a lean library system, even during years of booming funding. 

Around 75% of our budget is used to pay our librarians. And I can assure you that no one is getting rich working as a librarian!

What that means is that major budget issues—either increases in costs from the loss of in-kind contributions or decreases in funding—quickly translate to a reduction in services.

It may be a rocky year ahead. But my commitment is to writing a column next year explaining how we successfully navigated those challenges.

I’d like to close my first year with some thank yous:

To the county commission for funding the best rural library in the United States. To our board, for its wisdom and guidance over the years. To our Friends group at Hillsboro and at the county level, for their tireless work to improve the libraries. To my wonderful colleagues, for all their hard work, dedication and friendship.

And to you, our patrons and readers. Without you, there would be no library.

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