Friends of the San Francisco Public Library

Library Support Program:Friends has an annual direct support program that funds various library programs, resources, and equipment. As a community foundation, Friends awards support to the SFPL for innovative, free programs and services that are open to everyone across San Francisco in the areas of: children and teens, neighborhood branches, arts and culture, exhibitions, careers and jobs support, ESL, new immigrant support, technology and media learning, remote outreach (bookmobiles), and special collections and infrastructure support for affinity centers throughout the Main Library. Examples of popular programs that rely almost exclusively on Friends' support are One City One Book, the Summer Stride Reading and STEM Program, Tricycle Music Festival, and the publication of At the Library, a free newsletter of activities at the Main Library and the 27 branches. Friends' funds also support professional development for library staff, including paying for specialized training and conferences and grants to Librarians to pilot new innovative services that if successful, are often expanded system wide. And finally, Friends support includes additional funds for the library to promote free programs among identified groups of high-need residents, including contracting digital marketing expertise. Through Friends, community members express their support and aspirations for the SFPL as: - Persuasive Advocates committed to a strong and responsive library with reliable public funding. - Engaged Champions advancing the SFPL's mission for community literacy and expansive free resources and opportunities for everyone.- Generous investors bridging the funding gap between what the city provides and the cost of additional programs, resources, and services that San Franciscans want and need.

Advocacy Program:Friends continues the tradition of active and vocal support to ensure excellence in library services for all users. Friends' long and successful track record includes its critical role in passing five ballot measures over the last 30 years. Through its advocacy efforts, Friends helped pass a $106 million bond measure to build and refurbish 24 neighborhood branch libraries city-wide (2000, Prop A), championing the Library Preservation Fund, ensuring increased library hours, services and budget (1994, Prop E); spearheading the legislative campaign to build a $109.5 million new Main Library (1988, Prop A) and securing over $9.7 million in state funding. In 2007, Friends helped pass a measure (Prop D) that will bring in over $1.2 billion to the library by renewing the Library Preservation Fund and most recently in 2022, passed the third version of the Library Preservation Fund (Prop F) securing twenty-five years of public funding. We continue to work with elected officials, community groups, and the library administration to ensure a premier library system for San Francisco.

Community Book Program: Through ongoing efforts to support the library, Friends connects readers with inexpensive and free books. Each year, through its Community Book Program ("CBP"), Friends takes in over one million donated books and media, which it in turn resells to the public through two bookstores, online sales, and a number of specialty book sales (including some of the largest book sales on the West Coast). The SFPL also selectively acquires rare books from Friends that enhance SFPL's collections. Many books are also donated to schools and other non-profit organizations through Friends' CBP. This fiscal year, Friends re-engineered what has been known as Books Operations into the Book Program, embracing its activities more accurately and fueling its growth as a valuable community asset that supports SFPL's mission for literacy and literary engagement. The Book Programs' four fundamental goals balance literacy and a national model for environmental responsibility. These goals are to: - Increase access to low-cost books and media through multiple venues of convenience and affordability. - Redirect free books from the traditional market to underserved and low-income children and families.- Promote literary engagement through free literary activities. - Keep more than one million books and media out of landfill and recycling plants each year.

Volunteer Program:Friends has a robust volunteer program which helps support the CBP, library and Friends' literary events, and contribute to our library advocacy efforts by educating the public about the Library Preservation Fund as well as promoting patronage of the twenty-eight libraries in San Francisco. In FY22/23, the program was supported by a total of 112 volunteers who contributed a total of 11,690 volunteer hours valued at $436,252. Friends continues to strategize ways to make volunteerism effective as new phases of the post pandemic are implemented and a greater number of its volunteers become more comfortable getting back into the community. The Lisa Brown & Daniel Handler Writer's Residency Program:Made possible by the generosity of Daniel Handler and Lisa Brown, the residency is designed to provide five writers with free, adequate, and accessible space in which to produce creative work, and to connect them with the San Francisco Public Library to produce and share their work in the community. The resident authors work in designated artist space (the writers hive) at the Friends office where they have 24-hour unlimited access to the office and all the amenities and supplies of the office. Each resident is connected to a branch library as the resident writer/creator for the purpose of highlighting their talents and engaging with the library patrons.