BHB: What about the role of the Brooklyn Heights Association?
Johnson, BPL: They’ve been great. They’ve been very open, we’ve kept them appraised of our progress as we’ve worked forward and they’re quiet, but they’ve been helpful in terms of communicating to us what they’re hearing from their constituents, and we’ll continue to work hand-in-glove with them.
BHB: Previous experience.
Johnson, BPL: I was actually head of the Free Library in Philadelphia before I went to the Constitution Center. The other things is that the Constitution Center was run 100% on private money. Public money built the building—federal money went into construction of the project—but the institution is run 100% on privately based money.
BHB: How hard is capital fundraising for BPL?
Johnson, BPL: It is a challenge because it is a quasi-City agency; so even though we are truly a nonprofit, a 501c3, we get a big portion of our operating budget from the City. Raising private money for a public entity, or what feels like a public entity, is a very challenging thing to do. You have to overcome the fear that people have, which is that if they put a dollar into the project, then that’s one dollar less that the government will put in. So the money can do much more if it’s somewhere where there isn’t that issue. What we’re trying to make sure is happening, and we’re working really hard on this, on the capital side—we’ve made a little bit of progress this year but not enough—we got 2.6 million dollars more than we ever have on the capital side. It’s nothing compared to the need, right, but the point is if I can get to funders and say, “Look, the City is willing to do this,” if I can raise private money, that kind of approach. So it’s a way of putting people at ease with, you know, this tension. It depends on the donor, right, because some donors just try to give money to a program rather than to bricks and mortar, and that’s a very personal thing. I understand it, and respect it enormously, and we’re chipping away at it. We’ve raised, on a relative basis, a lot more money in the last two years than the Library’s ever raised. But it’s not near what it should be.
I hope that that’s [the financial state of BPL] the second thing that I’m judged on. What I should be judged on is the kind of service I deliver to the community. I’m not shying away from it—I just wanted to make that point.
If you look at our form 990, you can see what we’re doing. We’ve raised about $4 million dollars this year of private and foundation money. What I will say is non-City money. A lot of that is program money.
In terms of the Library’s history in raising money for capital, we raised $3 million dollars from the Leon Levy Foundation, which we used at the Central Library, and that was huge relative to what had ever been done before. I will say that over the past 24 months, it may be 36, the amount we’ve raised has gone up by 78%.
I’ve built a whole development team from nothing, and I’m proud of that. We’ve got some great people that are working with us now. They’re my salesmen. They’re the people that are out there with a very select slice of our constituents. By the way, as important as the large donors are, it’s equally important that there’s a broad base of support. Without that, without the fact that this is an institution that’s important to a lot of people, the larger donors won’t be compelled.
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