Vashon Friends of the Library looking to build on success, growth

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, January 13, 2016

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More than 50 volunteers last year helped the Vashon Friends of the Library put on its fundraising events, a huge improvement over the seven members that sat around the organization’s meeting table a couple years ago.

Now, the organization is hoping to continue the growth by bringing in more young volunteers. Vashon Friends of the Library President Deborah Anderson said this week that she credits the new blood on the volunteer force that came in early 2014 for reinvigorating the organization.

A host of islanders expressed interest in volunteering with the organization after a Beachcomber article in January 2014 reported the nonprofit had been seeing the number of volunteers decrease while the age increased.

“We were a sleepy little organization and everyone was getting burned out and had been doing it for a million years,” Anderson said this week. “Then in 2014, we had this huge reinvigoration, and now we want to kick it up a notch again.”

The organization also had been operating without a 501c(3) status since the 1990s. That too was reinstated in 2014.

With a new board and multiple successful fundraisers in 2015, including a film night at the Vashon Theatre, a giant book sale and a “Tea for Book Lovers and Book Clubs” event, Anderson said she is hoping for a large turnout at the nonprofit’s 10 a.m. meeting Saturday, Jan. 23.

“We’re hoping to reinvigorate and turn our roster of members into boots on the ground,” she said. “The sky is the limit.”

The meeting will discuss plans and ideas for the year’s fundraisers as well as start the search for a new president and vice-president.

“If people are interested in literacy, we’re the place to come,” Anderson said.

She also said friends’ members pride themselves on the ability to host successful fundraisers that are non-alcoholic, and the organization plans to continue in that direction.

“We’re non-alcoholic to go with VARSA’s (Vashon Alliance to Reduce Substance Abuse) mission and the community saying that, ‘We don’t need liquor to open our wallets,'” Anderson said.

The organization aims to provide funding for library programming and recently funded the purchase of LEGO bricks for the library’s brick club and popcorn for the teen movie night.

“It’s a really important thing that they do for us,” Vashon Children’s Librarian Amelia Lincoln Ecevedo said. “I can do two times the programs with them that I’d be able to do without them.”