Libraries May Dial In to Telemarketing to Help Raise Funds

In Meiners Oaks just south of Ojai, teacher Danon Plott assigned her sixth-grade class reports on famous African-Americans, a seemingly straightforward task.

But some of the 32 students ran into an unforeseen obstacle caused by the latest round of Ventura County budget cuts that have forced their local library to close every day but Thursdays and Fridays.

Ordinarily, library manager Kit Willis would have ordered the necessary volumes from other county-run libraries. But the books take up to two days to arrive, and Willis realized that the library wouldn’t be open to accept them until a week later--too late for the students.

The result was that many of Plott’s students who went to the Meiners Oaks library on a recent Thursday couldn’t get the biographical information that they needed.

Such hardships have become the norm at the 16 libraries run by the county’s Library Services Agency, the result of a 12%, or $846,900, budget cut this year.

The cuts have sent county library officials scrambling to find new ways to raise money.

But one of the proposals by the agency has raised the ire of some library supporters: a plan to hire a Los Angeles telemarketing firm to solicit donations from county residents.

The proposal, which would raise a projected $400,000 over three years, would make the county library system the first in the state to solicit funds through telemarketing, county officials said.

Although the library agency could employ a telemarketing firm directly, library officials thought that it would be easier for the nonprofit fund-raising arms of local libraries to contract with the company and funnel the proceeds back to the library agency.

Although the Friends of the Library groups are independent fund-raising arms for the libraries, they traditionally work closely with county library officials.

Over the last six months, library officials have pitched the proposal to the seven Friends of the Library groups throughout the county.

But only one group has been sold on the idea: the San Buenaventura Friends of the Library, which expects to begin a trial telemarketing program in the city of Ventura within the next few months.

Friends of the Library groups in Port Hueneme, Moorpark, Oak Park and Fillmore are lukewarm to the proposal, saying they may support it if the Ventura trial run succeeds.

The groups in Camarillo and the Ojai Valley have rejected the telemarketing plan outright.

“That’s a horrible idea,” said Louise A. Choate, president of the Friends of the Camarillo Library group.

“Nobody appreciated the idea of someone calling them on the phone,” Choate said, explaining her group’s opposition.

In addition to the prospect of annoying phone calls from telemarketing representatives, Choate and other opponents also said the proposal is not financially prudent.

“How can a reasonable person be for telemarketing, a person with an ounce of good sense?” she said. “People give money thinking they’re giving it to charity.” But, she said, much of the money would go to pay the telemarketing staff.

Under the contract being negotiated with the Ventura library group, the proposed telemarketing firm, Facter Fox Associates, would get $3.60 each time one of its staff reached a person on their calling list.

Working from their Los Angeles office, the company’s telemarketers would call the households of the 230,000 library-card holders of the county-run libraries, asking for $50 donations.

The county agency serves the county except for the cities of Oxnard, Santa Paula and Thousand Oaks, which have their own libraries.

Choate and other opponents said they are concerned that the library groups would have to pay Facter Fox regardless of how much money the firm raises.

But Dixie Adeniran, director of the Library Services Agency, said she would only approve a contract that would pay Facter Fox out of donations it raises.

“The risk is on the vendor’s shoulders, “ Adeniran said. “We are not prepared to have the county library or the Friends of the Library suffer a financial loss.”

In addition, some Friends of the Library members said professional telemarketers would lack the personal touch when culling donations from local residents.

“Living in a smaller community like this, I think we ought to work on our own people,” said Ed Scanlan, president of the Ojai Valley Friends of the Library, which raises money for the Ojai, Oak View and Meiners Oaks libraries.

Scanlan said his group has already raised $3,000 from residents since the fall.

“We didn’t want to hit our people twice,” he said.

Martin Rooney, 79, president of San Buenaventura Friends of the Library, said his group’s board voted against the plan twice, but members changed their minds after hearing a presentation by the telemarketing firm.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Rooney said. “I dislike telemarketing as much as anybody does. But it does bring in money.”

Facter Fox has a proven track record in fund raising, with its list of former clients including UCLA and two other state universities, county officials said.

Adeniran said government budget cuts are forcing libraries to go beyond their usual techniques of depending on their local Friends of the Library group to raise several thousand dollars each year.

The agency’s fund for purchasing new books, replacing tattered or lost volumes, and subscribing to magazines has been slashed 61% over the past two years, Adeniran said.

She expects that the Board of Supervisors will cut her agency’s total budget by at least another $1.2 million, or 13%, for next year.

Adeniran said she hasn’t decided whether to continue to push for a countywide telemarketing program.

But she said that such a program, if successful, could form part of the long-term funding base for the county’s libraries.

“Whether we face better days or not with public funding, I think we need to pay more attention to our private-sector fund-raising efforts,” Adeniran said.

The library agency has launched a campaign to raise $1 million from local businesses and is planning a drive to collect pennies from schoolchildren.

In the event that the agency doesn’t raise enough private funds to make up for county cutbacks, Adeniran said she would not rule out the possibility of closing smaller libraries, such as Meiners Oaks.

Meiners Oaks parent Barbara Brewster said families in her community are already discouraged about the budget cuts that took effect two weeks ago, reducing the library’s hours from Wednesday-through-Friday to Thursdays and Fridays only.

Brewster said she took her two school-age sons to the library during the week that the cuts took effect, not realizing that the hours had been reduced.

“We pulled up there Wednesday afternoon,” she said. “They were closed and the kids looked and said, ‘When is our library ever open?’ ”