By Katie Wagner, Staff Writer
The Princeton Public Library on Monday officially launched a fundraising campaign aimed at achieving a $10 million endowment in conjunction with its 2010 centennial.
The library’s endowment is already at approximately $5 million, with the campaign striving to reach $10 million by the end of 2010.
Leslie Burger, the library’s director, said the goals of the campaign are to generate a sustainable source of income to help the library to ensure that it has the money to continue to add to its collection; support the kind of programming that it’s come to be known for and to offer more of these programs; and launch innovative programs that could include running pilot projects to fulfill needs identified by the community.
Ruth Miller, a member of the Princeton Public Library Foundation’s board of directors, and Alison Lahnston, a member of the Princeton Public Library’s board of trustees, are the two co-chairs of the library’s Centennial Campaign Committee, which is composed of about 15 members. The committee will be receiving additional support from an honorary committee of distinguished members of the community, including former presidents of Princeton University Harold Shapiro and William Bowen.
”Our public library is one of the finest libraries in the United States and praised by everybody and we want to make sure as we come up to our centennial, which is in 2010, that we can maintain the very high standards that have been set for the library,” Ms. Miller said. “I was really honored when the library’s director, Leslie Burger, asked me to be a co-chair. Libraries have always been incredibly important to me and I grew up in a family with an appreciation for libraries. When my then 90-year-old father moved to Princeton he had one requirement — that he had to be able to walk to the library from his home.”
Ms. Miller added, “The library has already received two significant challenge gifts from the Robert Wood Johnson 1962 Charitable Trust and the National Endowment for the Humanities,” Ms. Miller said.
The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a $500,000 grant in December and Robert Wood Johnson trust awarded a $1 million grant in October 2006 to the library for its endowment with conditions.
In order for the library to receive the full $500,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the library must raise $1.5 million and the library will need to match the $1 million the Robert Wood Johnson trust is offering. The National Endowment for the Humanities grant will be dedicated to achieving the campaign’s goal of supporting programming, specifically for programs focused on the humanities.
In August 2001, George and Estelle Sands contributed $2.5 million to establish the library’s endowment as part of their $5 million donation to the Princeton Public Library’s expansion project. The additional $2.5 million was donated to the library’s $12 million Community Cornerstone Capital Campaign, which was established to pay for the construction of the library’s current three-story building.
