|Debra Smith|
Over the past few months, we’ve heard from many residents about the value of our local library to them and their families. These stories reflect what is widely known about the social value of libraries to communities, from getting children into the habit of reading from an early age, to supporting job seekers, providing internet access, and connecting people through programs and events. Libraries contribute to their community’s overall quality of life, even for residents who don’t or rarely use the library.
But there are also economic benefits. In the financial world, return on investment (ROI) measures dollars lost or gained relative to the money invested. In the non-profit sector, Social Return on Investment (SROI) attempts to measure the financial value created by the organization through delivery of services to the community. The most common approach uses outcomes (people served, services delivered, etc.) to calculate a return on investment.
The Maine State Library’s calculator can be used to calculate an individual’s ROI, or a library’s ROI in terms of dollars for its community. Here are the 2018 numbers for the New Gloucester Public Library. (The Maine State Library’s 2019 annual report is not yet available.)
These figures do not include everything the library offers, such as free museum and park passes (which are funded by the Friends of the Library), use of the maker space, use of the wi-fi on patrons’ own computers, borrowing items like cake pans, and playing board games. It also does not include the value of volunteer hours, or the funds raised by the Friends to supplement the budget for books and media materials. Even still, the return is more than 2.5 times the town’s investment.
Libraries with larger budgets and staff can generate higher returns. Gray, for example, spends about 3 times what New Gloucester does on its library, and about 6 times what NGPL spends on books and media. Their return on investment, according to their director Joshua Tiffany, is over $10, based just on books and media. Bigger investment, bigger capacity, bigger return for the town.
