Memphis Innovators

Who is a Memphis Innovator?

Memphis Innovators are donors like you who want to support the Memphis Library Foundation’s mission to transform communities through knowledge.

I want to be a Memphis Innovator!

Private donors make our award-winning library programming possible. The city does not fund the majority of MPL programming. MLF was founded in 1995 to secure private and corporate donations to fund our innovative and community-centered work at the libraries. 

Memphis Innovators help support the continued progress of the Memphis Public Library. MPL staff has been routinely recognized for their thoughtful, well-loved, and thoroughly innovative programming!

Become a monthly donor!

Monthly donations not only provide a secure source of funding for MLF, but Memphis Innovators help us evaluate, adapt, and grow the MLF/MPL community.

In order to keep Memphis at the top of the national innovation list, it is our goal to secure more monthly, recurring donations to ensure long-term impact, cost-effectiveness, and equitable access to MPL services across the city.

 

LONG-TERM IMPACT

Recurring monthly donations become funds we at MLF know we can rely on – they make it possible for us to support library staff who seek to make recurring events, update or acquire a unique collection, build out major programming in advance, etc. with secure funds.

Cost-Effectiveness

With recurring payments, we do not need to do the back-end work of seeking your donation every cycle. Instead, we can put those hours and fees toward programming.

Equitable Access

The mission of MPL is to provide free resources and services to ALL Memphians – to do so, the library staff needs a funding source. That’s us! As a Memphis Innovator, we regularly seek your input and you help us build the next round of innovations. 

If your money were only to go directly to one thing each month, $10 could put a new book on the shelf, $25 could help us maintain online access to some program materials, $50 gets a program coordinator snacks for their participants, and $100 can fund materials for a kids day camp.
If your money were only to go directly to one thing, $250 could help us fix a piece of broken equipment, $1000 funds a 5-day program for kids and teens, and $6000 would cover the entry fee for one competition for CLOUD901’s robotics team.
By the end of the year, a $10/month gift yields the funding of a full program; a $25/month gift allows us to finance repairs on equipment; and $250/month helps our robotics team register for competitions.

While each donation matters to us, the monthly donations allow us to better strategize how to distribute funds to all 18 branches of the library. Knowing we have $1,000 coming in throughout the year means we can direct funds where they need to go rather than hunting down more funding each time a new project comes up. Your money can have more impact in a monthly, recurring cycle than the occasional donation here and there!