CMLE Strategic Plan FY22-25

(approved at the September 2021 Board meeting)

Mission Statement

• Partnering with libraries for visioning, advocating, and educating

Vision Statement

• We partner with our members to help them provide quality service to the communities they serve, using research, advocacy, education, and network building.

We are here to support our members, and to help them make their libraries stronger. With a combination of resources that includes research data, collected banks of information, advocacy, and networking with members and professionals around the state and around the profession, we are ready to provide assistance to make all of our members stronger.

Goals

In this strategic plan we will be working to build on our four primary areas of service to our members. 

• Information sharing
  • Update  website to provide most current information to members, including professional knowledge and building library skills
  • Send out weekly newsletter to provide information from the website
  • Create and share podcasts to build skills library, and in readers advisory work, on a weekly basis
• Education and training
  • Create and distribute online classes (focus will be both member-requested and useful library skills)
  • Host an online conference for library staff
  • Hold in-person classes for library skills
  • Distribute virtual reality kits to members, as well as some training aimed at library staff, teachers, and students
  • Formalize our Professional Development certification program with the state 
  • Evaluate possibilities for fundraising opportunities
• Providing networking opportunities
  • Host regular salon discussions for library staff
  • Create and promote online services (such as Discord) to provide both synchronous and asynchronous discussion in a variety of formats (audio, video, text)
  • Host annual meetings for members, with participation available both online and in person
• Grant making
  • Provide mini grants to members
  • Provide information on grants across the library profession to members
  • Create and distribute training opportunities for grant writing

In addition, we will be working internally to focus our organization to serve member needs more effectively. This will include activities such as:

• Establishing benchmarks for performance
• Establishing quantitative and qualitative evaluation templates
• Creating procedure, and implementing, prior to end of our current lease to establish the best place to continue to provide services to all members
• Establishing a definition and practice of organizational sustainability