We like our members! We like the work we do! And we really like providing all the support we do for those members!!

Cool things we are doing include:

• paying out over $5000 in scholarships/mini-grants this year
• paying for members to attend events, so we can all connect in person
• paying for supplies for our continuing education classes
• paying monthly fees for website hosting, podcast hosting (two of them!), security software, and other online services
• paying for postcards and postage to connect important messages with our members, legislators, and other stakeholders

We love doing these things! They are part of what makes our jobs wonderful, and the feedback we get from our members warms our hearts every day.

And we start thinking: What could we do with just a liiiitle more money? For sure: jack up that scholarship/mini-grant fund! For sure: hire someone else to help us be out on the field with members more often! For sure: offer more continuing education events!

We want these things!

Our members want these things! And let’s face it: our members totally deserve these things, and they aren’t going to get the help we can provide from any other source.

But yeah: the “more money” isn’t going to happen.

We haven’t had a budget increase in eleven years – and there isn’t one coming our way any time soon.

Things happen, priorities are set, and…ultimately that’s pretty out of our hands. Sometimes, you just have to let things go.

So we are starting to look around for other funding sources. Our members need good work from us, and they need more than we can offer. It’s our responsibility to figure out how to get them what they need from us!

One of those strategies involves you. (Yes! I did mean you, specifically! *waves at you* Hi!!)

Are you an Amazon shopper? If so: Amazon has a structure to help donate money to us, without any pain (or even thought!) to you.

It’s their Amazon Smile program, and it lets you choose a charity to support with the profits Amazon is making from your purchase. You do nothing. Amazon figures it out, and will send us the money. We will use that money to do that stuff we talked about above: scholarships, grants, CE, and more.

Then every time you shop at Amazon, just go to Smile.Amazon.com (instead of Amazon.com), and buy stuff. Any stuff. Anything you would already buy there. Diapers, books, furniture, pillows, lawn mowers, laundry detergent – whatever you are already buying. Then, Amazon sends us a check.

Everyone is happy!

How do you participate? People: it could not be easier. (Okay, I guess it could be easier; but not much easier than doing nothing at all!)

From Amazon’s website:
“On your first visit to AmazonSmile (smile.amazon.com), you are prompted to select a charitable organization from our list of eligible organizations. You can change your selection at any time.

To change your charitable organization:

1. Sign in to smile.amazon.com on your desktop or mobile phone browser.
2. From your desktop, go to Your Account from the navigation at the top of any page,
3. Then select the option to Change your Charity. (NOTE: you can’t just search for us – we don’t turn up in the first page you see. You have to hit the Change Your Charity button, and search for use there.)
4. Select a new charitable organization to support.
5. Type Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. (There will be a couple of other very nice organizations that also start with “Central Minnesota” – applaud them, and then pick CMLE to fund.)
6. Bask in knowing that YOU are helping to support the wonderful libraries of CMLE!! (Maybe buy yourself something nice? We have hundreds of book suggestions on our podcasts! They even helpfully link to Amazon, for easy information access.)

For more information about the AmazonSmile program, go to http://smile.amazon.com/about.

As we get checks from Amazon, we will report back to tell you how we are spending this money on our members and their needs.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP!!!