GENERAL INFORMATION ON RAISING FUNDS

FOR AUTHOR VISITS

  In talking to teachers and librarians at various conferences around the country, I've heard some interesting suggestions as to how to obtain funds to support author visits and thought I'd share them with you.

  One librarian suggested getting local community support. For example, prepare a flyer about the author visit and include the names of the organizations supporting your efforts. Organizations and people you might consider approaching for funds:

•  Local politicians : Politicians always talk about how serious they are about education. Why not try to get them to put their money where their mouths are. It might sound a little intimidating, but local politicians are always looking for ways to make themselves look good in the eyes of voters. Sponsoring an author event, especially an author event that has community ties with local businesses, can make politicians look good. So don't be afraid to approach them -- especially if it's an election year!

•  Local banks : Many banks have outreach programs to give back to the community. Someone even suggested that they are legally bound to give back to the community, so although laws change, it still seems pretty worthwhile to track down the right person at your local bank to discuss sponsorship of an educational event.

•  National Homeschool Network : One teacher told me she was able to obtain support and information from her local homeschool network, and I've learned there are national homeschool networks that might help. Just google National Homeschool Network. Here are a few websites I found myself that might be  useful: http://www.notry.com/hschool/national.htm , http://www.nhen.org/ , http://homeschoolcentral.com/hsorg.htm , and http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/8579/chsna.html .

•  Evening Events for Adults : You might want to consider scheduling the author or artist to talk at an evening event for parents, teachers, librarians, and other interested adults and sell tickets to the program.

•  Book Sales : Most publishers and distributors offer a discount off the books you purchase for author appearances. Many schools pass on this discount to their students, but others charge full price and use the different to help defray some of the costs. Another thing to keep in mind is that you can limit book returns for an author scheduled in your school by having parents preorder the books. The less books you have to return, the lower your shipping costs.

  These are just a few suggestions I've picked up in my travels, but my journey is far from over, so as I get other suggestions from other enterprising teachers and librarians, I'll share them here, so be sure to return to this page from time to time.

  As always, thanks for your interest, time and consideration.

                                                                                    Catherine