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Identifying bidding opportunities
This guideline does not attempt to list all the possible sources of funds in all the countries of Europe. Most funding is national or even regional, not international. National Library Associations or sponsoring government departments should be able to give advice to libraries looking for sources of funding. Larger local authorities often have a section or department specialising in searching for sources of funding and preparing bids. A list of links is provided at the end of this Guideline. The UK Library Association, for example, has an introduction to EC funding programmes and websites. 

Preparing effective bids
Professional training of librarians needs to ensure that they have the skills necessary to prepare successful funding bids or to negotiate funding agreements with the private sector. A proposal will be competing with many other bids and many calls for bids receive proposals for more than ten times the available funding.

For a bid to be successful it must:

• Stand out from the others. 

• State its objectives clearly and concisely. 

• Describe how it meets the criteria set out in the call. 

• Provide a sound project plan and show how it will be managed.

Libraries submitting a competitive bid for funds from a grant-making body may find the following general guidelines helpful.

• Winning proposals always demonstrate that the writer has read the call for proposals thoroughly and carefully.

• A successful bid will describe a good idea for addressing one or more of the key issues identified in the call. These issues will always be spelt out in detail so the call for proposals must be read thoroughly and carefully. 

• Project proposals will be evaluated against a set of criteria that are described in the call. Examples of evaluation criteria include: 
  · Evidence of understanding of the problem. 
  · Appropriateness of the methodology and evaluation techniques selected. 
  · Experience of the proposers. 
  · Feasibility and detail of the work plan/timetable. 
  · Value for money. 

• First and foremost the proposal must be based on a good idea. It should be aligned with the requirements of the call, be original, offer real benefits to the institution and the wider or target community, if successful, and demonstrate a sound awareness of the field and of other work that has already been carried out.

• The evaluators must be convinced that the library can manage the project. The proposal should provide an outline project plan, with achievable milestones and deliverables. The team members, their experience and complementary roles should be described to provide evidence that the project will be properly managed. 

• Project management is particularly important where there are several partners in the project. Evidence of previous successful work with the same partners, or in similar consortia, will be valuable.

• The call may refer to specific standards and the bid must describe how it is intended to adhere to these.

• Some calls will clearly ask for large projects (more than EUR 150,000 per year) over long periods (usually up to three years). Others will offer more modest funding – EUR 10,000 to EUR 15,000 over 6 months or a year. The effort involved in preparing a response to the call should be proportional to the funding available.

Partnerships (see also co-operation)
In general terms, the cultivation and sustaining of a wide range of partnerships is more and more essential to the fund-raising effort of an organisation in the bidding culture.

• Working in partnership with a wide range of collaborators is an enormous advantage. These partners may be voluntary, private, from other local authorities or different departments of the same authority.

• Libraries museums and archives may well collaborate in the search for funds and would be in a position to present a strategic and systematic approach to a project likely to impress a grant-making body.

• Partnerships forged for a specific bid should be sustained and reused for subsequent bids.

• It may be advantageous to cultivate links with user groups to ensure that projects have plausible roots in the needs of the local community.

• Partnerships can increase difficulties when it comes to submitting bids to a tight deadline or securing matching funding.

Specialist Fund Raisers
Some authorities have appointed full-time specialists whose job is to identify funding opportunities and help librarians to prepare bids. Such officials are responsible for the progress of the bid and oversee all aspects of the bidding process. 

• Their success at their job is perceived to depend on the amount of money they raise and they break even at the point where they have raised an amount equivalent to their own salaries. Typically, they will raise much more than this. 

• Such fund-raisers work best in the context of an overall fundraising effort by the authority as a whole not just the library department working on its own. 

FUTURE AGENDA

Public libraries will need to ensure that any future definition of core services connected to statutory funding is appropriate for the current and future context of a digital library responding to the needs of the communities and citizens they serve. 

There is no universally applicable definition of core services; those descriptions of the function of the public library which have been framed are not specific and could refer to either digital or traditional resources. In the future digital services will be core services. This is already true in some countries.

At present public libraries everywhere are publicly financed and this state of affairs is likely to continue. Wealthy countries can afford to provide public libraries which are substantially free and to expand the services provided. It is much more difficult to fund an expanding and innovative service in countries where government revenues are lower.

If public libraries were freed from regulatory constraints and allowed to raise money more freely than is presently the case, it is not certain how much money they would be able to raise. The cost of membership fees at a full-recovery rate would be more than many people could afford. Much higher fees would have to be charged in order to provide many services which people now pay nominal sums for, such as reservations. Many smaller libraries would undoubtedly close, with a series effect on many communities and a growth in social exclusion. Public libraries would lose goodwill and the power to relate to society as a whole, currently valued both by users and by governments.

It is not easy to predict whether governmental funding for public libraries will increase in the future. Much will depend upon the impact public libraries can demonstrate that they make upon social, economic and cultural problems and needs. Although the circumstances are more favourable in this respect than for many years, it seems highly likely that additional funding sources will need to be sought by public libraries for the foreseeable future.

The future of competitive bidding
The bidding culture described above cannot in itself provide a way of financing the service as a whole. Its key value is in motivating change and innovation through special projects and capital funding. In some countries, it has become pervasive and represents such a large part of the funding mix that it may have unexpected consequences for the public library service. It rewards those who are good at bidding for funds but does not immediately allocate funds on the basis of need. 

Smaller authorities, particularly, may not have the resources to devote to the identification of opportunities, the preparation of bids, the carrying out of special projects and, especially, the resources to maintain a completed project after its initial externally funded phase.

Completed special projects need to be sustainable: that is they require financial maintenance when the externally funded phase is over. In a context of static background funding, this requires careful consideration of changing priorities and the need to divert money from existing services to the maintenance of new ones. In recent times the growing proportion of externally-funded projects has probably resulted in a transfer of funding from books to IT-based services. 

Organisations with a good track record, experienced staff and established working partnerships are likely to keep on winning. Imbalances may need to be redressed by special programmes to enable weaker bidders to ‘catch up’. However, the drive of one local authority and library to emulate the successes of another can be a powerful force in its own right in unlocking local authority funding.

The risk that governments and authorities may seek to withdraw core funding from libraries that have secured large sums of money from grants is one which needs to be monitored. Research may be needed to assess these outcomes over time. 

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