Partners in Advocacy

Tutor.com tapped into libraries' need for help with funding and found surprising success

By George Cigale -- Library Journal, 8/15/2005

The surprising success of Live Homework Help, a product of Tutor.com unknown to libraries before 2001, is in very large part owing to the company's effort to understand library funding and help libraries tap into all kinds of potential funding sources. The story is a model for partnerships between other companies and libraries. For the people of Tutor.com it meant much more than simply participating in professional conferences and joining professional associations. Today, businesses working with libraries must make a focused effort to support library advocacy and to ensure that our public libraries are well funded and able to meet the demands of a mobile, information-savvy society.

The founding vision of Tutor.com when it started in 1998 was to use the Internet to connect people for one-on-one instruction in any subject, anywhere, anytime. It was a grand vision, with an array of possible customers—kids seeking homework help, college students looking for information, schools trying to add online academic support, and many others. In 2001, to target its marketing, Tutor.com decided to focus on libraries.

In four years, Tutor.com has gained over 700 public library sites, over 3000 academic and special library sites, and reaches more than 80,000 students of all ages each month. Over 95 percent of these customers have renewed or expanded their Tutor.com programs. With a connection to the Internet and a library card, many local library users can be served anywhere around the clock. Live Homework Help (LHH), Tutor.com's one-on-one online tutoring program, works much the same way—students come in through a library's web site, indicate their grade level (fourthgrade through college) and the subject in which they need help, and are immediately connected to a subject expert.

Such a service was a new but welcome idea to many of the initial libraries contacted by Tutor.com. Many libraries had established homework help centers staffed by paid professionals and local volunteers. LHH complemented the existing homework centers and the remote services of libraries. Now, librarians were able to refer students to a subject expert who could help immediately, freeing up librarians to spend more time with the kids who needed reference help. Library directors and youth services librarians were interested, but their questions were inevitably about how to fund the service. It's not software. It's not a database. Is it reference? Is it youth services?

Tutor.com worked with libraries to answer these questions and quickly discovered that there are as many funding options as there are types of libraries. The first library clients helped the company learn the nuts and bolts—or dollars and cents—of library funding, traditional models, and opportunities, while both library and firm explored new options for funding together. The San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC), NC, and California State Library (CSL) devised inventive ways to pay for LHH.

While many library leaders found money in their budgets, a wide array of state and federal grants (especially Library Services and Technology Act [LSTA]), corporate sponsors, nonprofit foundations, Friends groups, and other creative sources provided seed funding for LHH programs.

In San Francisco, then city librarian Susan Hildreth clearly saw the future—libraries needed to expand on their core mission of providing equal access to information and educational resources. Yet, there was no budget line readily available for a new service. Hildreth approached the SFPL Foundation to fund the program initially. Now in its fourth year, LHH is in the operating budget of SFPL and is available to every child in the city.

The CSL had just completed surveying students across the state, and the leader of the project, Bessie Condos Tichauer, concluded that kids go to libraries primarily to seek help with their homework. She saw LHH as a cost-effective way to enhance that youth service. These findings helped Condos Tichauer and her colleagues request LSTA funds to introduce the service to about 100 public library branches across California. Today, LSTA monies continue to fund this successful and growing program.

Robert Cannon, then director of the PLCMC, was a believer in extending library services into the homes of his customers. He accomplished this through BraryDog, a suite of information and education services that became even better with the addition of real-time homework help. Cannon found money in the BraryDog operating budget and has since moved on, finding more operating funds for the service, this time at the Broward County Division of Libraries in Florida, where he is now the director.

Tutor.com took an active role in helping other libraries seek outside funding by creating and distributing brochures, letters, and grant templates geared for that purpose. The firm even hired a grantwriter to help smaller libraries that didn't have internal resources. The key to this effort was to keep Tutor.com in the background. All of the grant materials the company produced focused on library needs—there was no commercial branding of the services. Both New York's Queens Borough Public Library (QBPL) and Norwalk Public Library (NPL), CT, used LHH materials and resources to find initial support from very different sources.

In 2003, QBPL became the only library in New York State and the first public library system in the country to be awarded a 21st Century Community Learning Center (21st CCLC) Grant during the first round of New York State's 21st CCLC Program. Tutor.com brought this opportunity to the library as a unique way to fund LHH. Tutor.com's grantwriter collaborated with the library, and as a result, the Far Rockaway branch of QBPL was awarded $109,000 to offer a variety of after-school programs for the sixth and eighth graders of local PS 43 and their parents. After this initial success, Richmond Public Library, Joliet Public Library, IL, and Cleveland Public Library also received 21st CCLC funds for LHH programs.

NPL serves a diverse population of 80,000 people. Thirty percent of the children in the school system qualify for Title I funding, which supports programs such as free lunch. NPL director Les Kozerowitz wanted to offer LHH to his patrons, but he didn't have the budget. What he did have was intimate knowledge of his community. He recommended that we approach the Norwalk Education Foundation (NEF). This parent/teacher organization brought together the schools, housing authority, and grant funding to support the program initially. Grants from the League of Cities and United Way now fund the service, which is actively promoted by the library and NEF. The marketing initiatives have included direct mail to parents, bus banners, and several events at the library featuring the mayor and the school superintendent. NPL has embraced a community funding model with great success.

About a year or so after launching LHH, Tutor.com decided to expand its fundraising efforts for libraries through Congressional lobbying activities. Tutor.com invested in a government relations consultant, joined the American Library Association's (ALA) Library Business Alliance, and began to learn about the complicated process of government budgeting and appropriations.

The firm's government relations work paid dividends for specific libraries and helped spread the message about the importance of all libraries. The company learned how to package the LHH story for members of Congress and their staff. Tutor.com executives spent hours in meetings with aides on the "Hill" and across the country in local Congressional offices. Elected officials want to hear from their constituents, not just from businesses. The company created template letters of support and asked local library directors if they would feel comfortable editing these letters to reflect their needs. This strategy worked especially well in southern California.

Over the past two years, the Serra Cooperative Library System (SCLS), based in San Diego, has been the recipient of about $250,000 in Congressional demonstration grants. SCLS members including San Diego Public Library, San Diego County Library, Escondido Public Library, Oceanside Public Library, and Carlsbad City Library use the money to provide LHH and LHH en Español. These funds were made available because Tutor.com staff met with Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA), who helped SCLS kick off the program with a breakfast event at the 2004 ALA Midwinter Meeting.

Finding seed money is great, but libraries must fund programs over the long run. Library users need to know that their favorite services will be there from year to year. The best way to sustain support for a program is to market its success to the right people at the right time. The number of kids connecting with LHH tutors was just one way the firm and the libraries defined success. After a library purchased LHH, it had to market this new service to its community. Several libraries provided a model for all LHH clients. Once the community was using the service, funding it year to year became much easier.

In 2004, Barbara Roberts, director of the Harrison Regional Library System (HRLS) in Shelby County, AL, and staff members Mary Hedrick and Maria Dent implemented a program to visit ninth-grade classrooms throughout the library district to help students learn how to use library resources to enhance their school performance. The program features school media center workshops during which the librarians review the resources available to students through the HRLS web site, including LHH.

Since starting the school visits, the library reported an extraordinary 800 percent increase in usage of LHH. According to Hedrick, the library's goal is to reach all 32 schools in the area that have fourth- to 12th-grade students. The Harrison staff are now using their success to ask the state library for money for their own program and for other libraries statewide.

Similarly, Gwinnett County Public Library, GA, worked with the local school district from the start. Mabel Anne Kincheloe, the materials management director, organized presentations to school staff and administration and even partnered with the school district to create several professional promotional videos that ran on local TV stations. This aggressive marketing campaign resulted in at first hundreds of monthly sessions and now over 1500 sessions each month. Today, the school district and the library share both the success and the cost of funding and marketing LHH.

Numerous libraries launched creative, innovative marketing campaigns to build their own programs. Other libraries asked Tutor.com for marketing and promotion help. The firm began with a full-color "Got Homework?" poster and bookmark campaign four years ago and now maintains a web site that provides library clients with ideas and materials, including examples of what other successful libraries have done, bookmarks, posters, fliers, and sample press releases. Since the customers run the gamut from smaller libraries to statewide systems, these materials are in great demand.

Tutor.com actively supports/recognizes clients that are doing outstanding and creative promotions to serve their young patrons. The company hosts an Innovators Awards reception at the ALA annual conference to acknowledge the dedicated librarians who are making a difference. Marketing drives customer awareness, trial, and repeated use of library services. Sharing success with funding sources helps keep the money flowing. With this in mind, Tutor.com offers all customers monthly reports that track usage, subjects and grade levels selected, and qualitative data collected in postsession surveys. The firm has created books of the thousands of student comments received—misspellings and all. An amazing 94 percent of students completing the surveys say they would recommend the service to a friend.