
It began with a neon-pink postcard.
Dana Fleming, executive director of the Eugene Public Library Foundation, was going through files in January 2023 when she found the postcard. Dated about two decades earlier, it was addressed to the mayor and bore the message “Libraries are not dying.”
“Well, what a neat little way to poke at people,” Fleming thought.
As it happened, Fleming was seeking a way to poke at people. The foundation raises money and advocates for the Eugene Public Library, which was facing deep cuts to its city funding.
The postcard sparked an idea: a “Love Your Library” campaign to raise awareness of the cuts and generate support for the library. The campaign had two parts:
- a community design contest to create a promotional logo for the library;
- a “Library Love-In” event where people could write to city officials – on pink postcards, of course.
The campaign surpassed organizers’ goals and brought them a national award in November. The American Library Association’s advocacy arm, United for Libraries, named the foundation as one of three 2024 winners of the United for Libraries Awards for Innovation, along with Friends of the Library groups in Florida and North Carolina. The $1,000 awards, sponsored by library supplier Baker & Taylor, go to library foundations and friends groups for outstanding efforts to support their library.
The winners were chosen from more than 20 nominees, according to Jillian Wentworth, United for Libraries’ deputy director for strategy and engagement. Wentworth said the awards emphasize community involvement – “that those friends and foundations are out there letting people know what they can do for the library.”



A DELUGE OF DESIGNS, A PILE OF POSTCARDS
When the “Love Your Library” design contest opened, organizers had no idea how the community would respond, Fleming said.
“We were like, oh, it’d be great if we had, like, 10 entries,” Fleming said. They got 66, from artists of all ages: A stack of books whose spines bear the message “Libraries Grow Beautiful Communities,” festooned with flowers. Seedlings and mushrooms sprouting from soil above the words “Eugene Public Library.” A pair of slugs in a heart-shaped embrace over the message “I ♡ Our Library.” Superheroes browsing bookshelves under the message “Have A Super Day at the Eugene Public Library!”
Campaign organizers chose 22 finalists for a public vote. “We were trying to get it to a round number of 20, but they were all so good,” Fleming said. When the finalists were posted online, more than 1,100 votes came in.
The grand prize winner, Michaela Punt, submitted a design with a trio of ducklings, one carrying a book bag, another with a book splayed open atop its head, and the third toting a book in its bill. The foundation also named first-, second-, and third-place winners along with a youth winner. In addition to getting the rights to the winners’ designs (for which winners received cash prizes), the foundation bought several other designs.
Fleming said the contest not only generated “wonderful press” for the foundation and its work but also lifted library employees’ morale as they tracked submissions.
The “Library Love-In” postcard-writing session, complete with stickers and other decorative items, was meant to be a one-time event.
“We thought, that’ll be the end of the postcards,” Fleming said. ”People probably won’t be that interested in doing it afterwards.”


The foundation ended up reordering the postcards, in sets of 500, several times.
The postcards became a community presence, said Angela Ocaña, the library’s executive director. She’d be at work and someone would come in to drop off a postcard they’d written. She’d go to an event and see a stack of postcards. She’d be chatting with someone and they’d bring up the postcards.
People wrote about their desire for a place where they could check out books, take their children, or attend a program, Ocaña said. They wrote, “This place changed my life.”
Some writers took a confrontational tone. “But even in those letters, it was, ‘Here’s why I come to the library, and here’s why it’s a part of my life,’” Ocaña said.

CAMPAIGN TAKEAWAYS
Without the foundation’s campaign, Ocaña said, far fewer community members would have known about the library’s dire financial situation. “I am limited as a city employee for what I say and what I can advocate for,” Ocaña said. “The foundation can talk about it in a really human way and in an impactful way.”
Indeed, Fleming doesn’t mince words about the city’s budget decisions.
“This is what really sticks in my craw,” she said. “The library represents 3 percent of the city’s operating budget, but it absorbs 16 percent of the city’s total cuts. And they employ only 6 percent of city staff, but sustain 31 percent of staff cuts.”
For library patrons, those cuts lead to “a noticeable lag time” in services such as fulfilling hold requests, Fleming said. The cuts also mean patrons don’t get new books, programming, or materials. “It’s like operating a hot dog stand without a budget for hot dogs,” she said.
On top of the city’s cuts, the library is facing the expiration of a five-year, $14.25 million levy that Eugene voters approved in 2020.
Fleming said the postcard campaign succeeded for several reasons.
First, the foundation’s board embraced the idea. “They understood that it was definitely worth the investment of time and effort,” she said. “I really appreciated that they trusted us with this crazy idea.”
Second, the campaign had clear and specific calls to action. “A lot of people can be complacent if there’s not a rallying cry,” Fleming said. “Love Your Library” gave people simple and fun ways to act on the information they were receiving.
Third, the campaign got outside financial support. The foundation received a $2,500 grant from the Lane County Cultural Coalition that covered the cost of the design contest prizes, “and then maybe buying some frames for the art exhibition,” Fleming said.
Ocaña said the campaign’s success reaffirmed the importance of advocacy by library foundations and Friends of the Library groups, which can speak and act more freely than city employees. “The best foundations, I think, aren’t just there to fundraise dollars in the building, but they’re there to grow support outside of the library’s walls,” she said.

“Everybody loves money, but sometimes it’s the stories that they collect in the community that have the most impact when they’re talking to a large-level donor, or they’re talking to a city council member or, you know, just a small conversation at a door during a levy vote,” Ocaña said.
Wentworth called the campaign “a great, proactive example of library advocacy and then reaching out and making sure the elected officials know how much support the community has” for the library.
Wentworth said she also liked the campaign because it’s one that can be duplicated even by smaller libraries. The design contest “can really work anywhere,” she said.
Since the campaign, the foundation has seen more subscriptions to its newsletter and more engagement with its social media posts. The interest in its design contest led to a summer exhibit of all the entries, complete with an artists’ reception, at the library’s downtown branch. In the fall, the foundation launched an online “Love Your Library” shop that offers clothing, tote bags, and mugs.
This month, with Eugene city officials again discussing budget cuts, the foundation announced its 2025 design contest. Before the contest webpage went up, the foundation had already received the first entry, from a parent and child who’d heard the contest was coming back. “They were so excited,” Fleming said, “they couldn’t wait.”
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