Friends of the Library Groups Editing and Proofreading Services

A Friends group exists in the gap between what a library is funded to do and what its community wants it to be. That is a productive position and an awkward one: the group raises money for an institution it does not control, run by staff who did not appoint it, within a service whose budget decisions are made elsewhere. Almost every difficulty a Friends group encounters — a purchase the librarian did not want, a campaign the council resented, a fund nobody can spend — traces back to a relationship that was never written down.

We edit what Friends of the Library groups and similar institutional support organisations produce — constitutions and terms of reference, memoranda of understanding with the library or council, fundraising appeals and case for support documents, membership recruitment and renewal material, newsletters and member communications, event and book sale material, volunteer role descriptions and induction notes, grant applications to small funders, annual reports and accounts for members, campaign material on branch closures and service reductions, bequest and legacy information, and correspondence with library management and elected members. Our editors work at the scale of a volunteer committee.

The memorandum of understanding with the library is the document that prevents most of what goes wrong, and most groups have never written one. It should settle the questions that only become contentious later: who decides what the money is spent on, and whether the group can fund something the library has not requested; whether the library can decline a gift and on what grounds; who owns equipment the group buys; how the group's volunteers relate to staff and to any union agreement; what the group may say publicly when the service is under threat, given that staff cannot campaign and the group can; and who speaks to the press. We write these so each is answered in a sentence rather than left to goodwill, and so the document is short enough that a new committee reads it. The campaigning question matters most: a Friends group is often the only body able to argue publicly for a library, and a group that has agreed in advance how that works with a sympathetic manager is far more effective than one improvising during a consultation.

Everything you send is treated in confidence. We are editors rather than governance or legal advisers, and we offer no view on your constitution, charitable status or any dispute with an institution. What we can do is make the documents clear and the case for support persuasive to people who already like libraries and need a specific reason to give.