[Bookstoprisoners] UC Books To Prisoners Important Meeting Saturday

[Sandra Ahten]

Do you know the story of the lily pond? One day the pond had a single lily.
On day 2 the pond has two lilies. On day 3 the pond has 4 lilies. Obviously
these lilies are doubling every day. Sure enough, on day 4 the pond
had 8 lilies.

On day 15 the pond was half full of lilies.

What day was the pond completely covered with lilies?

No, it wasn't on day 30. (That was my initial guess/reaction.)
That's right -- on day 15 the pond was only half full and yet on day
16 the pond
was completely full!

This is a little lesson in exponential growth.

Exponential growth is what UC-Books to Prisoners is and will continue to
experience. As we all know, the need (of prisoners, for books) is endless
and unlimited. The only constraint is the fact that knowledge about our
program is primarily spread through word of mouth.

But if one prisoner tells one prisoner... pretty soon 500 prisoners
are telling 500 more prisoners and pretty soon the pond is full.

So far, we are meeting and surpassing all expectations. Our pond is
not full, because
we've been making the pond bigger. Moving to our present space, more
volunteers, more books donations, more sales for funding the postage
expense, great website and tracking system. Yes, certainly there are
tweaks that can be made... but we need to recognize the amazing
accomplishments of our system and the people who are making it happen.
(That's you!)

I wish I was a better historian, but I think that we started in 2004
at the IMC in downtown Urbana. We operated out of 2 bookshelves. We
collected money from the volunteers who worked that day to mail the
packages.  We moved to a donated room at the Illinois Disciples
Foundation in 2005, meeting at 3pm on Saturdays. In April we held our
first book drive and in the summer we had our first book sale --
raising $800. Later that year (2005) we moved into our present space
and had our first book sale at Lincoln Square (October 2005)

I would say we were shipping about 8 -10 packages a week when we were
at the IDF in 2005.

To date (Jan 2007) we have shipped about 2500 packages -- so (although
I can't do the math)  -- we have exponential growth.

The great news is -- from a service and efficiency perspective -- we
are answering letters that are less than 3 months old. And not just
answering them -- we are giving prisoners what they want. (Well, not
everything they want.) But we are buying them dictionaries and have a
great selection of books to pull from.

I've visited similar operations in Bloomington Indiana, New York NY
and Austin TX over the last year. Let me tell you -- we are shining
examples of a Books To Prisoners operation. In Austin they have no
money for shipping – and are so far behind in letters that they have
bins of wrapped books, that are waiting for someone to go back through
them and make sure the prisoners are still in the same place before
they actually ship the books. Not the well oil machinery of efficiency
that we are in Urbana to say the least.

But we are not perfect. For instance --

–  one of the ways which we've streamlined our organization is to stop
answering letters from out-of-state inmates. (They are piling up right
now and need a volunteer to write them and let them know that they
can't get books from us.) We  would like to have an up-to-date
resource list to send them.

-- We are inefficiently shipping and it could be costing us quite a
bit of money. We need someone to delve into the US postal services
rate structure and compare all the variables. (For example in Texas
they know how much a package can weigh before it goes to the next
higher charge and they have a scale right in their package area and
base the books sent on the weight limits.)

-- We don't know if our "recycled" books don't actually just end up in
the landfill and need someone to explore this.

-- We don't have a method of following up with new volunteers.

These are just examples of little jobs that come up all the time.

In the big picture. We are asking questions like:

How can we understand the Illinois prison library system better so
that we can influence the IDOC to actually provide access to books?

How can we share best practice methods with other BTP organizations?

How can we influence  Champaign County to provide library services, or
move toward at least funding the collection?

How can we work with the IMC in a more responsible manner?

How can we tap into grants and other less volunteer and physically
intensive fund raising efforts?

How can we help volunteers – who are learning about the broken
criminal justice system – to tap into other organizations that are
working to fix it.

Do we have responsibility or desire to help inmate get their voices heard?

Do we have responsibility or desire to help inmate get other needs
met? (Legal, penpal, etc.)

And most importantly -- how are we going to make sure that we don't
get to a day 15, and not realize that day 16… reaching our capacity…
is just around the corner.

We want to make sure that we are able to keep our eye on the big
picture, as well as tending to the day-to-day activities.

We have really just begun to flesh out our mission and have come up
with the statement:

-- To provide books to prisoners and provide a meaningful  experience
for our volunteers.

This week on Saturday at 1pm we have asked Laura Huth to meet with us.
Laura is an expert in structuring and guiding not-for-profit
organizations. Here is her website

http://www.dogoodconsulting.org/

Our ultimate goal of the meeting to is figure out the next step in
long range planning for Books to Prisoners, so we that we can continue
to develop and fulfill our mission. We need short and long term goals
and plans to fulfill this mission. In addition we need to address
continuity of leadership and or historical memory – so that we are not
reinventing the wheel as leadership changes.

I hope you will be able to join us for this discussion on Saturday at
1pm in the basement of the IMC. (202 E. Broadway, the downtown Urbana
post office)

Sincerely,

Sandra Ahten
217-367-6345
a coordinator with BtP