Beginning in 2008, the Revson Foundation has waged an escalating campaign to help New York City’s three library systems rescue their neighborhood branches from years of budget cuts, crumbling infrastructure, and indifference from City Hall. With total outlays of just over $5 million, and using only the traditional tools of standard philanthropy (coalition-building, research, public advocacy, and a prize competition), the Revson Foundation helped the library systems present a powerful case to the city’s government and civic establishment: that branch libraries are indispensable portals of opportunity for rank-and-file New York families — a resource strained to the limits, dangerously close to collapse in some places, but far too precious to lose. Thanks to this campaign, in 2015, the steady drip of budget cuts ceased, and the libraries received the biggest funding increase in their history.
