Brighton District Library, Cindy Mack
The Brighton District Library had completed a Strategic Plan in 2009. The following decade brought several changes for the library’s 43,000 patrons. Not the least of which was a voter-approved operating millage guaranteeing at least $400,000 a year for the next 20 years. So it was time to develop a new plan.
Early in 2019 Cindy Mack, library director, and the library’s Board of Trustees along with staff, community members, Friends of the Library, and others enlisted SCORE mentor, Craig Lesley, a Brighton resident, to facilitate the creation of a new Strategic Plan - one that would address the library’s current challenges and propel it well through the 21st century.
Over the next six months, Craig, Ann Arbor SCORE chapter chair, facilitated several SWOT discovery and planning sessions with library trustees, staff members, and members of the community. The sessions produced a user survey to receive broader input from the public about what they wanted from their library.
The feedback gleaned from the survey revealed what the Brighton community needed and expected from its library:
- continue the focus on children and youth.
- emphasize programming to them
- continue to provide education and lifelong learning opportunities
- provide access to technology to all patrons
Director Mack stated on the library’s website, “Our updated Strategic Plan serves as a guide for the consideration and implementation of new programming, resources, technology, services, and building enhancements that will drive this commitment forward.”
Of Craig Lesley’s facilitation, Jennifer Osborne, Head of Adult Services for the Library, had this to say: “I’ve been through other strategic planning sessions that were difficult. Craig made this simple. He allowed us to realize that this was ours - we owned it.”
A SCORE Mentor since 2017 specializing in strategic planning, sales, networking and marketing. A...