Wal-Mart Gives Libraries $1.6 Million

Contributions by the nation’s top corporate giver, Wal-Mart, are helping libraries in northwest Arkansas keep up with a population explosion expected to double the number of people in the area over the next 20 years. “We had a 20-year growth plan,” says Sue Ann Pekel, the head children’s librarian at the public library in the city of Rogers, “but we outgrew it in 10.”

One of the major forces behind the growth spurt is Wal-Mart, whose Bentonville headquarters are about 10 miles from Rogers. So it makes good sense for them to chip in to help the libraries scurrying to keep up with their communities’ needs. The library in Bentonville, the county seat, got $1 million; the library in Rogers, where Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton built his first discount store, got $300,000; and the library in Fayetteville, home to the University of Arkansas, got $300,000.

“It’s like having a neighbor across the street,” says Maureen Cover-Bryan, the executive director of the Rogers Library Foundation. Her group spearheaded a $2.9 million drive for a new wing that houses the Wal-Mart Children’s Library.

The company’s donations to the Bentonville Public Library will cover one-sixth of the $6 million cost of a new home, which will feature the Wal-Mart Meeting Room. Thanks in part to Wal-Mart’s contribution, children who visit the spanking new Blair Library in Fayetteville can listen to read-alouds in the Wal-Mart Story Time Room. (In June, Blair Library, named after its largest donor, was chosen as the 2005 Library of the Year by Library Journal, SLJ’s sister publication.)

The three libraries are delighted with Wal-Mart’s financial assistance. “We’re privileged to have them in our backyard,” says Cover-Bryan. Adds Pekel, “Wal-Mart has been very good to us. We view it as a community member, a local business supporting the children of the community.”

Elsewhere, however, people question the appropriateness of corporate gifts that come with the donors’ names attached. “There used to be a thing called philanthropy,” says Gary Ruskin, head of the 3,000-member organization, Commercial Alert. “That’s marketing.”

Cover-Bryan has an answer to such charges: So what? “Cause marketing is a particular benefit to a corporation,” she says. “If they’re not getting something from it, they won’t be doing it.”

Others argue that Wal-Mart’s contributions—$170 million nationwide in 2004—are a response to charges by unions and others that the company is unfriendly to its workers, the environment, and the areas it serves. Not so, says Jared Boudreaux, a spokesman for the Wal-Mart Foundation, which dispenses Wal-Mart’s gifts. “Wal-Mart was giving back to the community long before this onslaught,” he says. “It’s part of the Wal-Mart culture.”