NYC Shops for School Libraries
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Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 8/31/2006
The back-to-school shopping crush is well under way, and in New York City someone with the last name of Kennedy is helping to funnel hundreds of thousands of those shopping dollars to the Big Apple's public school libraries.
Caroline Kennedy is vice chair of New York's Fund for Public Schools, a 20-year-old organization that, among other projects, over the last three years has raised $3.8 million for NYC libraries. For the third year, the Fund is cosponsoring Shop 4 Class, a promotion running from August 25 to September 8. During this period, retailers like Hugo Boss, Sam Ash Music Stores, and J&R Music will donate a portion of their proceeds to the Fund's libraries project, REACH (Revitalizing Education for Adolescents and Children). Individual store donations can range from $1,000 to $10,000.
Eligible for the resulting $10,000 grants are New York K–12 schools with a demonstrated need (75 percent of children receive free lunch) and a viable idea for how to apply the money.
Each of the last two years, Shop 4 Class raised more than $160,000 in a single week, according to the Fund, a nonprofit affiliated with the city's education department that works to be a link between the city and the private sector. This year, says spokeswoman Elizabeth Berberich, because the promotion is running two weeks, those previous totals may double. In addition, several of the 80 or so participating retailers have scheduled in-store events, such as a fashion show at Sean John, so in-store traffic may rise significantly, Berberich says.
Sponsoring the promotion with the organization is NYC & Co., the city's tourism marketing agency. Partners include WNBC, Scholastic, American Express, and New York magazine. "As far as I know, Shop 4 Class is uniquely New York," Berberich says, on the question of whether other cities are following suit.
Berberich says, "We realized that even an amount like $10,000 can make an enormous difference to a school library, so the idea behind REACH is that a small amount of money strategically placed with a school library—with a librarian who's really committed to making the library a real center of learning, for the school, for the entire community—can make an enormous difference."
Shop 4 Class grew from an idea that Fish's Eddy housewares cofounder, Julie Gaines, floated to Kennedy three years ago, following a concert in Central Park by the Dave Matthews Band. The concert benefited arts education in New York schools. And Gaines, a public school parent, was interested in organizing small businesses to do something similar, donating retail proceeds over a specified period of time. Kennedy liked the idea and created the Fund. NYC & Co. came up with the shopping tie-in.
Thus Shop 4 Class took hold, and successfully so, probably because of its beneficiary, Berberich says. "It's a very appealing idea to the consumer," she says. "People understand school libraries."
