Synthesis Partnership

Kansas City Public Library

Strategy   Identity

Kansas City Public Library is a ten-branch library system that encompasses three separate municipal jurisdictions. It emerged from the Kansas City school system two decades ago, and is still addressing issues that linger from that association. It has more recently created the Kansas City Library Consortium, a library automation service with 25 subscribing libraries including colleges, high schools, and public libraries. In the summer of 2002 Synthesis Partnership conducted a strategic planning process for Kansas City Public Library, featuring extensive staff, user, and funder participation. Dan Bradbury, then Director of the library, was especially pleased with how we shifted library managers from an administration-centered view to a user-centered approach to planning. We examined the library’s identity and made recommendations for enhancing the clarity and appeal of its brand. A descriptive framework that Synthesis Partnership developed from our interviews and analysis crystallized a new, simple and clear mission statement, accompanied by value statements that, according to Bradbury, “bring a richness we didn’t achieve in previous planning efforts.”

New England Law Libraries Consortium

Strategy   Capacity

Founded as a regional resource-sharing group, NELLCO’s success in developing service-enhancing and cost-saving features attracted the attention of libraries far beyond New England. The pressure for growth, in turn, challenged the organization’s core values of collegial interaction and networking. NELLCO asked Synthesis Partnership for assistance in developing a growth plan encompassing alternative strategies, organizational development, financial modeling, and facilitation of board evaluation of these issues.

Providence Public Library

Strategy   Identity   Capacity   Facilities

From 1998 to 2006 Synthesis Partnership was retained by the Providence Public Library (PPL) for multiple and varied planning services. A privately governed and endowed nonprofit, the PPL comprises 10 community branches, imaginative programming, 61 programs and services, and a role as both the municipal and the state library. Over the years tensions have developed between PPL and the City, which makes appropriations to pay for some operations. The Library asked Synthesis Partnership to help it prepare for a campaign of public awareness and capital, endowment, and public-sector fund raising. We were asked to review facility needs and institutional resources, and to find ways to bring the issues to light most vividly for the library board, for the library’s larger pool of prospective donors, and for government decision makers.

We identified critical issues of institutional identity, funding, and coordination. We grouped library services into eight program areas within four broad categories and then helped to guide the further development of the identity plan through both graphic design and architecture. We also provided the PPL with both a tagline (“It’s more than you know.”), a message (“The essential resource for learning, advancement, and enrichment for Providence and all of Rhode Island.”), and extensive written material for use in the fundraising case statement and publicity materials. We developed a program and construction budget for each of the Library’s facilities; a timeline to coordinate myriad, interrelated efforts needed in organizational infrastructure, communications, fundraising, projects; and a financial model to allow management and board to explore alternative budget scenarios.

In the fall of 2005 we were selected by the PPL by way of a national Request for Proposal process to guide the PPL and its major stakeholders (the City of Providence, the neighborhood communities, and the State of Rhode Island) though a comprehensive, six-month strategic planning process. In 2007 Sam Frank was appointed by the Mayor of Providence to a task force charged with resolving lingering tensions and disagreements between the PPL and the City.