Unified Board Study

The Unified Board Working Group is a coalition of trustees from Latham, Peabody, and the Thetford Library Federation who are working with library staff to study the possibility of combining our three boards into one, with the goal of reducing burdens on staff, trustees, and the wider community.

Our study is grounded in the common values shared by our organizations, including:

  • Unified vision that supports the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights;
  • Libraries that are run with common values by trustees with shared dialogue, communication and community purpose;
  • Support for staff, trustees, and volunteers, and respect for their time;
  • Ensuring the best utilization of trustee and volunteer skills and town funds;
  • Remaining good neighbors with the Historical Society and improving communication about the Bicentennial Building;
  • Facilitating ongoing collaboration between our community’s libraries.

 

What Are the Issues?

With three different organizations creating policies and raising funds for various aspects of library operations and the improvement and maintenance of two buildings, our community’s libraries suffer from a number of inefficiencies and redundancies along with broad confusion, particularly in the areas of fundraising, decision-making, and management of library facilities.

The community is often confused about who is doing what. A lack of coordination and shared strategic planning leads to disjointed and overlapping fundraising requests, so that donors aren’t sure where to send their donations. Because of the confusing way our expenses and activities are divided and arranged, we struggle to provide a transparent budget to town taxpayers who are asked every year to support library services.

Library staff must often go through two if not all three boards for a simple decision. We estimate that staff time lost to duplicative board communication is roughly 65 hours per year, for an estimated cost to the community of $2300. These duplicative administrative efforts also take librarians away from direct services, an operational loss which is more difficult to quantify but which nonetheless impacts the community. Staff must support the needs of up to 28 library board trustees when all seats are filled, an unsustainably heavy burden that does not align with other Vermont or Upper Valley libraries. The likelihood of burnout and job dissatisfaction in this scenario is high.

The boards struggle to make progress without tripping over each other. One board may vote, only to be told after a several-hours-long meeting that the decision they made is invalid because another board should have discussed the matter first. With so many seats to fill on so many boards, it is difficult to recruit the right mix of trustee skills and effectively engage in community outreach. Each board is more likely to be siloed from the rest, reducing access to trustee skills and increasing the likelihood of distrust between boards and competition for resources.

How Will a Unified Board Help?

Our hope is that establishing a single unified board will:

  • Result in cost savings from recouping lost staff time;
  • Help both public libraries become more competitive for grant opportunities;
  • Improve operating budget transparency for the community;
  • Enhance event planning across all library organizations;
  • Help us explore potential cost savings on insurance and other areas;
  • Provide a better, more comprehensive reflection of services;
  • Facilitate more strategic and efficient fundraising;
  • Maximize trustees as a resource.

Separately, all three of our organizations have expressed interest in improving governance structure. The Federation recently engaged a consultant for advice in clarifying and updating their mission and organizational structure. Meanwhile, Latham and Peabody share a mutual enthusiasm for uniting their boards for library operations.

In early 2025, the Unified Board Working Group presented these issues and the proposed study to all three boards, and received unanimous support for proceeding with the study.

Next Steps

We are currently focused on retaining an attorney to advise us about our options and help us navigate not only the legal but also the tax and accounting considerations. Merging two organizations is complicated enough; merging three is exponentially more so, and we expect this necessary legal counsel to be considerably expensive. We have already secured $1500 in grant funding towards securing an estimate of the total cost, so that we can begin planning a larger capital campaign.

We look forward to sharing updates about our progress on this page, and we welcome continued dialogue with the community as we evaluate the best path forward. If you have questions or are interested in getting involved, please reach out to librarian@thetfordlibrary.org.