Shasta Library Foundation

Levels of Recognition

The Shasta Library Foundation believes its donors are a cherished asset and vital to the organization and its cause. Donors should receive recognition commensurate with the value of the contribution.

Donor generosity will be recognized in these ways:

• Donations of $100 or more will be listed on the Shasta Library Foundation’s web page and in our annual report. These listings honor the donor and his/her commitment and encourage others to join in the effort.
• Donors contributing $100 and over will be given the option of receiving a perpetual plaque with annual recognition of contributions which can be publicly displayed.
• Donations of $5,000 or more will be recognized permanently on a donor wall in the Redding Library.

Donor contributions will be categorized in the following ways:

Patrons: $1-$999

What is more important in a library than anything else – than everything else – is the fact that it exists.

The public library has been historically a vital instrument of democracy and opportunity in the United States.... Our history has been greatly shaped by people who read their way to opportunity and achievements in public libraries.
— Arthur Schlesinger

Society of Readers: $1,000-$4,999

The person who doesn't read is just as ignorant as the person who can't read.

The more you read, the more things you will know.
The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.
— Dr. Seuss

Society of Scholars: $5,000-$9,999

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

A democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry.
— Thomas Jefferson

Book Society: $10,000-$24,999

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
— Benjamin Franklin

Literary Society: $25,000-$49,999

A human mind, once stretched to a new idea, never returns to its former dimensions.

Throughout my formal education I spent many, many hours in public and school libraries. Libraries became courts of last resort, as it were. The current definitive answer to almost any question can be found within the four walls of most libraries.
— Arthur Ashe

Carnegie Society: $50,000 - $99,999

Named in honor of the Carnegie Foundation which gave a donation of $10,000 in 1903 to establish the first public library in Redding. Between 1897 and 1917, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie endowed more than 1400 public libraries.

There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.
— Andrew Carnegie

Visionary Society: $100,000+

The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
— Cosmos, Carl Sagan

Heritage Society

Memorial gifts.

My mother and my father were illiterate immigrants from Russia.  When I was a child they were constantly amazed that I could go to a building and take a book on any subject. They couldn't believe this access to knowledge we have here in America. They couldn't believe that it was free.
— Kirk Douglas

Legacy Society

Planned gifts from donors who have acknowledged in writing their intent to include the Shasta Library Foundation in their will or other estate plans.

Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.
— Socrates