Wine, massages, and movie nights: support the library fundraising dinner

Pop into the Rachel Kohl Community Library right now, and you’ll find some fun things decorating the circulation desk! 🧺 Eight gift baskets holding things like:

• Sephora and Starbies gift cards
• lots of bottles of wine
• a certificate for a couples massage
• all the fixin’s for a movie night or family adventure day
• and so much more!

This is no late summer mixup. It’s the library’s biggest fundraiser of the year, and it’s your excuse to skip cooking dinner, get a little dressed up, and treat yourself (or someone you love) to something good. Join us for the annual library fundraising dinner!

The 6th Annual Library Fundraising Dinner is coming up fast. Here’s everything you need to grab a seat, some raffle tickets, and maybe a little bit of luck. If you haven’t already, mark your calendars (and open your wallets if you can 😉) to support this community gem!

Save the date: dinner at Fava

• When: Tuesday, September 15, 5:30–8:30 PM
• Where: Fava Ristorante Italiano, 1102 Baltimore Pike, Suite 101, Glen Mills
• Cost: $125 per ticket, which gets you a seated dinner, a cash bar, and a chance at one of the night’s door prizes
• Tickets: Buy online here, or stop by the library to purchase in person through September 9
• Tax receipts are available on request

It’s a night out, full stop. Someone else cooks and does the dishes. There’s a cash bar. You get to spend an evening with neighbors and friends. Grab your spouse, round up your book club, invite the neighbors. The bigger the table, the better the night.

Eight baskets, one very tempting prize table

Every year, the library raffles off several gift baskets along with the fundraising dinner. This year, the baskets DO NOT DISAPPOINT! 🤯

Raffle tickets are $2 each or 3 for $5, and you don’t have to attend the dinner to play. Pick up some tickets at the library, scan the QR code on any basket display to buy raffle tickets online, or grab a few the night of the dinner.

Buy a few raffle tickets for yourself, and buy some as a gift! Have a friend who deserves a spa day, a family that needs a low-key weekend, or the wine lover in your life who will absolutely thank you later? The Beauty, Sweet, & Sips basket is perfect for the teen in your life, and they could always use a little dollop of love, right?

Here’s what’s up for grabs in each of the raffle baskets:

1. Beauty, Balance & Bliss Basket ($735) — The big one. A $350 Lash Lounge certificate, a Yoga Six 5-class pass, a Lululemon mat, and a private Blue Mercury makeup class for six. This one’s for you or a special friend!
2. Good Morning Basket ($275) — A stack of local restaurant and coffee gift cards (Morningside Cafe, Ashley’s, Fresh Market, Avenue Kitchen, Ryan’s Rise Up, Starbucks, Dunkin), plus tea, coffee, a travel mug, and a French press. Great for meeting up with friends or business connections!
3. Beauty, Sweets & Sips ($150) — Sephora, Ulta, and Starbucks/Sweet Frog gift cards, plus a mix of sour candy, chocolates, and beauty essentials like Summer Fridays lip balm and Tree Hut scrub. Perfect for teens!
4. Fun Family Weekend Basket ($200) — $175 combined in Pops, Crumbl, and Urban Air gift cards, plus board games and a mountain of candy and popcorn for family game night. So much family fun!
5. Red Wine, Sweet Treats & Time to Unwind ($250) — Six bottles of red (including a 2010 Robert Mondavi Cabernet and a 1999 Chateauneuf-du-Pape), a burgundy wine carrier, dark chocolate, a book journal, and a $25 library gift certificate. Need a minute to wine-d down? 😉
6. Wine Party Basket ($225) — Seven bottles spanning Old World, California, and New Zealand wines, plus cheese knives, a serving dish, crackers, and crisps. How about a wine night with friends!
7. Relax, Refresh & Radiate Basket ($550) — A $350 Joseph Anthony Salon & Spa couples massage certificate, $100 to Terrain Cafe, $50 to Omnia Spa, and spa essentials to round it out. Date night. Date day. Your call!
8. Movie Night Basket ($150) — All the fixin’s for a movie night out with the family. Sometimes ‘back to basics’ is best.

That’s more than $2,300 in prizes, all donated by local businesses and neighbors that believe in what the library does. A few dollars in raffle tickets could turn into a couples massage, a case of wine, or a family weekend out. Are you game?

More than just a fun night out

Baskets full of wine and chocolate, a massage, and lots of restaurant gift cards are a nice excuse to buy raffle tickets. And not having to cook or do the dishes while having a night out with friends feels great. But the dollars behind these dinner tickets and raffle baskets do the heavy lifting. Your support is paramount to the library’s continued success!

Community giving — donations, sponsorships, fundraisers like this one — covers 36% of the library’s total operating budget. Tax dollars and operating revenue cover the rest. These community donations and support from neighbors like you are the lifeblood of the library. They transform a building and walls into a thriving community center.

The library is busier than ever these days (despite what Amazon wants us to believe about books or what the New York Times tells us about reading being dead).

• In July alone, neighbors checked out over 19,000 items. In one month!!
• There were more than 70 children’s programs over the summer (that’s almost daily).
• There’s a new, dedicated teen space in the library that’s receiving little, incremental glow-ups week by week.
• The library issued 167 new library cards to residents across Bethel, Chadds Ford, Chester Heights, Concord, and Thornbury townships.

The community is showing up to use the library in new and important ways every day.

The library as a “third space”

Because of all that happens in a library beyond books, sociologists call it a “third place.” A third space is somewhere people gather (that isn’t home or work) where they can linger and build community for free. Pew Research has found that most Americans consider their local library a welcoming, friendly place, and that closing it would have a real impact on their community.

Libraries are some of the last places left that are genuinely open to everyone, no ticket or purchase required, no matter your age, income, or background. Rachel Kohl backs that up with a community space, quiet reading nooks, a “library of things” you can borrow instead of buy, book clubs, teen programs, tax help, interlibrary loan for books that aren’t on the shelf, and so much more. The truth is … none of this runs on tax dollars alone.

It’s up to us! Are you in?

The library would love your support! (And yes, I’m on the Board of Trustees, so that means I would love your support too!) Buy a dinner ticket. Buy a fistful of raffle tickets — for you, for your best friend, for your whole group chat. Tell your neighbors.

Show up on September 15 with a full table. Maybe leave with an empty wallet? I’m kidding… sort of. And let the library do what it does best with what you give it.

You can grab dinner tickets at the link above. Raffle tickets are available now at the library and also at the link above. There’s a comment field when you purchase raffle tickets to indicate which basket(s) you want to enter. The library will write up tickets for you and add them to the respective jars.

Good luck!

Highlights from last year 📷

We’ll be at a new location this year, but here are a few highlights from last year’s dinner. Hope to see many new and familiar faces at Fava in a few weeks for this year’s event!