While the Longmont Library Spellbinders struggled to fulfill their mission to share stories with children as a result of emerging pandemic restrictions in March 2020, the organization received news that put the final nail in its coffin. After nearly 20 years of sustaining the Spellbinders’ operations, the Longmont Public Library pulled out of its partnership. The library’s decision to split ties rendered the group immobile … albeit only temporarily.
According to the Spellbinders website, Spellbinders is a non profit corporation that aims to place trained, volunteer storytellers — most of whom are older adults — in classrooms across Colorado where children can learn from them. “Through the art of oral storytelling, Spellbinders enhances literacy, encourages character development, and builds intergenerational community,” the website states.
From the early 2000s until March 2020, the Longmont chapter of Spellbinders – the Longmont Library Spellbinders, or LLS — was composed of local volunteers who dedicated their time and efforts to telling stories to students in the St. Vrain Valley School District, or SVVSD.
Through its partnership with LLS, Longmont Public Library provided spaces for the group to hold meetings, as well as the services of the library’s liaison, Kathleen Kunau, who helped the Spellbinders facilitate storytelling sessions at SVVSD schools, according to Claire Studholme, head of the library’s childrens’ and teens’ department.
Although Studholme described the overall partnership as fruitful for both organizations, there had been conversations within the library about letting LLS go in the years leading up to the pandemic, she recalled. The consideration stemmed from a couple of issues the library faced due to the arrangement.
One of the library’s problems was that it managed the Spellbinders’ funding even though the organizations were separate and were therefore supposed to have separate funding, Studholme said, “which got a little murky and was really outside the purview of the library.”
When the library began foundational repairs pre-pandemic and its meeting spaces became limited, the staff began to wonder whether the library was equitably serving the community through its public meeting spaces, Studholme added — an inspection which illuminated LSS’s disproportionately high usage of the meeting spaces.
“The Spellbinders were the only group that had kind of been grandfathered in to have our spaces on a more regular basis than other community groups,” she said. “We also thought it wasn't super equitable that there was one group that could be granted different rules for meeting in our meeting rooms than everyone else.”
The library’s concerns about its partnership with LSS reached a pinnacle when both the organizations’ operations came to an indefinite halt in early 2020 due to the emerging pandemic. By March, “the library thought it would be a good time to see if the Spellbinders could spread their wings and go out on their own,” Studholme said.
For the Spellbinders to “spread their wings and go out on their own” was in the best interest of both the library and the Spellbinders, according to Kunau.
“The Spellbinders needed to become their own 501(c)(3) in order to be able to fundraise, have an independent website and serve all of the SVVSD schools — even the ones outside of the Longmont Library's service area. The library, as a part of the city of Longmont, could not be in financial relationship with them any longer,” Kunau said.
While the library contemplated dropping its affiliation with LLS in the years prior to the pandemic, Kunau put in a lot of time and effort with the Spellbinders to figure out what it would mean for them to exist completely separate from the library, according to Studholme.
To former member of the Longmont Spellbinders, Peg Brown, the library’s separation announcement came as a big surprise, she said — one that shocked her and her fellow Spellbinders.
“When the Spellbinders were informed by the library that it could no longer administratively continue its relationship with us, we hadn’t seen it coming,” Brown said.
“We suddenly found ourselves on our own and we had to regroup,” Brown recalled.
For approximately the next year, Brown worked alongside several former members of LLS to create the St. Vrain Valley Storytellers, or SVVS, a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission — “to enhance literacy, encourage character development and build intergenerational community through the art of oral storytelling” — mirrors that of the Spellbinders, although its services are specific to elementary school children in SVVSD, the website states.
Today, Brown thinks SVVS operates in a much more sophisticated manner than the group of storytellers did while they were under the title of LLS, she said. Such refinement is the result from SVVS receiving a grant from the Longmont Community Foundation, implementing effective budgets and, most importantly, sticking to their original mission and values.
Despite any mixed feelings surrounding the split two years ago, the library and SVVS continue their collaborative efforts in the community today, according to Studholme. “We still consider SVVS a community partner and a great asset to the library,” she said.
CORRECTION: This article has been altered to reflect that the national level of Spellbinders did not drop LSS as an official chapter of the organization, as reported previously. Today, the SVVS remains a licensed chapter of the Spellbinders organization. Additionally, the article has been altered to reflect that SVVS is not a member of the Longmont Community Foundaton, as reported previously.
