Strengthening Your Library's Funding Opportunities with E-Rate: Working with State Coordinators to Get Your Share

E-Rate is the single largest federal program addressing broadband access, affordability, and digital inclusion in libraries, but only 3% of the nearly $3 billion of FY2024 committed E-Rate funds were for libraries and library systems. Libraries are missing out! And there are more reasons than ever to make sure libraries get their piece of the E-Rate pie: with a new budget cycle coming up for network necessities beyond your annual internet access costs, the opportunities for the next funding year are tremendous. But applying for E-Rate is hard, and libraries need help.

That's where your state coordinator comes in! Thanks to an IMLS grant from the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program, your state coordinators are better prepared than ever to guide you. Panelists will provide an orientation to E-Rate for those new to the program, discuss the IMLS grant that helped state-level coordinators become more effective resources for local libraries, and ultimately dig into what E-Rate can mean for your library. Finally, we will address the elephant in the room: ongoing support for this federal program. Leveraging tools from the fall training and expertise from ALA’s E-Rate Task Force, you will learn to navigate program data to discover how much money your library can save, and you will learn how to find information about your state library agency's E-Rate coordinator and E-Rate support. You will also apply your learning by creating a 3-step action plan for follow-up after the conference.