LIBRARY MINI GOLF, LLC
PUNTA GORDA, FLORIDA

During the extensive coverage of Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005, news stations aired reports from Gulf Coast libraries caught in the path of the storm. The Trumbull Library Foundation had only recently been formed to support our own library and we were still casting about for our precise mission. Someone suggested we stage a “Gulf event” to raise money for hurricane victims. Another foundation member, betraying a youth misspent on the links, responded, “Golf event? Count me in!” By the time the confusion cleared, the words “Gulf” and “Golf” were inextricably linked, setting in motion perhaps the only charitable event ever generated by a verbal typo. There weren’t any plans to expand the program until we were asked by some of our library friends to provide a course as part of the 2007 Connecticut Library Association conference and support the 2007 Community Day at the University of Hartford. We were glad to help and we’ll admit we hoped the idea would catch on so that libraries would hear about the idea and have their own local resources make course and run events for them. We set up 9 holes in the Capital City Community and a full18 holes at the library on the main campus of the University of Hartford. Both events went very well and there we lots of questions and inquires that followed, but it seemed no one found others willing to make a course and get the idea started. And then in 2008, I was talking to the head librarian in my original hometown of Dartmouth, MA about a database product that I thought might be interesting for libraries to license, when she told me the library had a serious budget problem and faced decertification, I casually mentioned I knew of an idea for a fundraiser that had raised $10,000. She immediately said she would do it. I didn’t get the chance to even tell her what it was! When I explained the idea, she thought it was a bit out of the box, but still definitely wanted to move forward. So in 2008, we hosted another event and helped the library raise about $10,000. Even more publicity came from the ABC News affiliate out of Providence, MA who set a film crew to the event and we had a 3-minute segment on the Sunday Evening News that night. An executive at the American Library Association who regularly searched the Web for interesting new ideas for libraries soon called us and after a lot of encouragement, asked if she could write an article about the idea in her very popular blog called the Shifted Librarian. {internal link to article} It wasn’t long before we had inquiries from around the country, Canada, Europe and even Australia. So we formed a small LLC with no employees or staff and took some family savings to make a few courses and opened for business in 2009 and have since hosted about 135 events in 25 different states. We are still just two brothers and occasionally our nephews and close family friends that help us work with a few dozen libraries every year with their own Library Mini Golf events.