10/27/2026
Friends back Olean Library project with $110K donation
By BOB CLARK
[email protected]
OLEAN — That’s what Friends are for.
On Saturday, the Friends of the Olean Public Library, a nonprofi t founded in 1981, donated $110,000 to help the city library with its $8.75 million capital project. The funds will go to the Growing Together capital fund at the library, which aims to offset the local property tax impact.
The project, which has been in development for almost 10 years, is expected to formally break ground this fall. Library staff have begun boxing up materials for storage and shifting teen programming across the street to the Olean First Presbyterian Church.
Friends President Darlene Connelly said the nonprofit has been setting aside funds in a special account to help with the project for years, predating her tenure on the board.
“It’s been there since before I got there,” she said, adding the Friends have long been in support of an expansion project.
The project plans include renovating much of the existing library, as well as adding to the site’s footprint. The majority of that new space will be for a partial second floor. A large multipurpose room with a dividing wall will allow multiple groups to use the space, as well as an area for a maker space.
In 2025, voters approved a $7.9 million bond to cover the majority of the cost of the project. More than $1 million in state aid has also been received, as well as various donations to the capital campaign and for naming rights to portions of the library. Earlier this month, the library board awarded $8.75 million in contracts for the project.
The library, unlike most public libraries in the area, is not organized as a nonprofit organization. Instead, the library is organized as a government, complete with taxation powers and public votes on budgets, board members, and bond issuances. The Friends act as a nonprofit arm, allowing for donations like those given to other libraries.
Through returns on investments and fundraising, the nonprofit’s endowment has grown over $100,000 from 2016 to 2025, according to Internal Revenue Service filings. As of the end of 2025, the Friends had around $342,000 in cash and savings, according to tax filings. About half of the nonprofit’s revenue in 2025 came from investment income, while fundraising events collected around $11,000, membership dues around $8,000, and other contributions around $2,700.
Those funds helped the Friends build up the building funds while providing around $23,000 in direct support to the library, Connelly said, as well as making money available down the road.
“We didn’t empty that investment account,” Connelly said. “We did leave some in reserve because our fundraising will be affected.”
The Friends typically host two events every year in the library — a b**r tasting in the winter and a w**e tasting in the fall. The 2027 b**r tasting has been canceled, Connelly said, and the Friends are looking to see if library space will be available for the w**e tasting. If not, she said the fundraiser may move to alternative quarters or be replaced with a raffle-type event.
The Friends board would be interested in helping the library’s capital project in the future.
“It depends on how our fundraising goes if we are able to contribute more to the project. We do want to continue funding all our normal programs,” she said, such as the summer reading program, the annual poetry and bookmark contests, and the Born to Read program which provides books and other materials to the families of newborns at Olean General Hospital.
Connelly noted the cost of the neonatal program has risen not only because of rising materials costs, but also because more children are being born at the hospital after the closure of the delivery room at nearby Bradford Area Medical Center.
The nonprofit was founded in 1981 to support the library with funds for materials and programs. The Friends give 7.5% of the original $100,000 endowment to the library for materials every year, Connelly said, with fundraising efforts allowing the Friends to increase contributions to more than $20,000 in some years. In 2025, the Friends gave more than $23,000 in grants to the library.
On Monday, the Friends mailed out the annual appeal letter seeking new members for 2027. The Friends accept donations through the mail, via the Friends website at www.oleanlibrary. org/friends-of-the-library and through distributions from IRAs.
