We're going to need more shelves...

The other day, Paige let me know that she and Ryan - the orchestra's librarian - had secured a huge donation of music for our library. Orchestra Nova would be receiving 20 bankers’ boxes of music, from full symphonies and ballets to operas and a bunch of full scores. For any orchestra this is a fantastic gift and we were over the moon.
The only hitch is that we now needed some place to store all of these pieces and our storage room doesn't have enough room on our bookshelves (already bursting at capacity with our current library). We turned to our fantastic horn player John Lorge who, in addition to being an excellent musician, is also a carpenter. John gave us a quote on new shelves that was very friendly, but we still needed to come up with the money (we have a policy of not spending money on anything that isn't already budgeted).
A very generous volunteer and supporter said she would donate half the cost if we were able to come up with the rest. At our Board meeting on Monday evening, I raised this issue and how we needed some extra funds to pay for this project and quickly seven folks at the meeting (two staff members and five board members) each donated for the shelves.
This is the power of giving in any amount - you can effect real change, really fast. Eight generous folks donated towards our shelves, and so next year we will be able to choose pieces from our expanded library for our performances - saving us money and using this great resource. I'm always gladdened when a generous donor gives anything at all to the orchestra, because it will always be appreciated and ALWAYS be used.