Level of Service Overview
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Opportunity Online grants are designed to ensure free, high-quality computer access for people in need. This goal has driven our grant eligibility criteria, which consider both the number of low-income patrons that a library branch serves (poverty eligibility criteria) and a foundation-defined level of service or number of up-to-date computers provided in a library relative to the number of persons in poverty (vulnerability criteria).
The level of service criteria will help us serve participating communities equitably and will, in aggregate, provide a higher level of service for people in poverty than past foundation grants have. On average, more computers will be awarded per branch, with greater variability in the number of computers granted among libraries (compared to our previous allocation of eight computers for urban libraries, five for suburban libraries, and two for rural libraries approach). The foundation has chosen a level of service based on the following guiding principles:
- Serve communities equitably based on numbers of persons in poverty that have access to each branch
- Focus on cost effectiveness by maximizing persons served while optimizing the cost per person served
- Provide a higher level of service to library branches in small communities, where the library is often the only point of free public access to technology
- Consider the practical implications of the physical and organizational capacity of libraries, as well as the size of match required for workstations granted
Application of the Level of Service Approach
Level of service eligibility is determined by the current level of up-to-date computers provided at each library branch compared to the foundation-established level of service. The foundation’s level of service is determined as: one up-to-date workstation per “X” persons living in poverty and varies by branch segments. Branch segments are based on persons in poverty served by each branch (small/medium/large which roughly correlates to rural/suburban/urban). Grant awards and grant sizing based on level of service required assigning all persons in poverty to one and only one library. This approach eliminated any potential double counting of persons in poverty where library service areas overlapped, and ensured that all persons in poverty were counted.
The following table outlines the foundation-established level of service for each segment of eligible libraries. If a branch that was previously deemed “poverty eligible” is currently meeting the foundation-established level of service, it is effectively serving the persons in poverty associated with that branch and will not receive grant funding.
SMALL |
MEDIUM |
LARGE |
|
Persons in poverty per branch |
0 – 1,600 |
1,601 – 6,800 |
>6,800 |
Level of Service |
1 computer per 150 persons in poverty |
1 computer per 300 persons in poverty |
1 computer per 600 persons in poverty |
Range of computers granted |
1 – 11 |
5 – 23 |
11 – 52 |
Average # of computers granted by foundation |
3.3 |
7.7 |
13.0 |
National average # of computers per branch |
7 (rural libraries) |
13 (suburban libraries) |
21 (urban libraries) |
About the Initiative |
State Partnership Grant |
Library Training Program Grant |
Staying Connected 1 |
Staying Connected 2 |
Rural Library Sustainability Project |
Spanish Language Outreach Program |
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