Cohasset Library Trust

The Cohasset Library Trust, Inc. was established in 2006 to increase the library’s endowment and prudently manage its investments. The elected trustees of the Paul Pratt Memorial Library created this nonprofit, tax-deductible 501(c)(3) corporation as authorized by town meeting vote and enabling legislation. The Trust has a Board of Directors appointed by the elected library trustees. They have considerable experience in other Cohasset organizations and among them have substantial marketing, fund-raising and investment management skills.

The Paul Pratt Memorial Library is a Town Treasure
As residents of Cohasset, we are blessed with a library that is truly at the center of town life. It’s not just the books and tapes, the computer access or the bricks and mortar. The Paul Pratt Memorial Library offers all of us the opportunity to learn, to be enriched, to come together as a community in so many ways. This town treasure must be nurtured and protected. It is an investment in our future, so we must invest in its future.

Two trends are working against us. First, costs have increased due to greater library usage and a rapidly changing, technologically oriented, more expensive library world. Second, as other pressures on the town have increased, the library’s share of Cohasset’s annual budget has steadily decreased. We have more library cardholders, more visits, more programs and more computer use than ever before. Where will the money come from to meet those demands?

The trustees believe that increasing the library’s endowment will help to ease the financial future of our library. Currently, the library has an endowment of roughly $1.2 million, the result of 25 unsolicited gifts over more than 100 years. In recent years, the library has used about 4% of the endowment ($58,145.05 in 2016) to support its annual operating budget. This takeout rate sensibly protects against the effects of inflation in order to preserve the real value of the endowment.