A state budget proposal for 2026-2027 currently does not renew funding for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Monroe County will remain fully funded for the remainder of 2026, but beyond that is uncertain, said Marcus Whited, program director of the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County.
The imagination library is a free program that mails books to children from birth to age 5 every month no matter the family’s income.
Monroe County has been a part of the program since 2021, with local affiliate the Community Foundation helping connect the community to the program. The program is responsible for negotiating wholesale pricing for the books, while local affiliates are responsible for securing funds to cover the costs of the books and shipping fees.
When Monroe County joined in 2021 the initial funding came from a grant from CenterPoint Energy Foundation, Whited said. CenterPoint followed up with another grant in 2023, which the Community Foundation is still using.
Additionally, in 2023 former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb announced a statewide expansion for the book program. Holcomb signed into legislation funding for the program which allotted $6 million over the following two years. This led to local affiliates only having to pay for 50 percent of their local program costs with the remaining 50 percent paid by the state.
Gov. Mike Braun last February announced that he was appointing his wife to spearhead an initiative to continue funding the book program through public-private partnership. Whited said Maureen Braun was able to secure enough funding to last at least through 2026.
The 50 percent the Community Foundation is responsible for totals about $33,000, he said. That’s with 2,316 children in the county signed up for the program.
If state funding is ceased, Whited said it will make finding funding more difficult for local affiliates because they would have to come up with twice as much money.
He said as the Community Foundation funds other local nonprofits also going through funding cuts, lack of state funding for the imagination library could limit the foundation’s ability to make up the funds.
“There's only so much money to go around, and so we would have to make some difficult decisions as to whether we would be able to continue this program if we lost that funding from the state,” he said.
Whited said the program goes beyond increasing literacy rates and helping children develop their critical thinking skills. It has helped create bonds between the parent and the child.
“They get into this monthly routine if they get a new book in the mail, and then they sit down with their kids and they read through the books, and they talk through them, and what is happening in the book, and what that means,” he said. “(T)hat leads to kind of snuggle time, which is, you know, just really quality time between a parent and a child.”
The Community Foundation has applied for another grant through CenterPoint, which if received would be for two years. The foundation also has a public fund that people can donate to for the Dolly Parton Imagination Library in Monroe County.
