With last year's $75,000 planning grant from the Ford Foundation, New Words Live, the nonprofit sister organization of 27-year-old feminist bookstore New Words in Cambridge, Mass., studied various models for reshaping New Words and other feminist bookstores. In its newly issued report, New Words founding member Gilda Bruckman and coauthors Joni Seager and Laura Zimmerman propose forming a nonprofit Center for New Words that would include a bookstore and educational and community services to foster women's and girls' reading, writing, publishing and creativity.
After tallying the store's assets, which the report characterizes as primarily "community assets," and losses after a decade of diminished sales, Bruckman, Seager and Zimmerman conclude that "the service contributions of feminist bookstores to a wider women's community are as vital as ever," but that the retail operations alone are not. Seager told PW that the decision to create a nonprofit Center is, to her mind, the best alternative for New Words and the constituencies it serves. "Instead of walking away from 27 years, we can build on it. We're very aware of the trap of a lot of progressive organizations," she said. "There's a down cycle, and they close. It's a terrible squandering of resources and knowledge. We're looking at taking an idea and transforming it."
"The bookstore will be very central," added Bruckman. "We want it to be the physical center of activity and to serve more people. We want a bigger and better space that will make people want to come to it." She and the other co-owners of New Words plan to give the current store to the Center. In the next two years, it will likely be relocated to nearby Central Square, a culturally diverse neighborhood that is closer to public transportation and parking.
"Moving is a high priority," said Seager, who noted that readings and events will continue to be key to the Center's mission and might be expanded to include Web-based programming, zines and literacy workshops. The Center's first task, she noted, will be to set up an organizational structure and to lay the legal groundwork for nonprofit status. The Center concept is similar to that of a museum, in that it combines education and retail. However, the bookstore would be far more central to the Center's day-to-day operation than most museum gift shops.
After years of scrambling for money to keep New Words alive, Seager anticipates that the Center's operating costs would be about a million dollars a year. "We're definitely committed to not running this as a hand-to-mouth operation," she said. To create the necessary endowment to keep it going, the Center for New Words will need to embark on a major fundraising campaign.
Former Feminist Bookstore News director Carol Seajay commented that despite today's economic climate, she believes that Bruckman, Seager and Zimmerman can turn New Words around. "If anyone can succeed," she said, "they can, even if it's slightly impossible. I don't think 'feminist bookstore' is a concept that's passed its time."
For now, it's business as usual at both New Words and New Words Live, as the organizational restructuring to create the Center gets underway.
