A Playfully Serious Fundraiser
Name a Spot
Big donors name buildings. How many people get to name a step stool?
Universities put donor names on buildings, libraries, and lecture halls. We’re extending the privilege to a pencil cup, a squeaky book-cart wheel, and other overlooked landmarks of library life.
Choose a spot, make a donation, and bestow upon it a ceremonial name that will live on this website with all the dignity it deserves.
No plaque. No ownership. No special privileges. Just the satisfaction of helping fund something genuinely worthwhile.
How It Works
Choose Your Spot
A shelf, a stool, a rug, or some other indispensable piece of library life. Each has a minimum gift, and each can receive one ceremonial name.
Bestow a Name
Make the minimum gift, or more if you are feeling grand, and enter the ceremonial name you want bestowed upon the spot. Add an optional inscription, dedication, or joke for its page.
Receive Almost Nothing
No ownership. No physical sign. No reserved seating. You receive a ceremonial certificate, the name and optional inscription displayed on this website, and the knowledge that your gift helped the library.
The Spots
Priced with total confidence.
Everything below is real and findable at the library, except the intangibles, which are real and unfindable.
59 spots available · 1 ceremonially named
$100 minimum
The Friends’ Book-Sale Book Drop
Where donated books begin their second life.
Name This →
$15 minimum
The Squeaky Wheel on the Book Cart
Just the wheel. The cart is sold separately.
Name This →
$10 minimum
The Pencil Cup at the Reference Desk
An Orange County Public pencil, mostly.
Name This →
The Step Stool
The McLean Step Stool for Higher Learning
“In honor of bruised shins everywhere”
See its page →
$45 minimum
The Lost-and-Found Bin
Currently holding four water bottles and a single glove.
Name This →
$250 minimum
The Best Parking Spot
Symbolically yours. Legally first-come, first-served.
Name This →
No spots match that filter.
What You Are (and Aren't) Getting
You are making a donation in support of the Friends of the Orange County Public Library. In return, you may ceremonially name one very real library spot on this very unofficial corner of our website.
Your chosen wording appears on the spot's page after a volunteer reviews it, and we will send you a ceremonial certificate suitable for framing, filing, or explaining to confused relatives.
You are not purchasing the object, naming the building, installing a plaque, reserving the space, influencing library operations, or acquiring any authority whatsoever. The library keeps the spot. The public keeps using it. Your donation helps make more good things possible.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity, EIN 58-1507922. No goods or services are provided in exchange for contributions to this campaign; your entire gift is tax-deductible.
Why It Matters
The storytimes, welcoming spaces, useful technology, and small details that make a child feel at home in the library do not happen by accident. They come from dedicated library staff, and from neighbors who choose to help fund something beyond the minimum.
From Summer Reading to equipment, training, programs, and improvements to library spaces, Friends support helps turn good ideas into memorable experiences.
Every naming is ceremonial. The help it provides is real.
