2025 Reading Challenge discussion

GIVE 10,000 BOOKS
Duration: May 1, 2016 - June 30, 2016

This is an ambitious goal, but with the combined efforts of everyone in the group, it is possible! To participate, pick a charity with a book- or education-related cause you believe in. Donate books, money, or time between now and June 30, 2016 and let us know how you participated.

We realize that not everyone has the means or opportunity to participate, and that's totally okay! This is completely optional. :)

Everyone who does participates will receive one entry for our raffle prizes at the end of the celebration.

There are a ton of worthy charities out there, and we'd love to hear which are near and dear to your hearts. We will post them in the second comment in this thread along with some to get you started.

Thank you!

Some charities to get you started:

First Book
Reach Out and Read
Worldreader
Little Free Library
Women's Prison Book Project
And you can always check with your local public library.

I am a member of the local chapter of ILA international literacy association. We are placing 3 little free libraries out later this spring. So we are loading the first time. I am sure around 50 books from my library will be in them.

I am also putting out a Little Free Library. I love the idea of sharing books, especially with children, so my son and some of his friends donated books they have outgrown to put in the library for other kids to enjoy. I'm putting some of my favorite books in as well for the adult readers that stop by.

Our local library has certain restrictions on the books we can donate, but they do also list another organization in the MD/DC area called

Parole Rotary Club’s Books for International Goodwill (B.I.G.) project accepts donations. The drop-off location is available 24 hours a day. Please visit their website and click on “How to help B.I.G” or call 410-293-6865

A shopping centre I regularly visit has a little free library. I love it! (I spend more time there than actually shopping!) I have another pile of books here to donate next time I go.

Chloe we are putting on in our mall as well.

It's garage sale season which means I'm doing a huge purge at my house.
I always have a box of books I take for buy back at my favorite used book store. Any books left after that either go to Goodwill or Savers. This year my unsold books will more than likely go to the League of Women Voters' annual book sale fundraiser. https://www.lwvmn.org/local-leagues/w...
Any children's books go to the local public library (unfortunately for the public library they can never take as many of my books as they want as it costs more money for them to accept a donated book than to buy a new book) or the local elementary school. Last spring my daughter's kindergarten teacher was able to replace 90% of her classroom library with our old books.

I am donating 7 books this week which has the added bonus of literally clearing my bookshelves

I didn't donate books, but was really inspired and motivated through reading Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. They tell personal stories about women who were helped by specific charities and why. I did some research and decided to do some microfinancing through Kiva.org.

My public library participates in SEVERAL locations for the Little Free Library. These are older pictures that I took almost 2 months ago. I love the idea, and I wanted to participate. However I wasn't interested in the available books and I didn't have a book to give. This is a perfect time to clear my shelves, right a little note for each book, and finally participate! New photos coming soon. :)

How cute is that little library!! Love it :)

Yes, that is adorable!! I'm trying to think of a place I could give to, wish we had something as that!

There's a little library near me as well. it's a great way for people to share books. So cute too!

I agree with you Winter. I have some old books and I need more space for new books. Wish I new of a place that I could donate. Or trade.

Does a Friends of the Library count? I just donated 17 books to my local library FOL for them to use in their bookstore to raise money for the library.

Kester wrote: "Does a Friends of the Library count? I just donated 17 books to my local library FOL for them to use in their bookstore to raise money for the library."

Yes Kester! I love Friends of the Library. I donate and buy from mine often.

Just a tip to those donating to their local libraries. Try and donate brand new or almost brand new books that are about subjects that are different. Last year, I donated three children's books about Ramadan and Eid to my local library after discovering they had no books on the subject and received a lovely note thanking me for my contribution. I was told by the circulation manager that books about different cultures are often the hardest for them to supply because they just don't know what they are looking for. (I live in a very white town).

Thanks! Most of the books I donated were pretty good condition (mostly horror or middle grades) and the others were some biographies my high school library was about to throw away. Those are also in good condition, too, and many of the books in my FOL are from the local library itself.

Maria wrote: "I agree with you Winter. I have some old books and I need more space for new books. Wish I new of a place that I could donate. Or trade."

Yes, I will have to think of it for a while. I live in a small place, we don't have that many places that's possible that I know of.

I'll check with my local library and local book store. I about 20 books, possibly more, to donate.

Winter wrote: "Yes, that is adorable!! I'm trying to think of a place I could give to, wish we had something as that!"

Apparently there's many more in my downtown city. This will finally give me the chance to adventure out and find them :)

If anyone is interested (and I'm not sure how wide spread this is) but here's a map you can use to find locations similar to the images I posted. Try searching for your city though. It's the only way I could get it to work.

https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/

Taylor R wrote: "Winter wrote: "Yes, that is adorable!! I'm trying to think of a place I could give to, wish we had something as that!"

Apparently there's many more in my downtown city. This will finally give me t..."

I just went to the website last night and signed up to get some information about the program. We don't have any in our town, and I know the perfect little park to put one. My husband thinks it's the perfect project for me to take on.

Thanks for the website Taylor R. I just went on it and saw that there is a location in my city.

Kadijah Michelle
and
Maria
wrote: "Taylor R wrote:..."
Yay! You are so very welcome you two! :) I was looking into it a little more myself and it seems if you can build it, you can put it there? Is that right?

And that's great you found one! I'll be going to a few of them eventually to start making room for my physical shelves. I might even add a few children's books :)

Another great charity for book donations is the Women's Prison Book Project. Here's their info:

Women’s Prison Book Project
c/o Boneshaker Books
2002 23rd Ave S.
Minneapolis, MN 55404
https://wpbp.org/book-donations/

Since I don't live in MN, I mailed them Media Rate (which was pretty affordable). Check out the website as they have "high need" book types as well.

I'll post later in the month for how many books I'm sending them.

I don't really understand where to put the city. I don't really live in a city though, it's just a very small place at the countryside. But I don't think we have those in Norway. I have never seen or heard it.

I do have books I could donate if I could just think of place to donate them to. I don't think librarys accept and it's hard for me to get there since they aren't open when I have a car available. Must be some place though?

Winter wrote: "I don't really understand where to put the city. I don't really live in a city though, it's just a very small place at the countryside. But I don't think we have those in Norway. I have never seen ..."

Winter! What about a neighbor?? :) I use to live in the country, so I completely understand if your neighbors aren't close by. But do you think a neighbor would like a book to read?

Or maybe a school that would take books? A church? A rehabilitation center? A hospital? Hmm...What else.. You could proably search for "Book donation centers" or "libraries in need of books" and then add your location to the end of the search. :) I think a lot of the links we are sending is for the US lol.

not sure if you guys have them locally but I believe most do I just dropped off an entire box of books to our local boys and girls club so they could take a book home at the end of there program in June. I did my volunteer work there in college so I know they always need books and people to read to the kids in the after school programs .

Taylor R wrote: "Winter wrote: "I don't really understand where to put the city. I don't really live in a city though, it's just a very small place at the countryside. But I don't think we have those in Norway. I h..."

My place is so small that you won't really get anything for that, but I can talk to teachers at the school I worked at. Maybe they know of a place. I don't have any childrens's books to give away, but they might know still. And I will also talk to a person that works in church. I have some books I could give to that cause, spiritual books I have read. I will check that out, thanks for ideas!

I donate to the local library for their Friends of the Library book sales. I'll be doing that in June!

I donated 3 books to Goodwill. I have about 20 books, most of which I've won, that I am going to donate to the Red River library in northern NM. The library is so small that they close at lunch so the librarian can take a lunch break! I'm donating to them because I love the community & know they don't have the same level of library funding that we have in a big city.

I have donated some books to a book sale to raise funds for a community cafe.

I have just found out about this website: http://www.bookcrossing.com/ which may help with this. Plus, you will get to see where in the world your book ends up.

I donated a big box of books to a used book sale at my local library :)

I love hearing where everyone donates their books! We gave ours to the city library bookstore.

I donated some children's books to my daughter's school and have some other books to donate to one of the local charity shops :)

I'm part of the Books for Prisoners organization at my college.

I have a lot of trouble parting with my books, sadly, but I have donated roughly $30 over the course of the past 2 months. I also responded to a few letters, helped sort through hundreds of letters, helped with tabling, & go to planning meetings.
(Though not counting for this challenge, in April, we sent out around 100 packages w/ about 2-3 books per package to prisoners in need. Whoop whoop!)

We run by book & monetary donations.
If you're in the area (La Jolla, CA) and wish to donate books (and/or money), please feel free to bring them into Groundworks Bookstore in the Old Student Center on the UCSD campus when they are open & tell them that it's for Books for Prisoners. (We are always in need of dictionaries. Any books & magazines are accepted, but we prefer paperbacks. [Due to prison regulations, hardbacks usually can't be sent out. Instead, we try to sell them to generate money so we can send out packages.])

If you'd like to volunteer, we meet once a week during the quarter at a time set during the start of the quarter according to what works best for the most people (last quarter it was Sunday at 5 p.m.) at Groundworks. We also have events and packaging parties during the quarter, and you can come by Groundworks to do volunteer work for the org. any time it is open. (There's a fair amount of overlap between people in B4P & Groundworkers, so there should hopefully be someone there that can help you out.)
I can try to provide you w/ more info. if you're interested. Just message me.
You can also help out in the Summer. Groundworks is currently open MWF around 1:00 p.m.- 6:00 p.m., I believe, for at least the first part of Summer. I'm not sure how many people are there who can help you out, so you may want to wait 'til school begins.

One of our Mailing addresses is:
Books for Prisoners
c/o Groundwork Books
0323 Student Center
La Jolla, CA 92037

(Should alternatively be able to send to:
Books for Prisoners
c/o Groundwork Books
9500 Gilman Dr. MC 0323
La Jolla, CA 92093)


(I'd recommend waiting to send letters until about September, as we don't have enough volunteers to go through all the letters during the Summer.)
(Only book requests sent directly from inmates will be honoured. But feel free to send in any inquiries, donations, etc.)

If you have any ideas for fundraisers or any advice to getting more funding, please let me know! We recently restarted this org. after it died a few years ago, so we're building everything up again basically from scratch and we're very low on money.

Taylor R wrote: "My public library participates in SEVERAL locations for the Little Free Library. These are older pictures that I took almost 2 months ago. I love the idea, and I wanted to participate. However I wa..."

Oh I think I came across one of these in a neighbourhood by the high school I went to. I love the idea & it's so cute!

I donated books to the library used book sale. About 15 books.

I just realized I never included how many books I donated. On May 14, I donated 85 books to the Women's Prison Book Project.

Great job! For all of you that are still following, I'm working on another book donation project for school age children through our local Community Peace Dude and Dawah in Action Committee.