<p>I thought the parents might be more helpful with this situtation…</p>
<p>I’m planning a week long book drive in June. I’ve already got some volunteers and I’ve emailed places of worship and businesses to see if they’d want to help collect new and gently used books. I plan on donating the books collected to local schools, women’s shelters, hospitals, etc in my community.</p>
<p>The only problem is this is an independent book drive. I’m not going through an agency or organization. I already had one church email me back and tell me they’d want to know what organization I’m representing before they decide.</p>
<p>I totally understand that people have to be careful what with all of the scams that happen in charity. But there’s not an organization out there that would allow me to donate the books to places in my community (not that I’ve found anyway)</p>
<p>I think that it’s important for people to help other’s in their community. That’s how this book drive came to be. Any suggestions?</p>
<p>First, I’d find out exactly to whom I’d be donating the books. Make an arrangement with those facilities. Find out what kinds of books they want/need; how many they can take etc… the last thing you need is to be stuck with a thousand books in your garage and no place that will take them. </p>
<p>Then I would tell the organizations: “I’m an independent student who is running this charity drive on my own. I’ll be donating to x, y and z charities.” </p>
<p>On the other hand, have you tried the Key Club, Rotary, Lion’s Club etc… as an umbrella organization? They may be willing to help you.</p>
<p>Thanks! I’ve already emailed organizations that I thought might need the books, and also asked them what guidelines they had in regards to the condition, etc. So far I’ve got one yes and two schools that are “contacting the appropriate departments”</p>
<p>There’s a lot of Lion’s Clubs around here. I’ll see if they’re interested in helping</p>
<p>I am sympathetic to this, a book drive is harder than it sounds! D1 ran one for schools and organizations hit hard by Katrina as her Girl Scout Gold Award project. Finding people who wanted the books and coordinating the donations with what those organizations wanted was one of the hardest parts.</p>
<p>Some of these organizations (churches, etc.) already run a lot of charitable programs, so they are understandably wary of someone who is not part of their organization who wants to tap their membership pool for this. The organization has to communicate with the members (or make sure you are doing so appropriately) – probably multiple times, and coordinate allowing you to place collection boxes/retrieve what is collected. </p>
<p>I agree with other posters that having a couple of specific organizations you are donating the books to lined up helps with your pitch to get other organizations to let you collect books through them. You want to be specific about what type of books are most useful (women’s shelter probably want kids books and novels that would appeal to women, for example).</p>
<p>You also need a plan for what to do with books that aren’t appropriate for donation. Too many people just use a book drive as a way to dump out of date textbooks or damaged books. You will likely end up throwing some out, don’t feel too guilty if that happens. D1 gave some to Salvation Army at the end, and pitched a few.</p>
<p>I volunteer with our local public library. We run a lot of book sales, and we sell a lot of books, very inexpensively.</p>
<p>At the end of every sale, we give the left-over books, many of them in pristine condition, for free to any community group that wants to come in and pick them up. Sad to say, few groups come in to get them. Many say they already have too many books and can’t take any more. As for the schools, we were given many thousands of books this year by our public schools when they changed out their lit sets and went through their libraries to unload old stuff. Needless to say, the schools do not want the books back.</p>
<p>I should mention that this is a college town, so there are a lot of books circulating. You might well have a lot more luck with small, rural towns that have paltry book budgets for the library or schools.</p>
<p>Good luck. But please, make sure you have a home for all of those books or you will be faced with a very difficult situation: what to do with a whole lot of books you can’t get rid of.</p>