If you’ve volunteered lately, you know that we’ve outgrown our space. The owner cooperative of our building has agreed to rent us a MUCH larger space- more than 5 times larger, with high ceilings, natural light, and a storage loft!

This new space will give us room to store a wider variety of books, sell more books to bring in postage income, and make us more productive by giving us space for way more volunteers and eliminating the “cleanup” part of our packing parties where our supplies are stored in our current tiny room. It has large worktables and lots of wall space for shelves!

If you have any time to stop by and help us move this week, it would be much appreciated! Even an hour of your time moving books would help out greatly. If you can help text or call Shelby at 916-213-1804. Bonus points if you can unscrew our current bookshelves and mount them in the new space.

We also need recurring donors to help us cover our rent. If we have 10 recurring donors at $15, we’ll be covered! We’ll even paint your name on that big white wall down there if you want(once we give it a fresh coat of paint).

As our volunteer base and requests increase, we are tasked with finding ways to increase our fundraising to keep up. We are now a Thriftbooks bulk seller and we need a volunteer (or more!) who can run our online book store! It’s fun and easy.

What this volunteer will need:

-Some time
-A laptop

This job can be done anytime if you prefer to work alone, or you can do it during our weekly volunteer night (typically Tuesdays 5:30-7:30)

How it works:
The volunteer will scan book barcodes to see if Thrift Books will accept them. They will box acceptable books and arrange them on pallets and wrap prepared pallets for shipment.

Hit us up if you’re interested!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth to learn more about what we do, and to those who donated and bought swag! We were able to raise nearly $500 in postage funds to send more books to prisoners.

Our current needs are puzzle books like crosswords and sudoku. They usually have a ton of variety at Dollar Tree!

Due to the heat, we will be meeting off-site for a bit! Join us any Wednesday from 5:30-7:30 at Sneaky Beans. We have a lot of miscellaneous work to do, with a focus on a prisoner art fundraiser. Got some ideas? Bring em. Sign up here.

We’re excited for the opportunity to help Jeff and his peers with improving their library. Vocational books are not donated to us very often and are a bit pricier than novels, but are extremely useful in helping inmates learn skills that can later be used on the outside. Some of the requested topics include plumbing, electrical, framing, concrete finishing, ceramic tile setting, landscaping, drafting, mechanical drawing, and data mining. We have added some ideas to our wish list as well. Can you help us find some of these books? Whether you find them at home, online, or at the thrift store, we would very much appreciate it. We will be preparing a car load of paperbacks to bring to their library with the help of Chaplain Abel.

Special thank you to Eddie for building us all new gigantic shelves, and to Helen and Josh for delivering! We can’t wait to install them on Tuesday. 🙌🙌🙌 Step ladders would be extra helpful for us to make the most of our new storage space. If you have one you can donate, we would appreciate it a ton!