Steps for making your Books For Treats community event a success
* Form a small committee and divide up the responsibilities:
- Chair — has good project management, delegation and people skills
- Volunteer Coordinator — has good people skills and networks where s/he can ask for responsible volunteers.
- Media outreach — has good persuasive writing skills and can reach out to local media
- Logistics — can find a place to store the books (we store ours at our city storage area), transport them to the sorting area, then to the give-away venue, then, if any are left over, back to the storage area for next year.
* Work with a local community event to hold your Books For Treats.
Ideally this is where kids already go for a community trick-or-treating event. Some do Books For Treats in tandem with a merchant trick-or-treating event. Instead of candy, you set up tables and let the kids pick a book (more on how to this follows). Some do Books For Treats as part of a Halloween event at the local library.
It doesn’t have to be in conjunction or in front of a bookstore. In fact, some bookstores don’t want you giving away books. Don’t take it personally — find an empty space and if need be, ask permission to set up your tables there.
* Start collecting books.
You can start collecting books before you have a venue. Ask some local retailers (banks, restaurants, others in high-traffic areas) to be a donation drop off point and provide them a decorated box or basket. Use the Books For Treats logo you can download.
Then send emails and press releases to your local media asking residents to donate their gently read children’s books. If you have funds, you can also buy them at thrift stores, garage sales, and from Scholastic at a discount (see the link on our home page).
You can also buy new books through FirstBook.org if you are affiliated with a 501c3. You have to attest that 70% of the books go to low-income kids. Then you get the books free and pay $.45/each — a great deal! They will send you monthly emails with the distribution offers and then you go to their site and choose the titles and quantities available. It takes 4-6 weeks for shipment so order early. If you don’t have a 501c3 to work with, we can help you order the books through ours. If you order through FirstBook, you don’t need to sort the books as you know the age range when you order. You then need to mark the boxes with the grade level and put the Books For Treats stickers on the backs of the books.
* Gather sturdy boxes with lids.
You want to stack the boxes of books so make sure they can be closed. We find bankers boxes perfect as they are not too big to be lifted and they have handholds. You can purchase them in bulk at office supply stores. Small moving boxes are a bit too big.
A word from experience: Transfer any books donated in bags to boxes. The bags rip, you can’t stack them, and generally they are a pain. You’ll be glad when the books are all in boxes.
* Find a place to store the books.
We get about 100 boxes of books donated and it can quickly make a dent in garage storage! So, if possible, get some commercial storage donated. You don’t need to visit often — just every few months as you get more books than someone wants to store in their garage.
* Solicit volunteers for sorting.
In addition to your core team, you’ll need some pairs of hands to sort the books before Halloween, then on the day you give out books. We find we need at least a dozen — if not two dozen — people to help sort books. We’ve had retirees, students and Boy and Girl Scouts help with this task.
See our sample email soliciting volunteers.
* Solicit volunteers to help with the logistics.
Boxes of books, even smaller boxes are heavy! You need a team of strong people to help with this job, even with carts or dollies and good legs for lifting. We’ve had good luck with having a local Boy Scout troop help us with the transportation and moving of books.
* Solicit volunteers for giving out the books.
Anyone from teenagers to retirees works fine. We find we need 10-15 people for our 2-hour book giveaway to 4000 kids.
See how we explain the volunteers’ responsibilities in this sample email we send.
* Sort the books.
We sort donated books once a quarter so we know how many of what grade level we have. Then we can either buy to fill in the light grade, or put a call for donations for books in those grade levels. You’ll need a place to sort the books and store them until your Books For Treats event. The less you move the boxes of books, the better! Seriously!
Our sorting place is adjacent to our give-away space. But still, there is loading them onto dollies and shifting them into the right place. We’ve had help from students, Boy Scouts and even high school sports teams.
You’ll need more space than you may think. The tables, boxes of sorted and unsorted books and people need some elbow room.
We find it easiest to have adults sort the books. If you have kids helping, they are great for inserting bookmarks in or affixing Books For Treats stickers on the books.
If you have a dozen or so people, some will be sorters, some will be label stickers and some will be runners. The runners will make sure the sorters are supplied with boxes of books, then run the sorted books to the label appliers. The latter then puts them into boxes, writes the grade level on the box and the runners then fetch the boxes and stack them (see below).
Don’t overfill boxes — make sure the lids lie flat.
You’ll need labels to put on the front (not the top as other boxes will be stacked on top) of each box (see the template) or bookmarks to put inside. We found the removable labels work best as the bookmarks fall out and make a mess. (You can download the label art from this site.)
Once sorted, mark the grade/reading level on the outside of the book (see the 5 levels on the downloadable kit). We find it best to then stack the boxes of the same reading level together so it’s easy to see how many of each you have.
We give away a lot of toddler and pre-K to Kindergarten books. Depending on your area, you may find you give many more of these than the 5th-6th grade books.
Sorting is not an exact science. Use the downloadable sorting guide for a rule of thumb. Some books tell you the reading/grade level. Others don’t so you have to guess. It’s best to have alert adults do the sorting.
* Books For Treats give-away event
It’s important to let the kids pick a book rather than being handed one. They’ll be more invested in reading it and it will make Books For Treats a positive experience for them. Their parents may help choose a book.
An hour or so before the Books For Treats event, set up four 6-foot tables, divided by grade-level for pre-k through 6th grade (we’ll discuss toddlers later). Put two chairs for two volunteers behind each 6′ table for volunteers to keep the table top full and help the kids choose their books. Have the extra boxes under the corresponding table so it’s easy to keep the table tops full.
We find it best to have four to six (we’ll explain the extra two shortly) 18″ stanchions (purchased at a restaurant supply store) with a sign inserted showing the grade levels. This helps the kids find the appropriate table. If you have the tables in front of a wall, you can also put BIG signs behind each table with the grade level printed.
(You can print out the signs from the downloadable kit. Print them on card stock and insert them into the rings of the stantions.) Tape the stanchions down with duct tape! Otherwise they easily fall over.
Why not put the signs in front of the table? Because the kids stand there and can’t see the signs!
Why not just put the table tent signs on the table near the volunteer? Because if the signs aren’t high enough the kids won’t see them. Ideally the signs can be seen over the kids’ heads so they can quickly find their table.
We tried attaching the signs to helium balloons floating 3-4′ above each table, but that didn’t work too well. It’s important that the signs can be seen by the kids (and their parents) so they can go to the right table.
Put the books flat on the table so the full cover of each shows. Do not stack books on top of each other. As trite as it is, kids do pick books by their cover. They need to see the cover, not have it obscured by other books. *Only* put books on top of each other if they are the same book. Then only put 5 in a stack.
For toddlers: We’ve found the best way to give books to babies and toddlers is to put a handful of books on trays and have a volunteer offer these to the parents. Why? When we’ve put them on tables, we find three to five-year-olds take them. We then quickly run out of them. The older kids seem to remember the book when they were younger and want them. But then there aren’t enough for the toddlers. So be judicious with your board books.
The extra stanchions are for any 7th grade+ books and for any foreign language books. You can set up smaller tables for these — even a TV tray with the box of books for the kids to go through. Your need for foreign language books is dependent upon the make up of families in your area.
* Useful supplies for sorting and book giveaway day
- Scotch tape
- Box tape (for repairing damaged boxes/lids)
- Duct tape (you can always use duct tape!)
- Box cutter for opening sealed boxes and breaking down beat up boxes
- Masking tape
- Name tags for volunteers (people work better when they know each other’s names)
- Books For Treats bookmarks and/or stickers
- 4-6 table stanchions to put the grade-level signs in
- Grade-level signs printed on card-stock to insert in stanchions
- Hand cart for moving boxes of books, tables, etc.
- Chairs for volunteers — two per table
- 2-8 trays on which to put the board books to offer kids in strollers and in arms
- Small tables or TV tray/stands for 7+ grade level and Spanish/foreign language books
Optional:
- Donation bags (some parents like to drop a dollar or two in support of the effort)
- Donation signs
- Books For Treats banner