[Bookstoprisoners] Re: Assistance with Large Book Donation

[Jane Mohraz]

I've always been dubious about this donation largely because (1) it is large and we don't really know what we're getting, (2) if we could sell most of them on line, that would be great but since we don't know what they are, we don't know that we can sell them, (3) law books are usually large and heavy, which means big postage bills and most prisoners won't have much room to store them, (4) prisoners do ask for law books, but they usually don't know exactly what they want--torte law, college text books, etc. probably wouldn't be of much interest or use to them, (5) where are we going to store a van worth of books? (6) what are we going to do with the books that aren't sellable or of interest/use to prisoners?

I don't think we should acquire these books without at least Deb looking at them, which probably isn't possible. I definitely don't think we should rent a van unless we're pretty sure we can get rid of these books quickly and make a lot of money on them.

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jay Schubert 
  To: BTP 
  Sent: Friday, August 17, 2007 7:07 AM
  Subject: [Bookstoprisoners] Re: Assistance with Large Book Donation


  I've only gotten one or two responses to this request.  Barbara suggested renting a van one way, but this plan would require the additional help of others to meet her there as well as the cost of renting the vehicle.  If you are a person willing to do the driving, now is your chance to say so. 

  Unfortunately if there are no other ideas brought forward, I will have to tell the donor that we are not able to collect this donation.  I'll be calling her tonight to tell her this unless anyone feels strongly enough about us picking up these books to come up with a plan for getting them. 

  Thanks,
  Jay


  On 8/14/07, Jay Schubert <jay.schubert at gmail.com> wrote:
    All,

    Yesterday I got a call from an employee of a legal clinic, which does pro bono work at Northwestern University.  Last Spring they did a book drive with the intention of donating the materials to incarcerated juveniles.  They ended up with about 900 books, a majority of which are legal text books, many of which are college text books.  They would like to donate the books to our organization and understand that many of the text books may be marketed to pay for our operating expenses. 

    If we are to collect this donation (from Evanston / North Chicago) it will probably take some coordination, but could be very beneficial to us.  The donation needs to be collected before August 31.  The donor estimates that the books would require more than a single trip in a minivan.  The books are shelved, and we'd need to bring our own boxes and it doesn't sound like there will be many people around on their end to help us load.  They will be able to coordinate with us if it takes more than one trip.  Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but it sounds likely that the text books have the potential to generate considerably more revenue (by selling on amazon) than any book sale we've held so far. 

    Are you interested / willing to help collect this donation?  Do you have any creative ideas about how to get it down here?  If we aren't able to formulate a plan in the next couple few days, I will recommend that the donor contact one of the Chicago based projects. 

    Thanks,

    Jay





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