Thank you to our friends and supporters for helping to make our first annual book drive a tremendous success! Over 20,000 books were collected. We got lucky with the weather – a warm fall day, although rain had looked imminent for much of the morning – and that allowed us to do much of the sorting and packing outdoors.

Donations came from all parts – church groups from as far away as Upton, MA and Dennis, MA collected thousands of books on behalf of the drive in the weeks leading up to the event and then dropped them all of on the date of the drive, October 20th. From morning until sunset there was a sea of boxes and bags of donated books filling the parking lot of the Brighton Allston Congregational Church UCC. All unusable books were recycled so there was no waste!

The Boston Globe event sent a photographer to capture the day’s events – a photo spread from the Sunday Oct 21st issue of the Boston Sunday Globe can be downloaded here:

A special thanks to our co-sponsors, City Mission Society of Boston and Better World Books. CMS organized the dozen or so pre-drives that resulted in such a large number of books being collected and also secured the location at Brighton Allston Congregational Church. Better World Books supplied much of the logistical support for the drive, including recycling for unusable books. BWB also provided three of their employees who worked non-stop sorting and packing the thousands of books which were sent to BWB for sale online. See the BWB blog.

Watch for announcements about our second annual drive next year!

Sponsors: