Education by Donation: Better World Books
- Mar 16, 2015
- 2 min read
“We were founded in 2002 by three friends from the University of Notre Dame who started selling textbooks online to earn some money, and ended up forming a pioneering social enterprise — a business with a mission to promote literacy.” ~ Better World Books
Plenty of companies donate a portion of their profits to the community, however, the fact that Better Worlds Books’ main purpose is to serve the community separates them from the rest of the crowd. A plethora of companies perform work in the global community, but their main priority remains to continue to make profits, and sometimes this can affect how much and how often companies can donate. Numerous schools in third world countries operate solely on donations from outside companies and cannot afford to stop receiving donations because their provider is no longer making profits. Better Worlds Books’ main goal is to provide for those in need around the world and will not stop supporting literacy because of a loss in profits.
When the company first started in 2002, it sold used books and utilized the profits to support other literacy groups and libraries. It also used the money to buy books to donate to communities who couldn’t afford to supply books. On August 15, 2011, they started their Book for Book™ program where they promised to donate a book for every book that was purchased in addition to the services they were already providing.
“So far, the company has converted more than 117 million books into over $15 million in funding for literacy and education. In the process, we’ve also diverted more than 73,000 tons of books from landfills.” ~ Better World Books
The books are donated to those in need through Feed the Children and Books for Africa with free shipping that has a small carbon footprint on the environment. Any books that can not be donated are recycled to form other books rather than thrown into a landfill.
Written by Eke Wokocha
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