Category: Forest Grove fundraiser

On with the show

The Friends Spring Used Book Sale made over $7,600 for library programs. It was of one of our most successful sales ever.

It would not have been possible without the efforts of more than 70 volunteers. Those volunteers were recruited and scheduled by Katie Allnutt, herself a volunteer and board member of Friends for two decades. Katie also volunteered weekly in the library, sorting donations and filling, over the years, four or more boxes of books sorted books each week. It takes over 200 boxes of sorted books to put on each sale and, it is safe to day, Katie touched most of them. Thank you, Katie!

Our next sale will be October 22 – 24. We welcome your donations. We start the sale inventory from scratch twice a year. Please see the Donations page of this website for how to donate books and other materials for the sale and for other ways you can help support Friends of the Forest Grove Library.

Friends Spring Used Book Sale

Schedule
The sale will begin with a Members Only Pre-Sale, Wednesday evening, May 13 from 5:30 to 7:30. Only current Friends of the Forest Grove Library members will be admitted. Memberships may be acquired or renewed at the door.
The general admission sale is scheduled for Thursday, May 14 through Saturday, May 16. Hours correspond with the Library’s open hours: Thursday 9:30–7:30, Friday and Saturday 9:30–5:30. Over 8,000 books and other media will be on sale.

Prices
Hardback books are $3, mass market paperbacks (4″ wide) $1, other paperbound books $2, children’s books and coffee table books are priced as marked, CDs, LPs and audio books are $1 and multi-title media sets are $3.

Members Discount
On Friday, May 15, current members of Friends of the Forest Grove Library get a 20% discount on their purchases. Memberships can be started or renewed at the book sale. Dues have been updated recently: $25 Individual / $50 Family / $100 Sustaining. Members will each receive Welcome Packets and Sustaining members will also receive one of our Friends’ Totes.

All members will continue to receive a newsletter (twice a year), invitation to our Annual Meeting (held in April each year), and can select to receive digital reminders of Friends’ sales.

Bag Sale
On Saturday, May 16, all shoppers can fill standard brown paper grocery bags with books and other media and pay just $10 per bag full.

You can help
Volunteers make the sale possible. We need and appreciate your help with set-up (Monday, May 11 to Wednesday, May 13), the sale itself (Thursday, the 14th to Saturday, the 16th) and to clean-up (the morning of Monday, May 18). Please contact Katie Allnutt at allnutt@frontier.com to schedule your preferred job and time slot. Volunteers get two free books of their choice for each shift.

Dealer alert: Friends volunteers have screened book donations and library discards and removed some of them for sale online.

What happens to the books you donate?

Books and other materials donated to the Forest Grove City Library are first reviewed by Library Staff to see if they should be added to the Library’s inventory.

For those that are not selected, and for books de-selected from the Library collection by staff, Friends of the Library volunteers check used book prices online to pick out those that are valued at $8 or more. Most of them will be put on sale at Amazon.com under Friends’ dealership name, “forestgrovelibraryfriends.”  Friends have more than 2600 books on sale through Amazon and these online sales will net more than $8,000 for the Library during the Friends fiscal year.

Books in good condition that are not selected for online sales are sorted by Friends volunteers for the twice-a-year book sales and for ongoing sales in the library. The twice-a-year sales are Friends’ primary income source.  They have been making about $10,000 a year.  The ongoing in-library sales are a new Friends project.

Making money for the Library is one of Friends’ top priorities but this process for library donations and discards has other benefits: (1) Between donations and discards, the library has around 12,000 books to dispose of every six months, (2) turning donations away would be bad for the Library’s public relations, (3) friends efforts make money for library programs and help recirculate these books in our own community.

Help Friends Help Your Library

Have your income taxes done at H&R Block, and take this form to your Block Tax Professional.  If you are a new Block customer, the company will give $20 to Friends of the Forest Grove Library.

Another way to easily donate to Friends is through the AmazonSmile program.  When Amazon customers log on through the smile.amazon.com site, 0.5% of the sales price of most of the items they purchase will be donated by the Amazon Foundation to Friends of the Forest Grove Library.  No cost is incurred by either the purchaser or Friends.  None of the purchaser’s privileges at Amazon (Amazon Prime benefits, for example) are affected when buying through AmazonSmile.

The first time you log on to smile.amazon.com, you will be asked to name the non-profit organization of your choice.  To do so, there is a search option.  The registered name for Friends is Friends of the Forest Grove Public Library, Inc.

This is an easy way to help your Friends of the Library and your Forest Grove City Library at no cost to you!  Make it a habit to log on to Amazon through smile.amazon.com.

 Or write a check!  We don’t have a ‘donate button’ on this website yet but don’t let that stop you from donating to Friends! Send your check, with a note that it’s a donation, to: Friends of the Forest Grove Library 2114 Pacific Ave. Forest Grove, OR 97116

Friends’ federal tax ID: 93-6089869