Experience with Better World Books Discard Program Leads to Adoption of Drop Boxes

BWB Drop Box ProgramGwinnett County Public Library

GCPL already had a relationship with BWB through its discard program and viewed the Drop Box

Program as a new service from a company they already trusted. For GCPL, one of the primary

advantages of implementing the BWB Drop Box Program was the ability to give the community a

service they wanted—a way to reuse books and benefit the library.

Jane Walters, Division Director - Business Services, and Deidre Falcon, Business Officer, say it’s

easy for staff to explain to customers who want to discard their used books the benefits of using

the drop boxes. With the BWB program the books placed in the drop boxes can be sold online,

donated to literacy programs or physically recycled and the library benefits financially from the

program.

Although it’s not really possible to measure the impact of the bins on library traffic, anecdotally

Stanbery-Kellam says there is probably a correlation in that people who come to the library to

drop books into the bins probably come into the library, too. But that aside, she says, people really

appreciate the bins as a new library service.

Located northeast of Atlanta, the Gwinnett County Public Library (GCPL) serves a diverse and changing community from fifteen branch locations. The recent economic downturn created budgeting challenges for the library and, according to Executive Director Nancy Stanbery-Kellam, the drop box program offered by Better World Books helped put strategies in place to increase self-generated revenue.

From the outset, GCPL was impressed with Better World Book's monitoring of the drop boxes.

From the outset, GCPL was impressed with BWB’s monitoring of the drop boxes.

“BWB provides excellent service in emptying the boxes,” says Falcon. “They remotely

monitor the bins and empty them promptly. Customers can also notify BWB if a bin

is full.”

Stanbery-Kellam, Walters, and Falcon highlight the following benefits of using

BWB’s Drop Box Program to manage their donations.

• New source of revenue for the library. GCPL started the Drop Box Program in

April 2011. By July 2012 there were 15 active library bins, which continue to be

maintained. These 15 bins have raised almost $29,000 for the library. Stanbery-

Kellam says the library underestimated the generosity of the community. “We

receive detailed reports on all the bins so we can evaluate which ones are

performing well. Month to month the community has over-delivered in the

number of books placed into the bins. This has been great for the library as well as

for the community that clearly wants to give to the library.”

• Minimum amount of work for staff. “Managing a donation program is a

tremendous amount of work. With BWB, we just direct people to the drop boxes

and explain the benefits of reusing/recycling books.”

• Service to the community. The BWB Drop Box Program has allowed GCPL

to increase service to the community by providing an opportunity for people to

repurpose used books and benefit the library. This makes people feel good about

supporting the library.

In the final analysis, Stanbery-Kellam says, “The BWB Drop Box Program has been

very successful for GCPL. We spent the time up front to make sure it would work

the way we wanted and it has performed beyond what we thought it would.” Or,

as Falcon puts it: “The hardest part of the program is taking checks to the bank and

depositing them.”

The hardest part of the program is taking checks to the bank and depositing them.

GCPL Program Results

$28,979.58 Dollars Raised from 15 GCPL Boxes

(2011 through May 2013)

348,356

Number of Books Donatedby the Community

5,311 Number of Trees Saved

through Book Reuse

Benefits of BWB’s Drop Box Program