Listed below are the most common questions about Better World Books and our operations. For additional information, please email us at info@betterworldbooks.com.
Is Better World Books a non-profit?
Although the main focus of Better World Books is to raise money for literacy while reducing waste in the environment, we are not a non-profit organization. Better World Books is a for-profit social venture.
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What is a for-profit social venture?
For-profit social ventures operate under a for-profit business model in which success is measured by the positive impact a company makes in addressing a specific social issue. In the case of Better World Books, that issue is literacy. The primary purpose of a for-profit social venture is to generate a “social profit†by harnessing the power of commerce.
Operating as a social venture enables Better World Books to provide our non-profit literacy and education partners with a consistent and stable source of funding. That, in turn, allows the organizations to focus on implementing effective literacy and education programs -- instead of spending an inordinate amount of time raising funds.
The nature of our business model allows Better World Books to react swiftly to market opportunities, thereby leveraging the maximum social profit through the wonders of capitalism. As a sustainable venture, we do not rely on government or foundation grants or aid of any kind.
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What is your relationship to your non-profit partners?
Better World Books acts as their exclusive agent to collect book donations on their behalf.
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How much social profit has Better World Books generated for its non-profit literacy and education partners?
As of September 2006, Better World Books has raised more than $1.3
million for approximately 70 literacy and education non-profit
organizations.
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How do you collect the books?
Books collected by Better World Books come from two primary sources:
the 900-plus college and university campuses on which we run textbook
drives and the 500-plus libraries and thrift stores that send us
discarded and donated books.
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What do you do with the books that are collected?
Better World Books sorts through the collected books and determines the
best possible use for each one. We then sell the book to raise money
for our non-profit literacy partners, send it to one of our non-profit
literacy partners, or, if we can find no after-market use for the book,
we recycle it.
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Do you throw any books away?
Never. We pride ourselves on our ability to derive the maximum value
from every book collected by Better World Books. Any book that cannot
be sold or used directly by our literacy partners is recycled. To date,
we have diverted five million pounds of books from landfills.
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