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