Fundraising For Book Worms

Fundraising for charity can be tricky!  Not a week goes by, but there is a knock at our door and a gaggle of kids clustered behind one child who is asking for sponsorship for a walk or a readathon or similar. I make a point of asking them what the money is for and they often answer with the event, the walk or the run or whatever, or the name of the school or club they are linked to. 'No,' I say, 'is the money going to a charity? Which one?' Cue baffled kids looking at the bit of paper they have for me to sign. We usually get there!

One friend I have recently made has taken to fundraising with a zeal that has really impressed me. I met Caroline in Dublin, during the time that her daughter Seren was in the ICU in Crumlin Children's Hospital in Dublin. Seren was born with a very complex heart condition, which meant that she had already undergone several complex surgeries, despite being a few weeks old. Sadly, one of those surgeries proved too much for her body to handle, and she passed away in January, when she was just over 12 weeks old.

Since then, Caroline has set up the Seren Joan Memorial Fund (https://www.facebook.com/groups/SerenJoanBoylan/) and has connected with a huge amount of people to look for ways to raise money in Seren's memory, all of which goes to Crumlin Children's Hopsital. She recently took part in the mini marathon in Dublin, along with about 90 other women, which raised over 10 grand! TEN GRAND! Wow! Other events that have come on board have been: coffee mornings, a weight loss challenge, a golf tournament and a tropical party night. 
I had been mulling over the idea of holding a book swap for ages and Caroline inspired me to make it happen and to use it to raise money for Seren's fund. It was a great night and so far we have raised over 300 Euro.  Not exactly matching the 10 thousand from the marathon, but, as they say, every little helps!   Holding a Book Swap is really very straightforward, so here's a quick How To Guide in ten steps:

1. The Books. Have your house painted. The inside that is. This will make you take all your books off the bookshelves in order to move them and, once you have stopped sneezing from all the dust, be ruthless in sorting through them. The key questions: 'Am I likely to ever read this again?' 'Has anything from this book stayed with me?' If the answer is no, put the book aside. Accumulate a nice pile of discarded books and wonder what to do with them.

2.   The Place. Have a friend who likes reading, with a nice house, with room to hold an event. Preferably with rooms that open out into each other. She will also need a decent sized dining room table and a separate smaller table for children's books. (Garden furniture optional for the children's books.) Be nice to this friend and talk her into holding the Book Swap. 

3. The Date. Pick a date. Preferably a weekend evening so people can stay late-ish. You will find that people will browse through the books 3 or 4 times, picking up a few each time, so you want it to be a social occasion where they hang out and relax and keep wandering back to the books with a glass of wine in their hand and crisps nearby. You don't want them to pop in for 5 minutes and leave with only 2 novels and a recipe book. The aim is to have to help them carry their books to the car, as they have so many to take home.

4.  The Invitation. Get the word out!  Be very clear in your communication on a few key points: Bring books. On the night the books will cost money, set price of: whatever. (We opted for 2 Euro per book.) This is fundraising for this specific charity: whichever. 
You can learn from our mistake on this one - we didn't ask folks to RSVP and have been uncertain all week about who would come and therefore unsure of numbers. This has been tricky in terms of catering and planning. It worked out very well in the end, but was stressful in the lead up! As the main point is fundraising - ask folks to bring their book worm friends with them. The invitations need to be welcoming to all, as opposed to excluding people you didn't happen to get an invitation to.
I also sent out a big text, inviting a bunch of other local friends I knew I might not see in time to chat to.
People who can't come can still give you their old books and they can also donate if they want to!  But they need to know about both opportunities...  Texting, Facebook and chats at the school gate is the way to go here.  After the night, I texted loads of people who had expressed an interest but not been able to come. I let them know how much we raised and thanked them for their support and offered them the chance to still give.  I got a lot more donations that way, which was terrific. People really are incredibly generous.

5.  The Catering. You can either go for dessert and coffee, or wine and nibbles.  We kind of went for both and it worked well!  We probably over-catered in the end as there was a lot left. We included a line on the invitation, asking anyone who was willing to bake to send me a text. About 2 people did.  So I just ended up asking a few people if they could bake or buy some crisps and nuts to bring. Next time, I would just do that and not bother waiting to hear back from people.

6. The Set Up. Having co-run 2 of these, it works best if the books and the food are near-ish to each other so people can nibble treats and keep sidling up to the books. It's also a good idea to have a seating area with crisps etc a bit separate as people gradually drift away from the books and start chatting. Kitchen - food. Dining Table - books. Living Room - chat. The open planned house as mentioned earlier is great for this as it keeps people moving around easily and interacting with all parts of the evening.

7. The Money. Best to be discreet on this one, but not so discreet that people forget to donate! We put a tupperware tub in the middle of the table of books and there was money in it from the start to indicate what its purpose was.  People were generally overly generous and gave more than their haul's worth. But I certainly wasn't checking what was put in relative to the books people left with. 

8. The Night Itself. Get to your nice friend's house early to help set up. NB: this does not mean taking all the good books and concealing them for yourself! In fact, as the host(ess) you need to assume you will not really get to the books until much later as you will be busy getting coffee and unloading other people's books on the table. So accept that you will perhaps miss out on some of the books you liked the look of, try to see who got them so you can borrow them another time, and put the kettle on.
Apart from separating children's and adults books, there is no real need to group the books. We did try to put all books by the same author together a bit, or multiple copies of the same book. But by the time 2 or 3 people have looked through the books and passed titles to each other, they will be muddled. And people will be arriving with new books all the time. As long as it's a 4 sided table and there is space to stand and pick up books, people will be able to see them all. 
One important thing: it's handy if your nice friend has a nice husband who makes a mellow and appealing playlist for the night; this sets a lovely tone and atmosphere for the night.
If you are a keen reader, it's a brilliant night. You get to recommend books and chat about them and get other people excited about books you have enjoyed. With cake. 

9. The Follow Up. It's really important to let folks know how much money you raised.  I plan to post a few pictures too, including one of the money being given to Caroline. We used Facebook and Text to thank people and let them know what we raised.

10. The Leftover Books. You need to have a plan beforehand, as you will be left with books at the end of the evening, as really NO ONE wants a book on Wine Tasting or a schooldays copy of As You Like It. We were lucky; our church fete was on the next day, so a load of books went into my car for that. Another friend had a charity collection of books at work later in the week, so she took a box. The rest, we parcelled into a few bags and on Monday we plan to go round all the local charity shops and donate to each of them. 

A few final tips: 
Have empty bags or boxes to hand for people to bring their books home. 
Next time I would consider the possibility of adding DVDs to the list, setting their price slightly higher than the books, I imagine. But don't accept videos, as many charity shops won't accept them any more and you will be stuck with them. 
I would not recommend adding clothes to the mix - this is really a very different kind of evening.  You don't have to try books or dvds on, and you can go home happy without feeling that you are too fat to read that book you really liked...  No mirrors needed either, to see if you would suit that book with the nice cover. 
I think it would be an awful lot of work to try to hold this on your own. It has worked really well for me, organising with one other friend each time. You can each play to your strengths and share out the logisitical bits and pieces.

Overall, I recommend it as a very fun way to raise a bit of money, especially if you are a keen reader. Don't expect to raise thousands, but expect to have a great time. I love the way that even getting rid of the leftover books benefits charities, it's such a simple event with great results like this. I came home with 5 new books and 4 new Mr Men books for the boys - a great haul!

 There is an alternative to all of this of course:  I could have opted not to have my house painted, given the money that would have cost me to charity, thereby circumventing all of the above. But I wouldn't have any new books...

Why Book Clubs are Brilliant

To date I have been a member of 3 book clubs and have absolutely loved it! Currently, I am in 2, each of which meet once a month and one of which I started 2 and a half years ago. It is still going strong, although all of the original members except myself are no longer in it! (It wasn't anything I said....!)

My first book club was started by a friend in Dun Laoghaire and I went for about 6 months before starting my own slightly nearer to home. The experience of being in a group of people who like books and have opinions and questions to ask was great - I loved it.  It was helpful to see how group was run as well, to get an idea of what works and what doesn't as I started my own.

Personally, I don't think it works very well to have it in people's homes.  It puts a lot of pressure on the person hosting, especially if a group culture develops in which there is an expectation of home baked treats or wine and nibbles.  And what is the other half supposed to do while a horde of book clutching women invades the living room?  If the kids are unsettled, this can be very disruptive as well.  One memorable occasion that really sealed the deal for me on this one was when the rest of us had to wait an hour, an HOUR, for the hostess to get her kids to sleep before we could start to discuss the book.  Her husband was also at home, but apparently she had to be in the room until they were asleep.  Call me insensitive, but I was NOT impressed!

So, we meet in a hotel bar - much more relaxed!  We have a few other rules too: we try to keep to books of 400 pages or less so that you have about 100 pages per week.  The intention is to prevent it feeling like homework, as you plough through a tome a month with an eye on the calendar.  Book Club is meant to be a social, fun part of life - not another item on your to do list.  Another rule: you can't suggest a book on hearsay - you have to have actually read it. And if your book suggestion is on that month, you are asked to have at least one question to get a discussion started.  This last rule is more of a suggestion than a rule and isn't really followed!

We have read some great books and some that I have hated.  Ok, that's a bit strong, but really not enjoyed anyway. Here are a few we have read:

Our absolute number unanimous favourite was: (deep breath) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows. It starts slowly, but blossoms into a beautiful, moving and quirky story. It is set in World War 2 and explores the story of Guernsey under German Occupation.  This was an aspect of WW2 of which I was only hazily aware and it was really fascinating with some truly great characters. 

Our second favourite was The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  What a book!  It has so many ingredients: a social commentary, a misfit finding her place, danger and drama, political turmoil, women in different spheres of society and one of the bitchiest characters ever to get her comeuppance in a truly memorable way! We all really enjoyed reading this and I remember it being a great discussion.

The book we least enjoyed was Letters to Sebastian.  I don't remember the author and haven't kept the book, which tells its own story. The premise was good - a Dad who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis writes to loads of famous, clever and interesting people, mostly in Ireland, and asks them to write a letter to his son with advice for his life. The letters ranged from dull and pointless to totally trite and cliched, with the most random being a huge essay on fishing. It just didn't really work, but could have been great if the initial letter asking for input had had clearer parameters.

Another we didn't like much was The Slap by Christos Tsolkias.  It has a promising plot: at a suburban barbecue, a man slap a child that isn't his own.  The books charts the repercussions of this within the social group.  I picked this book and thought it was an interesting idea, especially in a group where so many of us have young kids. What became apparent however was that the characters were just horribly narcissistic and mostly drugged up or drunk for a lot of the time. I couldn't relate to any of them and there was no one who was sympathetic, which made for an annoying read in the end.

If you are not in a book club, but thinking about finding one -go for it!  But try and figure out if your group is about serious literature only, or a mix of different genres. Are the other members big readers or are most of them only reading this one book a month? It makes a difference and it's helpful to think about how much of a reader you are before you commit to it.  That's why some of the original members left; I think they liked the idea of being in a book club, but found it hard to prioritise the actual reading as it really wasn't something they would have been doing anyway.

For me, one of the best things has been discovering authors I would never have been drawn to, but have really enjoyed. Sometimes my expectations have been completely confounded and I have loved a book I expected to hate - this was true for The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Other times, the opposite was true - like The Slap. Andrew reckons we chat about the book for all of five minutes before just chatting and gossiping...  This is not the case!  We do of course have great chats about life in general and I have made some good friends through the club. But we absolutely discuss the books and it's a great way to find out what people think about things that might not come up in every day conversation.

The next book club meeting is a week tomorrow and we are looking at The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls - a fantastic book. But I already know that one member didn't like it at all. That will make for a good evening's discussion and I am already looking forward to it!