Our Impact

As a social enterprise, the impact our business has on others and the environment is our driving force. We're really proud of everything we've achieved so far with our US operation:

Social Impact

  • We’ve worked with student organisations at 1,800 colleges/universities and librarians at over 1,400 libraries across America to collect over 16.4 million books.
  • We’ve raised over $3.1 million for educational charities and other not-for-profit organisations at home and abroad, including:
    • More than $1.7 million for Books for Africa
    • More than $325,000 for Room to Read
    • More than $402,000 for the National Center for Family Literacy
    • More than $62,000 for Worldfund
    • More than $87,000 for the Robinson Community Learning Center
    • More than $510,000 for additional literacy partners
  • And we’ve raised more than $2.1 million for libraries and charity shops across the United States.
  • Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 we started working closely with the New Orleans Public Library Foundation to help rebuild the city’s libraries. We’ve donated over $80,000 so far.

    • Impact Story from Room to Read

  • We’ve also donated more than 1.1 million books to our charity partners for use in their programmes.

Environmental Impact

  • We've kept over 8,170 tons of books from ending up in landfill sites.
  • All the shelves we use to store the books in our huge warehouse were reclaimed from libraries – again, saved from landfill.
  • We worked with carbonfund.org to develop the first 'Carbon Neutral Shopping Cart.' We off-set the carbon emissions of all sales from our own online bookshop – over 4,720 tons so far.

Economic Impact

  • We’ve created over 218 full-time jobs with full benefits , and revitalised a dormant packaging plant in Indiana.

Better World Books UK

Better World Books UK is launching in the UK in 2008 and aiming to further increase this impact. We’ll be working with British charities and supporting efforts to improve literacy both in Britain and around the world. Watch this space for updates as to how we’re getting on!

Why the Facts and Figures Matter

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship reports that socially entrepreneurial individuals and organisations possess, “a zeal to measure and monitor their impact,” adding that, “Entrepreneurs have high standards, particularly in relation to their own organisation’s efforts and in response to the communities with which they engage. Data, both quantitative and qualitative, are their key tools, guiding continuous feedback and improvement.”

We recognise ourselves in that description. As a social enterprise dedicated to finding new uses for old books and supporting efforts to improve literacy, Better World Books is simply 'facts and figures'-obsessed.