Our Story
Mission
Local Book Donations has the sole purpose of making it easier to donate your books locally. We shine the spotlight on literacy charities, libraries, book drives, and general charities that accept book donations in your area.
Our goal is twofold:
- to make it easier to find a place near you to give your books to, and;
- to promote the great work that organizations do in their local area.
Please note: we don’t accept any book donations ourselves! We get comments on our guides a lot, but there’s no way for us to take the books, we suggest local organizations who specialize in this.
More About Who’s Behind The Brand
I’m Tom, and I created Local Book Donations with my wife, Meegan. I’m a recent transplant from London to Cleveland, Ohio.
Back in England, I used to work for a children’s book publisher. In my time there as a marketer, I came up with a number of campaigns that saw us donate hundreds of bespoke, personalized books to hospices and hospitals in the UK and US for children to enjoy. It was amazing seeing the impact books had on children who needed some joy in their lives.
I also created The Book Donation Map of America, which was designed to highlight local places all over America which would take your used books. The map received an overall positive reception, and even became an award-winning piece of content. All this made me realize the joy that a book, new or old, can bring someone.
That’s me back in 2019, visiting a local hospice where we donated over 40 personalized books. Damn, time flies.
I was proud to create a number of cool book-related content campaigns such as the Literary Tube Map of London in my time there too. I left my role at the company in 2021 but my passion for connecting people with books still remained, which was why I set up this website.
My wife, Meegan is an avid reader and also contributes to the site when she has some free time. In the future, we are going to look at helping out local book charities here in Cleveland, Ohio, and maybe even form our own project. For now, we’re busy trying to create the most comprehensive list of places to donate your old books in America, and beyond.
What larks!
Hi Tom, thanks for making such a nifty website. There are a couple of things you missed about the Dayton Book Fair— like the fact that we will also come pick up your donations, that we give away approximately 50,000 books a year including stocking a free book truck, sending a pallet of children’s books to Liberia and another to RIF— and through Rabbit Hole Books, our brick and mortar store downtown. We take in around 70 tons in donations per year and have through the last half century turned that into over 3 million dollars for other nonprofits. We have only one Book Fair a year, the second weekend in November., it is the largest in the region. Unlike some of the other worthy organizations mentioned, we are a 501c3 registered Ohio charity. Let me know if you’d like to talk further. (937) 781-6561 or daytonbookfair@gmail.com