Where to donate lots of books
My wife's parents recently passed away and left many books on a wide variety of subjects in their home. We have no room for additional ones so would like to donate them to worthy causes and we would be grateful for suggestions as to where they might be wanted. We know the public libraries do not want them and we surely do not them to end up in landfill. Thank you for your recommendations.
Dec 4, 2023
Parent Replies
The El Cerrito recycling center has a large area where you can drop off a lot of books.They are later put on shelves there for whoever wants to take them
The El Cerrito Recycling Center has a book area in the Exchange Center where you can drop off books and people can pick them up to read. There are also bins for "donation" but these bins are owned by a company that is not truly non-profit or ethical. Hope this is helpful.
Friends of the Oakland Public Library will take donations of books that can be sold at their store in Oakland.
As it says on this webpage, email them if you have a large amount of books to dontate.
https://www.fopl.org/donation-guidelines
Bookmark bookstore in Oakland! Supports the Oakland Public Library :)
College Preparatory School, on Upper Broadway below Lake Temescal, accepts book donations any time for their annual book sale in late February.
My strategy is to drive down into the front parking lot on a weekend afternoon, when there is minimum commotion from sports and other weekend activities, and find a place to pull over. The book collection area is on the veranda in front of the building to the left (southeast?) of the entry road. People can deposit boxes of donated books at the right end of the veranda. classroom/office building.
In wet weather it might be wise to cover the boxes with plastic sheeting.
The book sale itself is wonderful - not the place to go if you are trying to own fewer books, but I always find great bargains on high quality titles.
You can sell them to Half Price Books and they will take any that they will not give you money for.
Senior Centers like to have books donated to them. Someone just donated multiple boxes of books to the San Ramon Senior Center. There are Senior Centers closer to where you live that may want books.
Have you tried Friends of the Berkeley Public Library? https://www.berkeleylibraryfriends.org/book-donations/
They accept donations for their used books stores.
El Sobrante Library has a “Friends of” nonprofit that has great book sales to support the library. They take drop off donations inside the library.
The College Preparatory School, suggested in a previous response, is often better prepared to accept a large donation than many of the other places that have been mentioned. However, they now collect books on specific dates so you can't just drop them off at other times. The remaining drop-off dates this school year are January 18 and February 15 in advance of the big sale on February 24 and 25. If you have a large donation, they may be able to work with you on scheduling. You can contact the book fair committee at Bookfair at college-prep.org. Or contact me, since I volunteer for the book fair and I can try to help make arrangements.