This year is a blur so far! We hit the ground running in January and haven’t stopped. If you asked me a year ago where MSB would be now I couldn’t have imagined the progress we’ve made. Expectations exceeded is an understatement! We’ve gone from gifting several hundred books a month to distributing 1000s of books a month. We’ve completely outgrown our space and are looking for a new headquarters. We’ve gone from being funded by friends and family to being self sufficient fundraisers. I am just blown away by the dedication of our director Maria, our board members, volunteers and partners. I am so grateful to be part of this amazing community that’s bringing literacy and a love of learning to children and their families.
Let me tell you what we’ve been up to lately…..
BOOK DRIVES
Books, books, books!! Our headquarters has been filled with 10s of 1000s of books collected at book drives for MSB. The Livonia Education Association hosted book drives at their schools and brought in over 8000 books! South Lyon’s key club collected over 5000 books! Blown away by these book drives is an understatement. And thousands more books from Pembroke Elementary, Walled Lake Northern, Bloomfield High School, St Regis School, Bingham Farms, Walled Lake Early Education Center and Our Lady of Good Council. In addition to schools, we’ve had local businesses hosting book drives. We are grateful to DOBI Realtor, Coley, Baron, Tonda, Metzger and Julip Law, The Detroit Athletic Club and Biggby Coffee. And I can’t forget about our local Friends of the Library. Over 3000 books were donated by Hartland, Plymouth, Walled Lake and Westland.
NEW BOOKS
When an organization reaches out to you to see if you want 24 pallets (approximately 30,000 books) of books, you say “YES!” and figure it out later. That’s exactly what happened when the Junior Library Guild reached out to us in February. Two large truck deliveries later, we have gorgeous, new and diverse picture books and graphic novels to share with our target audience!
Our new partner, Storehouse Community Fund, donated 1298 Scholastic chapter books to MSB.
And to round out our new book haul, Habitat for Humanity of Detroit reached out and asked if we’d accept 4 pallets of brand new diverse YA books! YES we can! Another 3147 brand new books!
Having all of these amazing new books now enables us to say “YES” to doing more MSB FreeBook Fairs, supporting more community partners and committing to more summer programming.
SCHOOL DISTRIBUTION
We are still busy providing MSB Free Book Fairs in book deserts. Children living in these underserved communities have inadequate access to books in their homes. Early literacy is an indicator of later in life success.
4320 books were gifted at a Free Book Fair at Dickinson East Elementary in Hamtramck. MSB also visited Lincoln Elementary in Warren and Lessenger Elementary in Madison Heights, providing fairs in which each student self-selected 5 books and a new book tote bag.
Wilkinson Middle School in Madison Heights was in need of books for their recently reopened media center and also wanted to gift books to their students for summer reading. MSB donated almost 2000 books to them, so they could accomplish both of these tasks.
Anna, a middle school teacher at Emerson in Livonia, visited our headquarters and received 326 books for her classroom library. Since her book pickup, she has returned multiple times to volunteer at our HQ. She’s a valuable resource with all of her current knowledge about which titles are popular with students.
And we returned to Clarenceville Middle School and provided over 1000 books for their classroom libraries. It is important that students have access to books that they are interested in to become proficient readers.
COMMUNITY DISTRIBUTION
We are always brainstorming new ways to get books into the hands of kids. This month we piloted our new program MSB Daycare Drop Off at Greater Ebenezer Child Care Center. MSB dropped off a new book tote bag for every child prefilled with 727 age appropriate books to take home. Daycare centers who provide care in underserved communities to those receiving free or subsidized childcare will be targeted for this new program.
Rocket Mortgage‘s volunteer program provides MSB with volunteers at our events in Detroit. They joined us at All Things Women‘s new location and revamped and stocked their residents library with hundreds of books. Rocket volunteers also joined us to lend a helping hand at successful MSB At Home Library events gifting almost 300 books at Brilliant Detroit’s Russelwoods and Littlefield hubs. Each child painted and decorated their own mini-library to take home. They each self-selected 15 books to fill their new home library.
Great Lakes Bay Health Centers services children and families in under-resourced communities. Their pediatric care coordinator, Paige Speer, received 1034 books to distribute to the children they serve.
MSB provided over 300 books to our partner Project Excel of Pontiac for their 2025 literacy night. Project Excel provides fun and innovative after school programs.
COMMUNITY PARTNERS
One of our core values is connection. We value our community of partners, volunteers and leaders. We are not afraid to reach out to organizations that we align with to learn how we can work together. We recently made a new partnership after one of our board members read about a nonprofit in the news! Together, with Storehouse Community Fund, we are hosting an even larger Teachers Shop Free Event this year. Instead of just offering books to teachers, Storehouse is donating new school supplies for us to distribute. Save the date! August 20th we will invite teachers to shop our free event.
Liberia Children’s Community Library Foundation is MSB’s first international partner. They raise funds to transport shipping containers full of books to Liberia. Then they travel to Liberia to distribute the books. Their mission is to empower children by enhancing literacy skills by creating libraries in communities and schools in Liberia. Their founder Flomo Jutte came to the MSB headquarters and picked up 5950 learn to read books for LCCLF. These books will be in the hands of children in Africa next month.
We’ve added another food pantry to our distribution. JoAnn, from Fish & Loaves in Taylor, picked up 2128 brand new books from our storage space. When their clients shop for food they will also shop for books for their children.
And MSB will be keeping the bookshelves full at the First Step Women’s Shelters. First Step provides support to survivors of domestic and sexual abuse.
VOLUNTEERS
Hundreds and hundreds of volunteer hours have been logged at MSB this year. We’d be lost without our volunteers helping us move, count and sort books. We’ve had so many parent/child duos lately! In addition to Ford, and Blue Cross Blue Shield volunteers, we are now partnered with Comerica Bank and they are sending amazing volunteers our way. We are on the second floor and thanks to our amazing fleet of helpers, the books are lugged up and down constantly.
Because of our devoted volunteers the majority of the 30,000 books we were gifted by the Junior Library Guild have made their way from storage to our headquarters this month. Boy Scout troop 308 lent a hand and transported 5,000 of these books! We only have one or two trailer fulls left to move.
I am beyond grateful for our repeat VIP volunteers, they know the ins and outs of all we do and are invaluable assets to our organization!
FUNDRAISING
Our non-profit community partners have really shown up for us this quarter.
Bookstock Michigan awarded us a $1250 grant and will be donating all of their leftover children’s books to us! Bookstock is a community service project through which donations of books are sold at an indoor book sale at Laurel Park Mall. This year it takes place April 27th- May 4th. Proceeds from the sale support education and literacy projects in the Detroit metropolitan area and beyond. Bookstock has raised over $2million for local literacy programs.
The Livonia AM Rotary Club gave us a $1000 grant. And the Livonia Education Foundation not only collected over 8,000 books for MSB, they also gave us a $250 grant.
Platinum Cargo discounted our shipping cost and gave us a $522 in-kind donation to help get the 30,000 Junior Library Guild books from Dublin Ohio to us. Thanks Steve and Diane for facilitating the trucks for us.
Do you give gift cards to your friends, family, teachers? We have collaborated with RaiseRight to fundraise. When you purchase your gift cards from RaiseRight they donate a percentage of your purchase to us. There is no additional cost to you, just a wonderful donation to Making Spirits Bright from your purchase. Check out their website here, and click the “join program’ button to see all the gift card options.
What’s ahead? We are working with a select number of subsidized summer camps in book deserts to present Pop Up Book Fairs to help with the summer slide. We will continue collecting, sorting and getting books back out to the community because that’s what it means to be a book bank!!
Come visit us and donate your gently used books at our HQ. 28580 Orchard Lake Rd, Suite 201, Farmington Hills, 48334. Our hours vary and are listed here.
Tracy, Distribution Leader
PS We are a 501(c)3 and accept monetary donations from individuals and organizations. Please consider donating here.
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