Introduction: Easy Book Drive at Your School

Regardless of your motivations for organizing a book drive, they happen to benefit the community, look impressive to colleges and leave a lasting impression on your school. How many high school students can say they have an actual legacy they've left to their school?

What really counts in life in making positive changes and this one happens to demand no money for you and about five hours of leg work, max.

How is this so easy? Simple. The raffle method.

Step 1: The Raffle Method

Ahh, the raffle. We all love a chance to win something big that we paid around 25 cents for. What you have to do is approach the principal/English Honor Society sponsor with this idea:

1. You want to hold a book drive ( for required reading books/SAT/ AP review books/books in general)

2. You need a $25 dollar gift certificate to Borders or a local book store because

3. Everyone who contributes a book will get a raffle ticket. 1 book = 1 ticket. This way, a person's contribution will be proportionate to their chance of winning.

4. Promise him/her to do the legwork in distributing books (I'm sure you can round up a few friends to help)

5. Ask if you (or him/her) can put an announcement in the morning news advertising your bookdrive

Step 2: Your Legwork

This involves asking a teacher if they would be willing to have a big box in the corner of their classroom that will slowly fill with books. This is no effort for them, so they'll most likely say yes. Try asking a well known teacher, someone who most students will be able to find easily.

Once you have said box in place, get to advertising. Put up posters around the school, around your community, and have an announcement put on the school web page. If you do this in conjunction with your English Honor Society (highly recommended) you will have a built in base of
donations.

Ask English teachers to mention the book drive to their classes (print up an information sheet).

Get the word out through your friends, parents, teachers and anyone else who will listen.

NOTE: By the box, have a stack of tickets which will have spaces to write the person's name and phone number. Yes, they might have to do this a couple times, but their chances increase.

Step 3: The Aftermath

OK, so you've collected a lot of books. Pick the winning ticket and call the person/declare it over the morning announcements. Give them the gift certificate and congratulate them. Congratulate yourself, as well. You've got a pile of books!

Now, all you have to do is sort them and distribute them to the appropriate classrooms. English teachers sometimes have little libraries inside their rooms which could very well be the destination of your collection. Or, if you collected AP review books, just give them to the respective AP teachers.

If you get books more appropriate to middle schools or elementary schools, just drive by and drop them off (you might want to call first, actually). They could also go to a special needs classroom. You could also see if a church might have use for them as well.

This might take a couple hours, but if you delegate, it will be much less.
Make sure that people will continue this when you're gone to college. Talk to the principal, your younger friends, or members of the English-related clubs.

Let me know what you think and if you choose to do this!