Donations Policy

Several people responded to Elizabeth's question before I could post it here. I am copying and pasting all the replies here:

Jenni Harvey

I have just restarted a dormant church library so i am just working on this. I have a donation box in my library and its just put books here i look at them if they work I shelve them which all have fit so far but if not i plan on having stash and when it gets good sized sell to half price books and turn what ever I get into viable books for the library. that way even if the books aren't used in the library the donor is contributing to the library.

Sally Creed

Our library has a summer reading program every summer. This will be my first year to help organize and publicize it. We have decided to stick with the same theme we used last year, but I was wondering if any of you had ideas on how to encourage participation, if you gave prizes, incentives, etc.

Denise Roberts

We do a reading challenge every summer and winter. We have always done prizes AND incentives to get more participation. Debbie, my other half in the library :-), is a master at laying out the ideas to get participation. She contacts local merchants who give out coupons for free ice cream, meals for kids, or other things they might offer. Then we allow the families to pick coupons throughout the challenge to keep them going. We finish with a reading party and invite the participating families. Everyone gets something, but the participants who have worked the hardest receive nicer prizes. Then we take pictures and post them in our church newsletter. We usually have some kind of theme for our party that relates to the program we did for that summer. Debbie has put together 4 or 5 programs so we can rotate through them, and no one has to do the same one at the same level twice. It is quite effective.

Barbara Brown

Would you share the 4 or 5 programs with us?

Sure! Here are our programs, with a description of each one. Keep in mind that the basic goal for each one is to get participants reading books from the church library, and to get them reading across a variety of genres and authors. The package just looks different!

Some of our programs are just for kids, some include teens/adults. The age groups are generally:

Pre-K and K; gr. 1-3; gr. 3-6; teen/adult.

Our programs last seven weeks.

1. Book Bingo - for this we created bingo sheets for each age group, with 20 (teen/adult) or 25 (everyone else) squares. Inside each square is an age-appropriate assignment, for example, read a mystery. read a book of your choice. read an Arch book. read a book with a blue cover. etc. Participants can bring their cards each week and receive a coupon for rows/columns completed, with a limit of, as I recall, four coupons per card. I think we also limit the number of Bingo cards they may complete during the program.

2. Reading By The Numbers. For this one, my son created large numbers (1 2 3 4 5 6 7) for us, almost filling a page, each divided into six or seven different sections. Inside each section is an assignment. Some of them are book assignments, others are writing (for example, write a poem about God; write about a book you read) or drawing (draw about a book you read); some are easy like, read in the car or read in a tree or read a book to a small child. Then we collect the drawings and writings and (with parental permission) post them on the wall in the hallway outside the library. I like this one because it is much more low-key than the others and I think having something less challenging every four or five years is a good idea.

3. All About Books! We created booklets (8 1/2x11 sheets of paper folded in half), with an assignment on each page. The assignment includes the type of book to read, and then has some questions about the book or an assignment like drawing a picture or describing something about it. There are sixteen pages in the booklet and they can present four pages maximum per week to receive a coupon.

4. Choose Your Own Adventure (we're doing this one for the second time this year and I'm thrilled because it's my favorite). For each of four age groups we created ten different Adventure Cards. The cards are called things like All Creatures Great and Small; God Made The World; Author, Author!; Whodunnit?; A Classic Selection; A Dewey Decimal Escapade; I Love Series; You Choose; Parables Tell A Story...etc, etc. Each card then has an assignment or several on it; usually it amounts to reading 2-5 books, depending on the age range. For example,

PreK-K: Parables Tell A Story - Read any four books that are parables or tell about a parable.

Gr. 1-3: God's Word is For Everyone: Read a book about Jesus. Read a book about an OT character. Read a book about a NT character. Read any BIble Story book you like. Read an Arch Bible Story.

Gr. 3-6: A Life Well-Lived: read a book about a Bible character OR a great Christian. Read a book about a person from history. Read a Trailblazer book.

Teen-Adult: Scarlet Fever - read 2 books that have mostly red on the cover.

Somewhere in Time: read a historical novel. read a Biblical fiction novel.

I'm working on creating one more program, called Passport to Reading. I plan to put together small booklets (half sheet folded) that will resemble a passport, with an assignment on each page. I hope to buy appropriate rubber stamds with which to stamp the pages as the participants complete the assignments on each page. It's still very much in the beginning stages but I have high hopes...after this summer's program is over I'll start working on it in earnest and we'll use it next year.

I really love that we have four (soon five) great programs for summer reading. I love having the variety, to keep it interesting for the kids and their parents, and having four or five programs means that by the time any child does one of them for the second time, he or she is so much older it's not really the same thing for them at all.

Pleae feel free to ask any questions. I know I've thrown a lot of information out here and it can be hard to explain properly! Tomorrow I'll take some pictures and try to post them.

Replies

Morlee Maynard May 1, 2023 15:50

Several people responded to Elizabeth's question before I could post it here. I am copying and pasting all the replies here:

Jenni Harvey

I have just restarted a dormant church library so i am just working on this. I have a donation box in my library and its just put books here i look at them if they work I shelve them which all have fit so far but if not i plan on having stash and when it gets good sized sell to half price books and turn what ever I get into viable books for the library. that way even if the books aren't used in the library the donor is contributing to the library.

Sally Creed

Our library has a summer reading program every summer. This will be my first year to help organize and publicize it. We have decided to stick with the same theme we used last year, but I was wondering if any of you had ideas on how to encourage participation, if you gave prizes, incentives, etc.

Denise Roberts

We do a reading challenge every summer and winter. We have always done prizes AND incentives to get more participation. Debbie, my other half in the library :-), is a master at laying out the ideas to get participation. She contacts local merchants who give out coupons for free ice cream, meals for kids, or other things they might offer. Then we allow the families to pick coupons throughout the challenge to keep them going. We finish with a reading party and invite the participating families. Everyone gets something, but the participants who have worked the hardest receive nicer prizes. Then we take pictures and post them in our church newsletter. We usually have some kind of theme for our party that relates to the program we did for that summer. Debbie has put together 4 or 5 programs so we can rotate through them, and no one has to do the same one at the same level twice. It is quite effective.

Barbara Brown

Would you share the 4 or 5 programs with us?
- Debbie Dehart > Morlee Maynard May 2, 2023 21:21
  
  Sure! Here are our programs, with a description of each one. Keep in mind that the basic goal for each one is to get participants reading books from the church library, and to get them reading across a variety of genres and authors. The package just looks different!
  
  Some of our programs are just for kids, some include teens/adults. The age groups are generally:
  
  Pre-K and K; gr. 1-3; gr. 3-6; teen/adult.
  
  Our programs last seven weeks.
  
  1. Book Bingo - for this we created bingo sheets for each age group, with 20 (teen/adult) or 25 (everyone else) squares. Inside each square is an age-appropriate assignment, for example, read a mystery. read a book of your choice. read an Arch book. read a book with a blue cover. etc. Participants can bring their cards each week and receive a coupon for rows/columns completed, with a limit of, as I recall, four coupons per card. I think we also limit the number of Bingo cards they may complete during the program.
  
  2. Reading By The Numbers. For this one, my son created large numbers (1 2 3 4 5 6 7) for us, almost filling a page, each divided into six or seven different sections. Inside each section is an assignment. Some of them are book assignments, others are writing (for example, write a poem about God; write about a book you read) or drawing (draw about a book you read); some are easy like, read in the car or read in a tree or read a book to a small child. Then we collect the drawings and writings and (with parental permission) post them on the wall in the hallway outside the library. I like this one because it is much more low-key than the others and I think having something less challenging every four or five years is a good idea.
  
  3. All About Books! We created booklets (8 1/2x11 sheets of paper folded in half), with an assignment on each page. The assignment includes the type of book to read, and then has some questions about the book or an assignment like drawing a picture or describing something about it. There are sixteen pages in the booklet and they can present four pages maximum per week to receive a coupon.
  
  4. Choose Your Own Adventure (we're doing this one for the second time this year and I'm thrilled because it's my favorite). For each of four age groups we created ten different Adventure Cards. The cards are called things like All Creatures Great and Small; God Made The World; Author, Author!; Whodunnit?; A Classic Selection; A Dewey Decimal Escapade; I Love Series; You Choose; Parables Tell A Story...etc, etc. Each card then has an assignment or several on it; usually it amounts to reading 2-5 books, depending on the age range. For example,
  
  PreK-K: Parables Tell A Story - Read any four books that are parables or tell about a parable.
  
  Gr. 1-3: God's Word is For Everyone: Read a book about Jesus. Read a book about an OT character. Read a book about a NT character. Read any BIble Story book you like. Read an Arch Bible Story.
  
  Gr. 3-6: A Life Well-Lived: read a book about a Bible character OR a great Christian. Read a book about a person from history. Read a Trailblazer book.
  
  Teen-Adult: Scarlet Fever - read 2 books that have mostly red on the cover.
  
  Somewhere in Time: read a historical novel. read a Biblical fiction novel.
  
  I'm working on creating one more program, called Passport to Reading. I plan to put together small booklets (half sheet folded) that will resemble a passport, with an assignment on each page. I hope to buy appropriate rubber stamds with which to stamp the pages as the participants complete the assignments on each page. It's still very much in the beginning stages but I have high hopes...after this summer's program is over I'll start working on it in earnest and we'll use it next year.
  
  I really love that we have four (soon five) great programs for summer reading. I love having the variety, to keep it interesting for the kids and their parents, and having four or five programs means that by the time any child does one of them for the second time, he or she is so much older it's not really the same thing for them at all.
  
  Pleae feel free to ask any questions. I know I've thrown a lot of information out here and it can be hard to explain properly! Tomorrow I'll take some pictures and try to post them.

This reply was deleted.