First, get your supporters to donate their unwanted books to your organization (it’s possible they could receive a tax write off for doing this).

Second, organize a book sale where you display all of the books (organized in a meaningful way, like by genre) and invite people to come and purchase books for their families.  See if you can use a high school gym for this.  Additionally, I recommend sorting out the books that are like new and could be purchased as gifts.  If you set them aside in a separate area, you might be able to entice some people to pay a premium for these books.

Third, gather the books that remain and prepare to sell them online.  This is much easier than to do than it sounds to many people.  Simply register for an account at Half.com (an Ebay company that specializes in selling used books) and Amazon.com (they have a used books section).  When you’re ready to list, there’s not much to do besides enter the ISBN number of each book (the number on the back) and select each book’s condition from a list of options.  Both companies provide a price suggestion for each book you list and automatically include all the relevant information about each book (page count, author info, etc.) from existing databases.  Amazon.com and Half.com are the largest two online used book markets.  In my opinion, it’s not necessary to list your books on any other online market.

If you do not want to sell books online, you can either pay a high school student to list them (and ship them as they sell) or you can donate them to homeless shelters.  Homeless shelters will almost always take books. [Author’s note: I visited a massive homeless shelter in Chicago years ago and was shocked to discover that there were only a handful of books.]

This is a remarkably simple fundraiser.  With this fundraiser, you will raise money in two phases – first, at the initial book sale and, second, over time as you sell books on Half.com and Amazon.com.