College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Sarah Hayward
Anthony Pollard
Roy de Guzman
Kentaro Tani

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Our group decided to do our social change project on R.E.A.D. Books, located in City Heights. READ Books is a nonprofit organization, currently funded by grants and donations. Its pervading goal is to help improve literacy in City Heights, by targeting children of all ages. READ Books offers books at a significant discount to community members, teachers, and local schools. They rely on contracts with publishers to allow them to sell at a discount. READ offers reading sessions for local classes, to increase exposure.

READ Books has several needs that our group identified as possible areas for our project. First, READ Books is currently funded by a one-time grant. Unfortunately, as this grant is non-renewable, the store needs to find another source of funding in order to stay open. Currently, the grant will allow the store to operate until the summer of 2004, at which time it will need to be self-sufficient. We reviewed the bookkeeping for the store, and suggested some areas of improvement.

The next need we identified was that children in the community do not have access to money for books. To help solve this problem, we decided to recruit organizations to donate money. Our idea was that donations could be used to hand out $3 or $5 gift cards to local children, to allow them to buy books. Most books in the store run under $5. To accomplish donations, we got in touch with SDSU organizations, including fraternities, sororities, and social clubs. We cultivated interest in either donations or volunteering. Ultimately, we contacted over 50 organizations, working closely with two who are currently planning fundraising events. We also provided READ Books with a list of possible organization contacts, for their use in requesting donations or volunteers.

READ Books also needs to raise awareness in the community about its presence. To help accomplish this, we created a flyer about donations and volunteering. We also created a website, where community members can request information about specific books or notify READ that they’re interested in volunteering.

We sincerely hope that our efforts have been useful to READ Books. This is a good cause and will hopefully continue operations indefinitely. We believe that the website is a great tool, as it includes information such as operating hours, contact information, and a map to the store. This project has raised our awareness about the need for increased literacy in parts of San Diego.