How to Donate Textbooks in New Jersey

Donating textbooks is a meaningful way of contributing your mite to the cause of education. Textbooks in line with current syllabi are useful to students who cannot afford to purchase them. You can donate them to schools that will find worthy recipients. There are also various organizations in New Jersey that accept textbooks for those below 18 years of age. Donating books to these will ensure your support to educating underprivileged children in various parts of New Jersey served by these charities.

Instructions

1. Remove the used textbooks from where they are stored, and examine their condition. Check if the books are good enough to be used by students in classrooms. Books that are torn, affected by mildew or have missing pages are of no value. Recycle these books through your county curbside recycling program. Visit the website of Recycling New Jersey (See Resource 1), and follow the links it provides to your county recycling website to find out how you can recycle books.

2. Check for utility by checking the date of publication. The information in older textbooks for some subjects -- computer technology for instance -- may be redundant and not of much use to students currently studying the subject; however, school libraries can use them as reference material. If you live in Morris County, New Jersey, contact the Morris County Library (973-285-6939) for donating your textbooks.

3. Consider the appropriate age of students who will benefit from the books. Accordingly, pick the right schools and get in touch with the school administrator about donating old textbooks. Find the list of schools in your county from the New Jersey School Directory website (See Resource 2). Send an email to the administrator of schools in your vicinity, or visit the schools. Provide details of the old textbooks you wish to donate, mentioning the book titles and year of publication. Ask if the school will accept them to donate to needy students. If your books are outdated with respect to current syllabi, ask if the school wishes to use them as resource material for teaching faculty.

4. Search the New Jersey Tutoring Directory (See Resource 3) for tutoring centers in your area. Get in touch with these tutoring agencies, and speak to the person in charge. Give relevant details of the textbooks, and find out if they will be of use.

5. Check the websites of organizations like Bridge of Books and Reach Out and Read, New Jersey (See Resources 4 and 5). These charities accept donations of books for those younger than 18 years of age, and route the books to underprivileged children across New Jersey. Call up and find out if they will accept your textbook donation. If you have too many books to mail, provide your address and ask the organization to arrange for picking them up.

Tips & Warnings

• If you live in Essex, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Somerset and Union counties of New Jersey and have more than 250 items to donate, get in touch with Drive4Books (See Resource 3) about picking up your textbook donations.

References

• National Service Resources: Finding Places to Donate Used Textbooks
• Bridge of Books Foundation: How You Can Bring Books into a Child's World
• Reach Out and Read New Jersey: Book Donations
• Used Book Donations: Morris County, New Jersey
• Drive4Books: Donate Books

Resources

• Recycling New Jersey: Curbside Recycling
• State of New Jersey Department of Education: New Jersey School Directory
• School Directory: New Jersey Tutoring Directory
• Bridge of Books Foundation: How You Can Bring Books Into a Child's World
• Reach Out and Read New Jersey: Book Donations
• Drive4Books: Donate Books