What is Refill the Shelves?

This summer, Books for Keeps has a big goal to get 15,000 books back onto our shelves that we can give to kids across our community. These books will be shared through our book distribution programs, inspiring joyful experiences with literacy for kids of all ages and expanding book access for families across our community. Basically, we see this like a big ol' community book drive, and we want you to join us!

How can you help?

Donate: Books for Keeps purchases books for our programs at an average of $2-$3 per book. Any gift donated during the Refill the Shelves campaign will go towards next year's book purchasing!

Give Books: We collect new and gently-used children's book donations all year round, and any children's books donated during Refill the Shelves will be counted towards our big book goal!

Host a Kids' Book Drive: Your community can make a big impact! Consider hosting a book drive at your work place, in your neighborhood, or online. We will accept books for all ages and count any children's books donated towards our big book goal!

Volunteer: Help us get the books ready to be shared with kids across community! Volunteers can join us in the BFK Warehouse all summer long helping to unpack, sort, and shelve donated books for future distribution events.

What will Books for Keeps do with the books?

Every year, Books for Keeps distributes 70,000+ books to over 5,000+ elementary students. Through this program, every child has the opportunity to personally select 12 new, high-interest books that they want to take home for keeps, one for every week of the summer. We do this to help inspire joyful experiences with literacy, help students maintain their academic momentum during the summer months, and expand book access across our community and beyond.

All books are provided at no cost to kids, families, or schools, thanks to YOU! Our community of donors help make this possible, starting with our Refill the Shelves campaign each summer. This campaign is an opportunity for us to literally begin refilling the shelves in our BFK Warehouse that get emptied out during book distribution season.

With your help, we are aiming to refill our shelves with 15,000 books this summer!

Behind the scenes, our team begins preparing for the next year's Spring Book Distributions at the very beginning of the school year. Meeting our big 15,00 book goal will help us start the year strong, with enough books to provide summer reading for over 1,200 students! That translates to over 80 classrooms, 20 grade levels, or 3 entire elementary schools prepped with a summer's worth of reading before the school year even starts! Will you join us? Make a gift (and a big impact!) today.

Refill the Shelves 2025

Help us get 15,000 books back onto our shelves this summer!