Boulder Bookstore’s New Foundation Gets Books to Readers Who Need Them

The Boulder Bookstore recently launched its literacy foundation in mid-September. “ The Boulder Bookstore had been donating books to the Boulder Valley School District for decades now,” said Helena Balduc, co-owner of the store. “Every year we do a big drive, thousands of books. We donated every year, and so we thought maybe we could do this year-long. It doesn’t just need to be for the end of the year.”

The foundation’s plan is to raise money to bring books and authors to schools, especially schools with low-income students.

According to head buyer Arsen Kashkashian, “a lot of what we do already is we try to bring as many authors to schools as we can, but a lot of times there’s a requirement, you’ve got to sell 50 books, you’ve got to sell 100 books. So that leads you to lean on the same schools often over and over again — the schools that have the ability to, the parents have the ability to buy that many books. It’s a richer population. And we really want to bring people into the Title I schools.”

Kashkashian said the model for the organization is based on other bookstores’ similar foundations.

The foundation is accepting donations through a fiscal sponsor, the Boulder County Arts Alliance. You can find more information on their website or on boulderbookstore.net.

This story aired on the Morning Magazine, KGNU’s weekday morning show featuring in-depth discussions on local news issues. Click here to listen to other episodes of the Morning Magazine.