Magazines from dentists make new readers smile

My lifelong love for magazines started with reading Highlights at the dentist office – and I know I’m not alone in that experience. To this day, I can’t pass a Highlights without picking it up to look for hidden pictures.  So reading magazines in the dentist office is the seed that grew to become MagazineLiteracy.org and dentists continue to receive and share so many wonderful magazines in their waiting areas with their patients.  Let’s tap this enormous potential – putting a smile on the face of new readers, while your dentist brightens yours.

Organized literacy efforts among health professionals are not unprecedented. For example, Reach out and Read is an amazing program empowered by pediatric physicians.  Dental offices receive many wonderful magazines each month to share with readers in their waiting rooms and cycle through them as new issues come in.  We know from working with many dentist that they love the idea of giving the magazines a new life by sending them to our literacy programs.

Whether you are a dentist or a patient – contact us to help grow our “Make Readers Smile” project.   Every dentist can participate – strengthening the breadth and depth of our magazine literacy supply chain. In addition to supplying their own magazines, the visibility can encourage patients to be involved too – perhaps by recycling their own magazines to new readers and volunteering to build up our local literacy teams.

I’m smiling already!

Harvest magazines at work to recycle to new readers

Office Magazine Harvest

Here’s a sample email you can send to your colleagues to collect and recycle magazines to new readers.  Pack and ship clean, gently read magazines with no torn or cut covers or pages to us and we’ll deliver them to kids and families in shelters and other literacy programs.  It feels good to share the magazines you love and they are very much appreciated and enjoyed.  Carefully remove paper and mark out ink mailing labels, and we’ll take care of the rest.

Magazines are great – we love to get them and read them.  Please join me in recycling “gently read” magazines to new readers – homeless families… moms and kids in domestic violence shelters… via food pantries… etc.

I’ve set up a collection box for any magazines you’d like to share.  Don’t worry about mailing labels – I’ll remove or mark them out with a permanent marker, and MagazineLiteracy.org will cover up the spot with a fresh “gift” label.

Any magazines that a child or adult would enjoy are needed – as long as they are clean with no torn or cut covers or pages, or water or moisture damage.

Thanks for helping to feed families hungry to read.

Getting a local or school project started for recycling magazines to new readers

Thank you Tiffany for helping organize this Getting Started article for our local teams. Join us to start recycling magazines in your town for new readers nationwide.  Here’s another article for those collecting magazines at home to donate.

The Magazine Recycling Process

Hello and welcome to MagazineLiteracy.org where magazines are our specialty and our mission is to change the world—one magazine at a time!  A brief overview of what we do:  We collect and donate new and gently used magazines to the various programs we work with to share the magazines we love and to support literacy:  domestic violence and homeless shelters; foster care, youth mentoring centers, etc.  In this article, you will read just what we expect from you to help us spread the joy of reading with thousands of families all around the world!

We say “…The process of recycling is easy as 1, 2 3!…” and we really do mean that!  The first step is to start collecting magazines.  This can happen at the local grocery or book store, at your school, club or business, or even in your own home or apartment building.

 The magazines we share with new readers should be in good or very good condition – clean, with no torn or cut covers or pages.

An important step is to remove any mailing labels, to protect personal information and to allow a more dignified experience for the new magazine owner.  Carefully remove paper labels and black out ink labels with a permanent black marker.  Then cover the spot with one of our “gift” labels.   Contact us to get some.   Simply place the “gift” label over the blacked out information or where the paper label once was.  Repeat this with every magazine.

Next, sort your magazines by age group and topic.  Once your bundle is ready, we’ll help get it posted where literacy programs can find it and request it.  Be in touch for more information about this step.

That’s it!  You have just helped a child, their family, or a few dozen children and their families experience the joy of reading!  What a wonderful feeling that is…I hope you found this article informative and if you have any problems or comments, don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Tiffany