Whole Foods Mag Drive

Some of the best blog posts originate from your inquires. Today, we were asked for more details about our volunteer needs.  As you will see, there are endless ways to be involved in our literacy work in your community, school, and even your home. Volunteers are our lifeblood and our literacy champions.

The easiest and most important way to help is to follow us on twitter and facebook.  Ask your friends and family to follow us too.

Organize a local team: We are an all-volunteer organization with many ways to be involved, depending on your availability and interests. We need community and school leaders and teams to be successful. We would very much like to set up sustainable magazine recycling operations in communities and schools – where once or twice a month, collected or donated magazines are delivered to local shelters and literacy programs. That involves setting up a lasting team to organize and keep the effort going. The team may grow and shrink and the members of the team might change, but with good leadership and guidance, the torch can be passed from year to year to keep the local project going strong.

Harvest magazines at Whole Foods: We are making a concerted effort to collect magazines at every Whole Foods store in the U.S. and other locations for delivery to new readers via nearby literacy programs. Whole Foods has been a great partner in this effort.  Each store has to be organized individually, and requires a reliable, sustained effort to succeed.

Sponsor magazines for homeless peers: Also, there is a very serious problem in every community relating to homeless young people and students. Every school district has a program that focuses on homeless children. We’d like to organize teams in schools to “adopt” a group of peers – perhaps in their own or another school district anywhere in the U.S. and sponsor new magazine subscriptions for those readers – the idea is to share the magazines we love to read ourselves and the wonderful experience we enjoy reading them with others who do not have ready access to them.

A Mag Drive to feed families hungry to read: Another project – which is more of a one-time effort or could happen periodically, is to organize a magazine drive at a supermarket or book store – that’s like a food drive, but you’d collect magazines for a local domestic violence or homeless shelter or for distribution to families with groceries they receive from a food pantry.  A food drive can be combined with the magazine drive to feed hungry bodies and minds and to easily put reading materials into homes that have few.

Ship us your magazines: Another great way to be involved at home or in school is to collect your magazines at in a medium-sized USPS box or to organize an event with your friends and ask them to bring their magazines to ship. When the boxes are full, they can be shipped for only about $11 to our magazine distribution center.  Help us to spread the word about doing this to as many people as possible.

Help us find and serve local literacy agents: With the local collection and delivery projects – an important first step is finding agencies that would like to receive the magazines.

Go viral: With all these ideas, we love to gather photos and stories to post to our blog, twitter, and facebook page.

Hope this helps stir your imagination.

Help us connect to supporters and literacy leaders by posting these ads on your web site.  Select an ad to view the full portfolio.  Link ads to http://magazineliteracy.org

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Sharing the magazines we love with new readers is a simple, but powerful idea.

There are many parallels between hunger relief and literacy – feeding both the body and the mind is vital for life and productivity.  Whether a child in school or an adult in a job training program, the body needs to be fed for the mind to have the energy needed to focus and learn.

The roots of MagazineLiteracy.org are planted firmly in decades of hunger relief work that I have organized with hundreds of volunteers in many communities across the U.S., including food drives at supermarkets for local food pantries.  I began organizing food drives in 1986.  In 1994 I launched a toll-free national hunger hotline to connect hungry people, volunteers, and food to their local food pantries.  That same year, I conceived the Magazine Publishers Family Literacy Project because I knew that families hungry for food were starving for reading materials at home.

Food drives are easy and fun.  Even one person or a small group can spend a day at the entrance of a supermarket asking each shopper to purchase something extra for a hungry family, handing out a “shopping list” of priority items, resulting in thousands of pounds of food donations.  I’ve seen it happen many times.

Food banks, food pantries, backpack feeding programs, Meals on Wheels, and other nutrition programs are a natural way to get reading materials into homes, along with food.  MagHarvest is a special supermarket drive that combines food and magazine collection.  Shoppers are greeted at the supermarket entrance with a smile and “shopping list” that suggests needed food and magazines.  The food and magazines are delivered to a nearby food pantry for distribution to hungry families.  In addition to putting food on the table, MagHarvest shares our own favorite magazines and gets these special reading materials into homes that have few.

Volunteer to organize a MagHarvest drive in your community, so you can help to change the world of a child or a family – one meal and one magazine at a time.  It can be done in four easy steps.  Begin today and have fun!

1. Locate a food pantry to receive the food and magazines.
2. Ask a supermarket for permission – most will say “yes!”
3. Organize a small team – two volunteers working two-hour shifts at the store entrance – enough to cover a day or weekend.
4. Print up a “shopping list” flyer  - four lists per page – cut and handed to each shopper with eye contact and a smile.  Be sure to include food staples and “magazines for all ages” on your list:

• Magazines for all ages
• Baby Food and Formula
• Canned Vegetables and Fruit
• Peanut Butter and Jelly
• Hot and Cold Cereal
• Powdered Milk
• Healthy Juices
• Pastas and sauce
• Chili and Soup
• Beans and Rice
• Packaged Tuna and Salmon
• Canned meat
• Cooking Oil
• Crackers

This is a special communication intended to improve our volunteer information and organization. As an all-volunteer project, we rely on your passion and initiative for any and all success. Organizing such a large and growing group of volunteers is very challenging, and there is always room for improvement. I want to share some basic steps that can be taken to start or to continue your mission critical volunteer work.

The easiest and most important way to support our mission is to follow us on Facebook and Twitter and to encourage your social networks to do the same. We are a dynamic organization with a great deal of news to share – including about the volunteer work you are doing. For example, our Facebook page notes that the students in the Ad Dynamics advertising agency are kicking off a wonderful “spring cleaning” event to mark Earth Week where magazines will be collected on campus and delivered to nearby literacy programs – it’s a great model for other schools and communities.

I’d like to ask you to do one other thing to help us better organize your volunteer experience. Click on the link below (or copy and paste it into your browser) to provide us with some additional details about your volunteer interests. Many of you have already done this, but I’d like to ask you to repeat it one more time for a couple reasons. First of all, it will help us to update our volunteer contact information with the most current information. Also, and most important, we’ve added a list of specific volunteer activities that will help us help you to get started and keep going on vital community literacy projects.

[volunteer info]

It’s important to know about your time contribution and to measure our total community impact, so please be sure to keep track of your volunteer hours here:

[Volunteer Hours]

Also – stay tuned about new developments. We are constantly innovating and sharing lessons learned to improve our operations and results. Our website and blog offer a wealth of information from our many years on the ground. We are in the process of upgrading our technology and website to better organize that information so it is easier to find and use.

Our volunteers are our lifeblood – the heart, soul, minds, hands, and feet of our literacy work. Thank you again for your amazing passion and inspiration, and for helping us to get the wonderful magazines we enjoy ourselves into the hands, hearts, and homes of children and families.

Please be in touch without hesitation if you have any questions or ideas. I am looking forward to our follow-up and continued growth together.

Best wishes,

John

John Mennell
Founding Director

http://magazineliteracy.org

How to organize a Magazine Recycling event

Spring Cleaning – Magazine Harvest Poster

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Thanks!

Kudos to Arizona State University student Susie Satta who collected, sorted, and delivered hundreds of great magazines to new readers at a nearby shelter.  It’s wonderful to share favorite magazines with others who greatly appreciate them and enjoy them.  Congratulations Susie – your passion is an inspiration!

Also, a big thank you to Nicole Sivilli – an amazing New Jersey High School student who volunteers her spare time to assist with our literacy database management.  Nicole is developing a nationwide list of potential drop-off locations for recycled magazines.  The database is utilized to focus our volunteer recruitment efforts.  That focus enabled us to connect with Susie in Arizona and many other volunteers around the country who are willing to manage local magazine collection and distribution.

Together – we are changing the world – one magazine at at time!