Ninja Book Box was founded at the heart of a community. I've been proud to be part of the bookish community here online for a number of years now and I've seen the massive benefits to be reaped from generosity. Obviously as readers we feel very strongly about the importance of literacy. We can't really overstate it - we've seen that literacy has the power to change lives, and so we were always going to want to support literacy charities.
We'll come straight out and say that profit from Ninja Book Box will never be huge because we aim to keep it small and bring you excellent value for your money, but whatever profits we do make we want to also divert some towards some brilliant literacy charities working here in the UK and worldwide.
We've been trawling the internet and found some charities we think look amazing and we've set up a poll for you all to vote for the one(s) you think we should make our charitable partners for 2017. We plan to redo this poll every year and hopefully increase the amount we can give as more of you become Ninja Book Box converts!
Some charities accept donations of books, some of money so there's a chance we'll be sending some of both, but we'll announce more about exactly how that'll work when we announce the result of the poll.
Here's some information about the charities we're considering:
Give a Book is a UK based charity working with other charities. They source books at trade price and send them to the charities they work with, with each £5 donation buying a book. They work with a big variety of other charities including Prison Book Clubs, Community Foster Care, Doorstep Library, Magic Breakfast and many others.
Beanstalk train volunteers to go into schools and read with children who need additional help with literacy. They work nationwide and have various initiatives to help improve literacy.
Storybook Dads (and Storybook Mums) help incarcerated parents throughout the UK to comfort their children by recording themselves reading bedtimes stories. This helps maintain family relationships, and according to the Storybook Dads website prisoners who keep in contact with their families are up to 6 times less likely to re-offend.
Discover is a centre in Stratford, London for 0-11 year olds and their families dedicated to storytelling and stories in general. It provides a space for families to learn and play with stories, and also has exhibitions to explore specific authors more deeply. They are supported by donations.
Readathon is a charity that works primarily through getting children in schools to read books and raise money for children in hospital. However they also accept donations towards providing books for children and their families when they're in hospital.
The poll will run until December 30th and we'll announce our partner/s early in January.