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According to their website, they have donated $28,000,000 and 26,000,000 books. These seem to be separate activities, i. e. the money is straight-up cash given

According to their website, they have donated $28,000,000 and 26,000,000 books. These seem to be separate activities, i. e. the money is straight-up cash given independently of the donation of books. I'm not sure if that fits with your characterisation as "a very small percentage". They don't seem to publish profit numbers, making this somewhat unanswerable. But having read the press release and website, I did no get the impression that this was necessarily a non-profit. There are dozens of "free shipping", "sale", "save", "bargain" claims, and barely any of do-goodery (the name, plus those donation numbers at the very bottom). "Non-profit" is mentioned nowhere on their site, and they characterise themselves as a "social venture", a term that means exactly what they are.

jjeaff 7y ago
They may have cleaned up their act some. But this is what their "donation" boxes used to look like: https://www.alamy.com/book-and-clothing-donation-bins-in-a-sarasota-shopping-plaza-image61362024.html https://www.alamy.com/book-and-clothing-donation-bins-in-a-s... Notice they say, "Donate books here". But you aren't donating. That's a total lie. Any more than giving free merchandise to Walmart is "donating it" because walmart gives to charity every year. No one goes directly to their website. They sell primarily on 3rd party sites, so they probably decided to clean up the site a bit. I remember it being much more misleading in the past. I'm sure you could look on the wayback machine. As for the large number of books given away, that is simply a cheap way for them to get rid of the books that are worthless. Otherwise, they would have to pay to have them hauled off. And you'll also notice that they don't say they have "donated" $26m to charity. They say they have raised $26m for charity. Not sure what that means, but it sounds more like they are soliciting donations from others. Maybe they are providing matching funds in some cases or maybe they are just organizing donation programs. Also, that number is the amount raised since 15+ years ago. They have annual sales estimated around $75m a year. So $26m lifetime is rather small.

jjeaff 7y ago

They may have cleaned up their act some. But this is what their "donation" boxes used to look like: https://www.alamy.com/book-and-clothing-donation-bins-in-a-sarasota-shopping-plaza-image61362024.html https://www.alamy.com/book-and-clothing-donation-bins-in-a-s... Notice they say, "Donate books here". But you aren't donating. That's a total lie. Any more than giving free merchandise to Walmart is "donating it" because walmart gives to charity every year. No one goes directly to their website. They sell primarily on 3rd party sites, so they probably decided to clean up the site a bit. I remember it being much more misleading in the past. I'm sure you could look on the wayback machine. As for the large number of books given away, that is simply a cheap way for them to get rid of the books that are worthless. Otherwise, they would have to pay to have them hauled off. And you'll also notice that they don't say they have "donated" $26m to charity. They say they have raised $26m for charity. Not sure what that means, but it sounds more like they are soliciting donations from others. Maybe they are providing matching funds in some cases or maybe they are just organizing donation programs. Also, that number is the amount raised since 15+ years ago. They have annual sales estimated around $75m a year. So $26m lifetime is rather small.