Books For Soldiers

Books For Soldiers

I stumbled upon this organization while researching for my charity posts this month. Books For Soldiers is a website where soldiers from all branches of our armed services request books (and other items) be shipped to them where they are deployed. You have to sign up to be able to see the requests, but I thought this is a great idea! Soldiers request books, toiletries, magazines and other miscellaneous care-package items, sometimes just a card or letter.

If you are someone who has a gazillion magazine subscriptions, or reads tons of books but don't know what to do with them all after you are finished, and don't have room on your already over-crowded bookshelves, Books For Soldiers may be a great way to "re-gift" your books and magazines.

From their website:

During the first Gulf War, several of my friends from school were in the reserves and were activated to fight the Iraqis. CNN reported that once the soldiers were deployed, they were faced with massive downtime and were restricted to their base due to the travel limitations set by the Saudi government.
I am a voracious reader and at the beginning of the Gulf War, I had a closet full of paperback books. Books that were not being used. So instead of selling them at the used book store, I packed them up in small care packages and sent them out to all the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen I had addresses for.

Within a few weeks, I ran out of books before I ran out of addresses. Friends and family members began donating their paperback books and in the end, over 1000 books were sent to the Gulf.
After the war, we received many thank-you notes from soldiers who got one of our books. Unless it was time for them to fly back home, mail-call days were one of the most anticipated events of deployment. Regardless of why the military is deployed, the men and women of our armed services are there for us. They deserve our support and if we can make their deployment easier, then all the better.

Currently, BFS is a non-profit corporation, operated as a ministry of the non-denominational, interfaith Order of the Red Grail church in North Carolina. You can download our IRS 501(c)(3) approval letter in PDF format


If you have recent magazines or gently used books that might be of interest to our deployed military, please consider visiting Books For Soldiers and sending these items to someone who would really love to have them, rather than to a recycling center or thrift store.