Ever wonder what happened to those old books you donated to Goodwill? Thanks to the not-for-profit organization’s innovative eBooks program, those books helped to create new jobs for people with barriers to employment.
Photo by Marius Sikorski
The eBooks program — part of Goodwill’s contract division, which is funded by United Way — redirects book donations of value for online sale through Amazon.com and
other online used book retailers.
The eBooks program is an international Goodwill initiative that started in 2007. Goodwill’s Edmonton operations ran the program until the spring of 2011, but it’s on a temporary hiatus as Goodwill undergoes reorganization.
“It’s a way to get more value out of the books than just selling them in our stores,” says Barbara Engelbart, director of marketing with Goodwill Industries of Alberta. Engelbart expects the program to start again by January 2012.
The two eBook centres in the province employ 10 individuals, who are still working in Goodwill’s contract division in other positions until the eBook program resumes. One eBook centre is located in Edmonton and the other in Calgary, and all books, CDs and DVDs donated to Goodwill stores in those respective regions are first diverted to the centres. There, employees scan them with a special supermarket-style UPC scanner and an online computer program called Monsoon automatically determines the products’ values. They’re either accepted and listed for sale online, or they’re rejected and sent back to be sold on the shelves of an area Goodwill store. With older books, the process is much the same: titles are typed into Monsoon, where they’re automatically appraised.
[The eBooks program] utilizes books in an effective way and also provides employment for people with disabilities.
The job is extremely straight-forward, says Engelbart, and it’s that fact that helps to make Goodwill’s eBooks program a winner. “It’s all staffed by people with barriers to employment,” she says. “It’s a very simple, repetitive-type task that they can be very successful at.”
In 2010, Goodwill Alberta received 2.5 million donated books, 21,000 of which were sold through eBooks. Online, the titles listed range in price from just a few dollars to the high hundreds.
While some revenue is brought in through eBooks, money is not the primary motivator behind the initiative, says Engelbart. She explains that any funds generated simply go back into the program to pay employee salaries. “It doesn’t add a lot to our bottom line but the point behind it is that it utilizes books in an effective way and also provides employment for people with disabilities. That’s always our primary concern in our mission.”
Goodwill aims to break down employment barriers for disadvantaged people, and the eBooks program is just one of the ways Goodwill has succeeded in creating new jobs for the people who need them. “The main focus for us is to find ways to employ people,” says Engelbart. “We’re always looking at new and innovative ways to do that and to provide those people with an accommodating work environment, which the eBooks program really is.” 
