Friends groups run on the goodwill of a handful of people, and most traditional fundraisers -- book sales, bake sales, galas -- are volunteer-hour furnaces. They work, but they ask for sorting, hauling, staffing, and reconciling, year after year, from the same few hands.
A Read-A-Thon flips that. The activity is reading, the donations are online, and the platform handles the logistics that usually fall to your volunteers. Your group keeps 75-80% in cash and spends its limited energy on the one thing only it can do: rallying the community.
Raise more without burning out your volunteers
Friends groups run on the goodwill of a handful of people, and most traditional fundraisers - book sales, bake sales, galas - are volunteer-hour furnaces. They work, but they ask for sorting, hauling, staffing, and reconciling, year after year, from the same few hands.
A Read-A-Thon flips that. The activity is reading, the donations are online, and the platform handles the logistics that usually fall to your volunteers. Your group keeps 75-80% in cash and spends its limited energy on the one thing only it can do: rallying the community.
Up and running in 10 minutes
No contracts, no minimums, no boxes in the back room.
Sign up free
Create your page in a few clicks. Our team sets up your main fundraiser and hands you the dashboards - no credit card, no setup fee.
Readers log minutes
Readers pick what they read and track minutes - not pages - so everyone can take part and succeed, at any reading level.
Donations roll in
Family and friends donate online from anywhere. We handle payment processing; you watch totals climb in real time.
Friends of the Library fundraising ideas
Ideas that respect how little time a volunteer board actually has.
- Lead with a Read-A-Thon. Make it your main event. It's the highest-margin, lowest-effort option - everything else here works best layered on top.
- Keep the book sale as a supplement. Your annual sale is a community tradition. Run it as a fun add-on rather than your financial workhorse.
- Add a small online auction. Auction donated books and local experiences with no inventory to store. Set one up free on 32auctions.
- Recruit a few reading champions. A handful of enthusiastic families sharing their pages does more than any flyer. Give them the tools and let them spread it.
More cash kept. More readers reached
- 75-80% kept by your group, in cash.
- 5,000+ schools and groups served.
- $150M+ raised to date across communities.