The PTA and the Bookstores We think that there are a lot of opportunities for us to work together to be of mutual benefit. Here are a few of them: 1) Reading list books can be a challenge to find, especially at the last minute. We can all be more aware of what these titles are if someone in each PTA chapter takes responsibility for circulating a questionnaire to the teachers to find out which ones are going to have such a list for a given school term, and what the titles on it are going to be if they know yet (and for those that don't, a phone number to call when they get it figured out). The results of this survey could then be shared with parents so that they know as far ahead of time as possible what they are going to need to find for their children. And if you share them with us as well, we can try to arrange for a better supply of the right titles when possible. We are often offered books to pay cash for that we can't buy if we don't know that there will be enough demand for multiple copies to make it worth while for us to have "extras". And with multiple locations, we can be funneling copies to the right store as we see them show up elsewhere. This will help us have more inexpensive copies available when you need them. 2) If you are having events at your school that are open to the public, we are always happy to help you publicize these by putting up any posters or other notices that you bring for our customers to see. And if it is a fund raiser where you will have an auction, drawings for door prizes, or the like, we welcome your solicitation to see if we can be of help with these prizes. 3) If you need off campus space for committee meetings, after school programs, informal chats or the like, please feel check with us to see if our community room (at the two locations that have one) is available at the right time for you. There is no charge to use these in most cases other than tidying up afterwards. These rooms are arranged as large living rooms with couches and arm chairs but can be rearranged to suit with additional folding chairs that can be brought in for even more capacity if needed. 4) You can support your school library or the teachers if they are needing books for their classrooms by establishing a trade-in account in the school name that can be used by the librarians or the teachers being sure that they know that they can cut their costs in half when they get things for school use by having us apply your store credit from trade-ins to pay for up to one half of the price of items that they select, making their budgets go twice as far. You can either bring in items that you have collected from members to generate this credit, or those in your organization that already have store credit with us can donate some of theirs to the school account if they wish. We have also on occasion had the supporters of a particular school match the credit from trade-ins with a contribution to a separate cash account (that acts like a gift certificate for the school to draw on as needed to pay the remaining costs after the store credit has paid for the first half of these) so that the entire cost is covered for purposes they set forward. 5) We'd like you to consider using bookstore gift certificates that allow recipients to select their own books as rewards, prizes, "thank you's", etc for goals accomplished, behavior rewarded, effort acknowledged and the like. We have interesting places for folks to browse with a lot of different sorts of items that might appeal to a wide range of interests and all at bargain prices, that can be further reduced in conjunction with store credit. Besides our regular gift certificates which are printed on paper, old style, we also can print bookmarks for smaller amounts that can function the same way and be distributed as needed especially when your purpose might for instance be that each recipient in a class is able to get a book of his or her own that they have selected, or used as rewards to encourage efforts and accomplishments. We welcome suggestions for additional ideas that we can publish here. Click here to email us for more information. Please refresh your browser to make sure you are seeing the most recent editions of our pages. Home