“We only do well by doing good,” is a statement found on the website of Better World Books, a social enterprise capitalizing on the value of unwanted books to fund literacy goals nationally and around the globe. The privately held for-profit company partners with 1,400 libraries and over 1,800 college campuses in North America.
“As individuals, we can make a small difference in this world and if we all act, we can make a huge difference. Better World Books can make that difference. We must make conscious decisions to make a difference,” said John Ujda, Atlanta-based vice president of marketing, in a telephone interview.
“We work with over 3,000 United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland libraries, providing complete solutions for discarded books,” added Ujda, (pronounced Weeda). “Besides selling them online, we also have over 24 marketplaces to sell them.”
By collecting unwanted textbooks and library discards, the organization has been able to support nonprofit literacy programs by providing its nonprofit partners with a stable source of unrestricted funding.
“I served a stint about four years in the Peace Corps, taught for two and a half years and witnessed first hand the value of teaching. There are about 781 million in the world who are illiterate and two-thirds of them are women. The potential that education can unleash to educate the women in the world, we take it for granted because we are swimming in books versus ones that don’t have access to books in the rest of the world,” said Ujda.
Between 2003 and 2009, Better World Books collected more than 25 million books and raised more than $7.3 million for over 80 literacy and education nonprofit organizations. Books are sold to raise money for nonprofit literacy programs, sent to a nonprofit partner or recycled, if they are unsuitable for sale or partner use.
Better World Books is unique in the sense that it is among the group of companies that grow according to a triple bottom line. According to Better World Books, profit is not the only way to measure business success. People and the planet are equally important.
From helping to build a nursing library in Somaliland to offering its customers carbon neutral shipping, and doing good is its business. The online bookstore partners with literacy programs like Room to Read, Books for Africa, Worldfund, National Center for Family Literacy, Invisible Children, and 80 others.
It is one of the first B-Corporation entities, a group of companies with an international network of purpose driven businesses dedicated to setting a new standard for social and environmental performance.
“We are one of the 400 B-Corporations to date. It is a growing movement of social enterprises and B-Corporation certifications started about three to four years ago. Its purpose is to have social, environmental, and economic impact to benefit the people, planet, and profit. For a B-Corporation, all the bylaws state that the corporation must benefit all the stakeholders, which includes employees, communities, and the environment, addressing all the needs,” said Ujda.
According to Ujda, the laws of incorporation are insufficient. “We are trying to establish this state-by-state to incorporate as a benefit corporation, and there are currently over seven states which have already included this in their corporation bylaws. This can be done not just on a small scale, but on a large one as well.”
Ujda was a panelist at the recent Womenetics program in Atlanta. His panel’s topic was Essentials for Economic Empowerment: Access to Health and Education.
“I was contacted by Ellen Adair Wyche, who is a program organizer. She read about us and our mission and called us up to participate as a panelist representing the business side for literacy, as we are a self-sustaining and growing company,” said Ujda.
