Margate Bookshop raises £3k in books for schools drive

The Margate Bookshop has collected almost £3,000 for books for local schoolchildren with plans to run the fundraiser as an ongoing scheme with other independent bookstores, potentially as part of a charity. 

Shop owner Francesca Wilkins, who opened the store in a former textile studio two-and-a-half years ago, revealed she was inspired by a customer’s generosity last Christmas. She has launched the campaign on GoFundMe as well as collecting the majority of donations in the shop. 

She told The Bookseller: “It was an idea from a customer who last year donated to the shop and said ‘can this be made available to families on low income who might not be able to get books for Christmas’. So literally out of the generosity of someone’s heart. I thought this was brilliant and put the idea on social media but wasn’t sure how to reach the right people. People got in touch and said they wanted to add to the donation but I wasn’t sure how to distribute the money.” 

Wilkins had been mulling over the idea further when she learned of how many schools are struggling to fill their shelves, with research recently showing that three-quarters of schools cut library provision through the pandemic. “I've been thinking about it for the past year and a nearby primary school got in touch and said ‘we have no budget for books’. And I realised before that I'd made these assumptions about government allocating money for this for schools — this was a total surprise to me. I spoke to more people and found out that because of budget cuts and everything else that schools have no money for books, particularly in this area.”  

Thanet, the surrounding borough, has one of the highest child poverty rates in the south of England and the highest in Kent, so Wilkins feels particularly incentivised to help children in her area: “This is an area that has a very high levels of child poverty and very low levels of literacy. I was aware of this when I set up the shop, I always felt I didn’t just want this shop to be for people with lots of money, just for people who had moved from London. I had always been aware of this other aspect of Margate. And then when this school got in touch I thought: 'this is a huge issue and maybe I'm in a position to address that because of my trade discount and my customers and because people had got in touch to donate money'.” 

For the moment 12 nearby primary schools will benefit, with several of the biggest schools the hardest hit in terms of funding cuts and Covid-19, with one of them having more than half its pupils on free school meals. 

Schools will have discretion over how to allocate the titles, Wilkins said. “Some schools have said they’d dedicate the books to children who are struggling and who can take books home but others will put them in their libraries, I’m leaving it up to the schools.” 

Wilkins is also going to consider carefully which titles to buy for the schools and ensure a range across fiction and non-fiction. “I’ll look at what is popular in the shops and speak to the teachers to see what they already have," she told The Bookseller. "I’ve met with two of the schools and in one they had a little stack of library books which looked about 14 years old (in erms of condition and subject). We’ll include diverse authors, different social issues and some classics as well.” 

The shop manager's trade discount boosts people’s contributions by about a third and publishers have also extended support for the scheme. “Now I’m openly asking people to donate money and so now with the trade discount I match the donations, so effectively £10 is more like £15 worth of books,” she said. “Some publishers have already said 'we can give you a higher discount for this’. The response has been really amazing. It doesn’t cost me anything as a business so it really feels like ‘why not’, I have this advantage of the trade discount.” Altogether the shop has raised just under £3,000 and is working up to a goal of £5,000. 

Originally planned as a one-off Christmas campaign, Wilkins has ambitions to run it as an ongoing scheme ideally with other independent bookshops. “I’m hoping once I’ve hit my target to expand and possibly do Ramsgate and Broadstairs and the wider area and speak to other bookshops about partnering to grow it that way. I need to think about how I keep this momentum going all the time and I’ll have to look at whether I set up a charity around that so it’s separated from my shop account so I don’t get taxed on it.”