First Book

By removing barriers to educational opportunities for children growing up in low-income families — and supporting the educators who serve them — we can help close the achievement gap and change the trajectory, both for individual children and for our country.

Remove Barriers to Access: Through a sustainable, market-driven model, First Book makes everything from brand new, high-quality, relevant educational resources — including books, sports equipment, winter coats, snacks, and more — deeply affordable to educators and program leaders who serve kids in need. First Book also recruits funding to provide resources to programs that have no budget for books or learning materials.

Aggregate Educators Serving Low-Income Communities: The First Book Network is made up of more than 550,000 educators who exclusively serve kids in need in a variety of settings, including classrooms, after school programs, libraries, shelters, early childhood programs, and more. Through surveys, focus groups and formal studies, we aggregate their voices to identify needs and focus investment. First Book also works in partnership with both national and regional nonprofit organizations serving children in need to supply books and resources to them.

Close the "Last Mile" of Education Innovation: First Book also expands the breadth and depth of the education field through a family of social enterprises. First Book Research & Insights is First Book's proprietary research initiative built on more than 25 years of listening to feedback from educators working in under-represented communities. The First Book Accelerator brings best-in-class research to these classrooms and programs via relevant, usable educator resources, decreasing time-to-market from years to weeks.

Increase Diversity and Promote Inclusion: Children in need are vastly underrepresented in books. First Book's Stories for All Project™ is the largest worldwide collection of diverse content curated for kids in need. To date, the collection includes more than 2,000 titles, and has launched books previously only available in hard-cover to affordable paperback formats, and partnered with publishers to make new, diverse and bilingual titles available at retail.

As a nonprofit social enterprise, First Book has built an award-winning distribution channel that delivers resources to where they are needed most. The First Book Marketplace (www.fbmarketplace.org), along with its affiliated Canada program (www.fbmpcanada.org), is a nonprofit e-Commerce platform that provides First Book's network of educators with thousands of free and very affordable high-quality, brand new books, educational resources, and basic needs items.

With thousands of items curated in direct response to educator input, the First Book Marketplace reduces the problem of price and distribution, addressing the barriers to education and attendance for kids in need from birth to age 18, including a large collection of relevant diverse and Spanish/bilingual books, school supplies, digital devices, food, clothing, and personal hygiene kits, as well as free teacher resources.

Eligible educators, librarians, providers, and others serving children in need can sign up to receive resources at www.firstbook.org/register. Registration is free and carries no obligation.

Since 1992, First Book has distributed more than 225 million books and educational resources to programs and schools serving children from low-income families in more than 30 countries. With an additional 1,000 educators joining each month, First Book is the largest and fastest-growing network of educators in the United States exclusively serving kids in need.

Learn more in our Impact Report and thru our First Book web site. Please consider a donation to support our mission and help bring equal access to quality reading and educational resources to our kids across the US and Canada. Thank you!