​2019 was truly magical. In only our third year as an active all volunteer organization, we doubled the number of families we had reached the prior year, putting books in the hands of 3,173 mothers of newborns through our twelve delivery partners. In only three short years we have created more than 6,500 newborn libraries and are currently on pace to add another 3,500 in the coming year.

From our kick off in January 2017 we have now delivered 26,000 books and are scheduled to deliver at least 14,000 more in 2020. We generated our most significant annual surplus while raising >$89,000 from 116 supportive donors. Thanks to our wonderful volunteers, who contribute 100% of the time and talents required to do what we do, the vast majority of the funds we received will get converted into books and bookbags that find their way into the hands of the people we serve.

We established important fundraising sources by building relationships with two multi-year grant making organizations and by hosting our first incredibly successful, family friendly annual charity event Beers, Brats & Books with an Oktoberfest theme. It raised >$40,000 and we believe it can generate a significant percentage of the funding we need for existing programs in years to come.

We also bega n talks with two organizations who work on literacy with older children in the hopes that we can collaborate to hand “our kids” off to them as they age. And we are nowhere close to done. Based on the interest our work has generated in organizations outside the City of St. Louis’ boundaries, with a little luck and a few more donors we are sure you’ll be reading about new and expanded programs in the months and years to come.

As we said, a truly magical year. And one that makes us grateful for how truly blessed we are,

Former World Series Champion pitcher Kyle McClellan and his wife Bridget, who serves as Executive Director of their BraceforImpact46 Foundation, donated 150 “lightly used” children’s books for our expanding Big Brothers Big Sisters program, sparking several other young mothers “like new” book drives that have collected well over 1,000 more books so far.

Their BraceforImpact46 Foundation is making a big impact for kids in Haiti and for families in need in North St. Louis. We’re glad they thought to make a big impact on Books for Newborns kids, too.

Nurses in NICUs in Minnesota published findings about the calming effects that colorful crocheted octupi (like the one pictured here) have upon newborns in their care.

Paula – a long ago St. Louis resident who now lives in suburban Chicago and puts her considerable crocheting skills to work for several charities there — read those findings, learned about Books for Newborns and created a dozen for us to distribute to our hospital delivery partners.

Though literacy is our primary focus it is only part of getting newborns off to a great start. We’re grateful to Paula for her help in doing just that.

Patrice was a member of our Management Committee before relocating to Texas, where she now resides with her husband and two young sons.  She continues as BFN’s volunteer Director of Development, leading our efforts to identify and apply for funding from charitable donor organizations with missions aligned with our own.  Her Masters in Social Work and impressive writing skills have helped her research and write effective proposals that have resulted in tens of thousands of dollars for kids who need books from a dozen donors.  And she’s just getting started.  We are thankful for all she has accomplished so far and look forward to all she’ll continue to do.

​We are so grateful to have NYT Best Selling Author Eileen Dreyer (aka Kathleen Korbel when writing romance novels) on our Advisory Board.  Her experience as a trauma nurse, love of literature and life lessons learned as a mother have all contributed to the impact she has on our success.  Plus, as you might guess from this photograph, she makes Books for Newborns’ work fun.  She introduced us to St. Louis Black Authors of Children’s Literature, used her knowledge of internet publishing and marketing  to help shape our new  web site and is still sorting literally thousands of donated kids’ books into appropriate age categories. A 1995 inductee into the Romance Writers of America HOF, she’s in our Hall of Fame too. Go raibh maith agat, Eileen.

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Five years! After building for four, we found our place and hit our stride in 2021. From our launch as a stand-alone agency that shared books with new mothers and their children, we now recognize our place as an important conduit to and integral part of our region’s coordinated effort to make a real lasting difference on literacy.
Our Newborns program sparks reading and bonding from birth to improve both mothers’ and babies’ health and to lay the base which others then build on in preschool and beyond. Our Older Siblings program provides new and repurposed “like new” books to build on that base by reinforcing the importance of reading with children through their grade school years. And both programs do so in an inclusive way, ensuring that children of all races, colors, cultures and backgrounds see themselves portrayed in a positive light in the books they receive from us.

We work toward common goals with schools, more than a dozen other literacy organizations, each of our delivery partners and like-minded organizations across the United States, knowing that reading and all it entails is the key to unlocking success in school and access to a world of opportunity later in life. We are interconnected. We succeed or fail together … and we are focused on succeeding.

We hit our stride by delivering 5,009 bookbags to Newborns and another 2,645 bookbags to their Older Siblings in 2021, an increase of 55% from the prior year. In just our first five years we have now delivered 19,124 bookbags. That’s more than 81,000 books with a retail value of more than $700,000, all at no cost to those who received them, packed and delivered by an all-volunteer work force whose efforts are limited only by the amount of funding we can attract. Because research shows that each of our book bags touches at least 3 additional people, more than 75,000 people have been steered toward or kept on the path of promise that reading provides since our founding in late 2016.

2021 brought many new supporters, chief among them the 8 elementary schools who conducted book drives and 11 other organizations and individuals who combined to donate 13,405 new and “like new” books valued at >$50,000 for use in our program for older siblings. And we raised $126,308 (32% more than last year) from a broad base of 149 generous donors. Buoyed by earlier success with “Baby’s First Day” in the Newborns program, we expanded efforts at racial inclusion by working with St. Louis Black Authors of Children’s Literature through grants from the Downtown Rotary Club of St. Louis and Missouri Humanities to add “Rock What You Got” to our book bags for older children.

We feel very good about our first five years. But we’re even more excited about what the next five years may bring. Thank you for your encouragement and support.

It is with very heavy hearts & sadness that Books for Newborns needs to report that our Fearless Leader & Chairman of our Board, Mike Hogan passed away on the evening of Friday, March 24th. . Words will never express how much Mike meant to our team. We will all miss his friendship, mentorship and drive to make our little charity successful.

Whether it was our daily check ins to insure we were focused on our Books for Newborns “To Do List”, updates on bags delivered (30,000+ to date) or new sponsor he wanted us to be aware of, Mike was an inspiration to us all. We know there are many in the community including our Books for Newborns Board, Volunteers and Donors praying for Mike and his family. Just last week Mike posted this in our BFN offices a real tribute to his life: