The Whitworth Sigma Tau Delta Chapter wins a grant to support the Spokane Books to Prisoners branch, an organization dedicated to fostering love of reading and education to those who are incarcerated.

Sigma Tau Delta offers grants every fall for chapters to support and better engage with nonprofits in their communities. Current club VP and Honors senior Andrew Doughty developed the idea of working with Books to Prisoners, nurturing our relationship with them and applying for the grant on their behalf.

Club leadership organized a meeting with the kind volunteers at Books to Prisoners in the fall to better understand their needs and how we would word the grant proposal. Here’s what we learned:

The Spokane branch of this organization is operated out of a room in the Unitarian Universalists Church in West Spokane. Previous to that, they were run out of volunteers’ basements. Their room was lined with bookshelves and piles of books; each was alphabetized and sorted according to genre.

Books to Prisoners is technically a publisher based out of Seattle. Incarcerated individuals generally can’t receive books as gifts depending on the prison, but they can buy books. The way around these rules is to include an invoice from the “publisher” for $0.00.

Most often requested are Fantasy, Legal texts, horror, comics/manga, and Spanish language books. You can see a full list of commonly requested titles and authors on their bookshop.org wishlist.

Once a letter come in, a volunteer opens each note and reads it carefully. Sometimes multiple letters come in the same envelope if some of the incarcerated individuals don’t have the funds for postage.

A volunteer will peruse the shelves of books looking for the titles and authors requested or similar enough matches that will entertain or educate, depending on the request. Once 2-4 books are collected for each letter, they are wrapped up and addressed using the information on the letter like prisoner number or cell block. The invoice is included, and they are sorted into boxes designated for each prison.

Though shelves and books are always in high demand, what many people don’t consider when it comes to this organization is how much it costs to ship heavy boxes full of books. Postage alone for a box may cost over $90.

With all this information, Andrew Doughty drew up a grant proposal to submit to the larger Sigma Tau Delta organization for $500. With this money, he planned to purchase another bookshelf for their space, fulfill requests for some of the most popular books, and dedicate the rest of the money for postage costs. In addition, Doughty planned to host a book drive on campus for students, faculty, staff, and visitors to donate their lightly loved books in the most requested genres.

The grant proposal was accepted in December, giving our chapter the opportunity to support Books to Prisoners Spokane with $500 worth of supplies to continue their operations.

The Books to Prisoners book drive is underway and will be open for several more weeks, with donation boxes in Westminster, the Whitworth Library, and Lied Square in the HUB. We hope to return to the Books to Prisoners homebase in the Unitarian church to assemble the bookshelves and fulfill a few more requests later in the spring.