Fundraising well down for Red Cross Book Sale
An intended four-day book sale that became a three-month fixture has raised about 30 per cent of its normal annual takings after a year of false starts.
The annual Red Cross Book Sale in Palmerston North ended on Sunday after twice being called off due to Covid-19 restrictions and being converted into a temporary shop.
Volunteers had been concerned at the number of books that would be left over due to the cancelled sales, but goodwill from Brian Green Properties led to the opening of a store on Rangitı¯kei St.
The store was open for almost three months and sold about 30,000 books, jigsaws, CDS and films from its 100,000 inventory.
Sale manager Jill Spicer said the venture had raised about $40,000 for Red Cross projects, well below the $140,000 the traditional sale usually raised, which was attributed to the reduced number of books that could be displayed in the smaller space.
A spokeswoman for the charity said it was a learning curve for Red Cross that large fundraising events such as the street appeal in March or the book sale could not be blindly relied on to bring in cash.
‘‘What happened with the book store kind of made us learn that we, as an organisation, need to not be complacent and rely on the sale.’’
It wasn’t known how the $100,000 downturn would affect the charity’s projects, she said.
Shop manager Beverley Keenan, who has volunteered for Red Cross since 2013, said the store worked well, but the preference was to return to a short sale in a larger space next year.
‘‘There isn’t the same range, but some people have liked having a small area ... It’s done the job for us. It has freed up storage space for us, which is what we needed it to do.’’
The store had drawn book lovers from Horowhenua, Tararua and Whanganui, but not in the numbers that a flash sale had.
‘‘I’m not sure it’s a destination like it normally is. We’ve had a lot of people returning, which they can’t do at the big sale, and some people like that.’’