About Us

Book Wish Foundation is a U.S. tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN: 26-1285319) with a mission to provide reading relief for people in crisis. In partnership with organizations that work on the ground in some of the most distressed places around the world, we support reading to improve education, mental health, and job training.

Reading relief is a concept much broader than providing books. The people we help often need more than books in order to read. For example, they may need reading glasses, solar lighting, a library building, literacy textbooks, or school supplies. All of this aid can help people to read, but to provide relief, what they are reading must be relevant to their lives. We match books and other aid as specifically as possible to the crisis situation, culture, language, demographics, educational history, and aspirations of our recipients.

Reading relief is very different than sending whatever books happen to be donated at a book drive, and we often decline donations that are not targeted to the needs and interests of the people we help.

The specific needs for our projects are listed in the Wish Lists on our website, and provide an opportunity for highly effective giving.

We focus on people in long-term crisis situations because they may face problems so grave that reading relief is not a major component of the aid they receive, although reading may have a great positive impact on their lives. Refugees, internally displaced people, school-aged children not in school, the homeless, the critically ill, and the desperately poor are among the populations we aim to reach.

Book Wish Foundation was formed in October 2007 by the mother-son team of bibliophiles Lorraine and Logan Kleinwaks, in response to a Washington Post article describing the lack of books in a refugee camp in Eastern Chad. We are staffed entirely by unpaid volunteers, and all money and goods donated for specific projects or Wish List items will be used only for those purposes. Incidental costs, such as for office supplies, are not funded through these targeted donations. Public documents of the Foundation are posted on our website and can conveniently be viewed here. In compliance with State charitable solicitation laws, we are required to display the following statements for certain States where we are registered to solicit:

New York: A copy of our most recent annual report is available from the Office of the Attorney General at New York State Department of Law, Charities Bureau, 120 Broadway - 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10271, or from Book Wish Foundation at 11606 Brandon Hill Way, Reston, VA 20194-1215.

Virginia: A financial statement is available upon written request from the Office of Consumer Affairs of the State of Virginia.

In July 2009, Book Wish Foundation was featured in the "Changing the World" article in Costco Connection, which you can read here.