EMC CHARITY BOOK FAIR 2020

Yet again our 2020 Book Fair raised a record amount for charity.  We raised £45,162 up from £41,241 last year and we are proposing to donated £41,550 to the following charities who helped:

We estimate that we sorted about 87,000 books and used over 2,700 fruit boxes. We had the usual collection of inappropriate books which were unsuitable for sale including this year a collection of books on bondage! This year we had to buy flat packed fruit boxes as the supermarkets from whom we collected fruit boxes previously have increasingly moved to plastic crates; this increased the cost of running the fair and our overall expenses were up at about £3,700. 
We continue to have great help from over 300 volunteers from EMC, from charities as well as others who just turned up to help, or even took time off work to do so.  We also benefitted from the trend of larger businesses giving employees “Charity” days off so that they can support their chosen charity including HSBC and IHS Markit.
Our Fair seems to becoming even better known and we sold over 10% more tickets  including having a record 94 dealers and others come along for our preview on the Wednesday evening. We even met a family from France who had, for the fourth year, taken their holiday to coincide with our Fair. Roots was again a great success providing tea, coffee, cakes and sandwiches to all and through their hard work our takings were a remarkable £2,694 – almost £900 per day.
 
This year the articulated lorry arrived early to take the remaining books away and even by packing every fruit book tightly with books we only just got them all on the lorry.
 
We celebrated the fair with a very enjoyable cream tea party which was attended by over 50 people who had helped with the fair.  Our thanks to Hayley and Sandra for proving an excellent tea and to the Downs Barbershop Choir for entertaining us admirably during tea.
Finally, we could not run the fair without the help of so many volunteers who willingly give their time and expertise.  Huge thanks go to all of them for making this another very successful event. 
Andrew Jennings and Jacqui Raggett