Interview with Michiel Erkelens from Books 4 Life Utrecht

Written by: Svetozara Bozhilova

Books 4 Life Utrecht is a volunteer organization that promotes human rights by collecting and selling secondhand books, CDs, LPs and DVDs in Utrecht. The organization donates 90% of their proceeds to charitable projects and depends entirely on volunteers motivated to create change. Michiel Erkelens was interviewed to give insight to the foundation’s mission and work processes. Michiel is Chair of the Books 4 Life Utrecht Board, having previously acted as a volunteer in the shop. He emphasizes that the Board’s mission is to give people the opportunity to work in a safe and pleasant environment, be busy with books and reading, and enjoy the company of customers and colleagues while doing something they love. Books 4 Life

My name is Svetozara Bozhilova, a second-year Literary Studied student at Utrecht University. In my first year in the Netherlands, I spent a long while skimming through second-hand bookstores as a student in search for affordable books. In Books 4 Life Utrecht I found a safe place during the coronavirus lockdown.

I highly value the organization’s ambition to create a haven for booklovers in Utrecht and am pleased to announce they have been invited to collaborate with Utrecht University on 16^th June in the form of a book market and exchange. The event will be held at Drift 25, Room 2 from 11:00 to 15:00h.

The event will make available a selection of fiction and non-fiction books in English and Dutch with a 50% discount for all UU participants. If you have any books currently collecting dust on the bookshelf, you can donate them at the event, or exchange them for other donated books free of charge.

All book donations and sale profits during this event will go towards Books 4 Life’s efforts to help those most in need.

Q. How did the idea of the bookstore come about?

Michiel: The idea originates from a group of people in Tilburg. You have to keep in mind that all Books 4 Life stores, 6 at the moment, are in cities with a university. Some of the first shops are still in university buildings. The basic idea was to give access to good books to people with a lower income, students, and that the generated value would be given to charities that were effective in helping out people in distress.

In Utrecht it started as a copycat system in one of Utrecht University’s buildings. We’ve hopped around a few locations: we’ve been in the City Centre University Library for a time, and the last move we made was from a building in the centre to what is now our location at Koningsweg.

Q. You mention the store has moved locations multiple times, as well as away from the city centre. How are you dealing with this?

Michiel: Moving out of the centre was definitely seen as a threat but it really became an opportunity. Our customer base has grown. For donations, it’s a far simpler location because you can drop off books by car, which is hardly possible when you’re located in the city centre, and so the size of donations people bring themselves is now bigger.

What we didn’t expect is how traffic increased. We are on one of the routes to the University and the centre/Central Station. There’s only a few shops on our street and mostly one-time shops, like a bike shop and a car rental, so it’s not the same or similar people that come to the store. The exact reason for this we don’t know but it worked out quite well. The way we are able to display books and music in the shop helps a lot too: it’s a relatively bright shop and the room we have makes the display better.

Q. You mention each shop is in a city with a university. You also have a history with Utrecht University as it has provided one of your previous locations, on Wittewrouwen. How involved are you with the University now?

Michiel: The involvement with the University, except for giving us the free location, has been low. The only link we have is that we are able to use the Library for intercity type of meetings, and use rooms for free or almost free. A lot of the staff from the University also donate books; we receive a lot of collections from retired professors or ones moving.

Q. It is stated on the Books 4 Life website donations go mainly to two organizations, as well as to local charities, in which volunteers are involved. What’s the process behind this?

Michiel: It’s a time-consuming process. The local charities are invited to come up with projects. We don’t finance the general being of a charity but the projects they come up with. In the first round, charities send a written application. They know from our website what guidelines we have. Each year between 4 to 10 organizations apply. The board then scrutinizes the applications and comes up with a shortlist.  The organizations then are invited to make a 1:30-2 minute video pitch explaining what they do, why they need funding and how it will be spent. This video pitch is sent to all volunteers.

The volunteers indicate what they think about each application by answering 3 basic questions: Do you understand what the organization is trying to do; Do you think it fits within our goals; Do you think it will have impact? Based on that, we make a final decision where we should donate in full. Usually the organizations we shortlist will never be all fully rejected but it may be the case that we give them less than they requested. That can happen based on the input we get from our volunteers.

Q. And do the volunteers find local charities, or do they introduce the bookstore to these charities?

Michiel: It’s an open system. We broadcast in several places, including Facebook and LinkedIn, our annual round of money. We also have 2 mailing lists, one for volunteers and one for people interested in the shop. In total, this is close to 600 people who get a notified by us indicating that they can mention us to people that work for charities or with charities, and apply for this funding.

Q. You also offer a limited selection of books on the internet. How are you dealing with the issue that more people are becoming used to online shopping?

Michiel: There’s actually a division in markets: we have the low cost, high value books in the shop and we have the higher value books online on Boekwinkeltjes.nl, which makes the 2 different markets.

We are not going to sell our cheaper books (0,50 to 5€) on the internet. It has to have a certain value to be put up online because a lot more effort is required to sell a book that way: you still have to pay for packaging and transport costs, and it’s very time consuming. Whereas, in the shop people can walk in and shop, and only the books are paid for.

The sales we do via Boekwinkeltje are books that don’t attract our customers from the store. These books are either too expensive, or on topics that people don’t come for in the physical shop. Our online customer base is people from the Netherlands and Belgium, mostly Dutch speaking. There are books in other languages but most books are still sold in these 2 countries. And transporting outside the EU is very expensive, so it would have to be a very high value book to sell.

During Covid we had to close the shop but people still wanted to do things. This is why we developed a model to keep around half of the volunteers able to do some work. The other half didn’t because our average volunteer is susceptible to Covid issues due to age and health. The half that kept working, in very restrictive rules and tasks, could still remain active. That was the main objective. The sales are of course nice, but the main purpose was to keep everyone who wanted to work, working.