Frequently
Asked Questions
Book
Donations Funding
Logistics
Language
Book Donations
Does Sabre accept used books?
No, for three reasons:
a. Publishers donate new books to us.
b. Publishers donate multiple copies - each child/student in a class can have the same book.
c. We do not have the space nor the manpower required to inventory used books.
Does Sabre donate books to individuals?
Sabre's book donations are coordinated through its local NGO partners. The recipients of books include universities, schools and individuals.
Does
Sabre donate books within the USA?
No.
As a condition of receiving new book donations from publishers we only
donate books to countries where the publishers have no market. These
countries are typically in conflict or in transition.
Funding
Is
Sabre a grant-making foundation?
No. Sabre
relies on external sources of funding - other foundations, organizations
and individuals - to underwrite Sabre's book donation and ICT programs.
Logistics
How
does my organization become a partner?
In the first instance
your organization needs to be a 501c 3 or equivalent and may be US-based. Valid
documentation will have to be provided.
Are
there any costs involved?
Yes.
Sabre's cost in making available new books and CD-ROMs includes the following
activities:
pro-rated
book procurement (including screening of offering lists from
publishers) and transportation of publisher donations to Massachusetts;
pro-rated warehousing;
maintaining
and updating the inventory database used to offer out titles
to overseas partners;
order
fulfillment, packing, palletizing and loading of the container;
preparation
of packing lists and shipping documents;
freight
costs, including both transportation to the port of departure in the
US and ocean freight (when possible, door-to-door).
How
might these costs be covered?
We encourage you to explore your own sources of funding - foundations, corporate,
individuals - to underwrite a shipment. With the significant Diasporas there
are in the USA, it doesn't take that many people to club together to fund a
shipment.
What
is the value of a container-load?
Depending
upon the type of book and container size, a load can be valued anywhere from $250,000
to $750,000.
What
are the partner responsibilities?
Partner
responsibilities include attending to customs clearance, the logistics of storage
and distribution, and the tracking from local warehousing facilities to the generation
of reports from the end-user.
What
volume of books do you send?
Sabre typically sends books by the container-load, 20-ft and 40-ft containers.
This is the most cost effective way to ship. The number of books is contingent
upon the kind: so for example, children's books are thin and thus something
of the order of 15,000 can fit into a 20ft container. Secondary education and
tertiary level books are of course much larger- a ball park figure would be
6,000 books. Encyclopedia sets of course are very much larger. Sabre typically
requires that a minimum of 35 copies per title are requested. Any title and
numbers are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Sabre's stock is continually
in flux.
Language
What
languages are the books in?
As our book donations come from English-language publishers, the majority of our
books are in English. Furthermore, given that English is lingua franca
of business and science, our clients have a preference for English-language books.
We have a significant stock of Spanish-language children's books.