About - Books In Hand

Our goal

Holding a book in your hands is a completely different experience than swiping left on a screen. A screen doesn’t smell like a book, you can’t feel the pages turn one by one in your fingers. A screen doesn’t have the dopamine reward of watching the pages pile from the right side to the left side, in the “I can’t stop, just one more page” addiction, until there is one page left, and then none.

There are libraries shuttering, bookstores closing, individuals throwing book collections into dumpsters. And at the same time, there are children, teenagers, people in jails, shelters, hospitals, unhoused persons, elderly, economically disadvantaged people – who want those books. Individuals and organizations are dedicated to getting books to all of these various demographics, and so many people are doing such a wonderful job. But no one group can save every book, or get a book to every person who wants one.

And that’s where Books in Hand sees an unfilled niche, and we will strive to fill it. Our role is like a jigsaw puzzler – we are the ones looking at the outside of the box, seeing the whole picture, figuring out where all of the pieces match. The puzzle is vast, with so many pieces – but the picture on the box is beautiful beyond words.

What does this mean in practicality?

As of October, 2025, we just completed our initial California Non-Profit paperwork. We are waiting on our Federal 501(c)(3) paperwork to go through, and hoping to get that by February 2026. So these first few months are going to be a time of information gathering. We want to talk to anyone and everyone possible, currently active in the book redistribution and literacy world.

We are hoping over these first few months, to create the skeleton for a cohesive network of resource-sharing in Contra Costa and Alameda counties. Who has an excess of volunteers, storage space, bookshelves, books, transportation? And who needs those exact things? We are hoping to create one or more depots, where individuals and groups can bring boxes of excess books, and other groups can come and take what they lack.

Once we get our 501(c)(3) status, it’s game on! At that point, we will start working with partner organizations. It will be our happy task to start doing grant-writing, networking, and advertising to maximize book and fiscal donations from all sources. By combining resources, we can get larger financial and physical item grants, and every partner organization that has a reasonable monetary need, will get it filled. We will recruit volunteers to help between any and all partner organizations. Once we manage funding for a proper webmaster, we will upgrade this website to forum-based, with an interactive inventory sharing system. We can start taking applications for fiscal sponsorships – which will help reach into the small corners that aren’t being reached now.

After we have a solid working model in the East Bay, we will expand into the entire Bay Area. Then, all of Northern California. Then, all of the Southwest. Then…

About the Founder

Donna Holsten started reading at 3 years old. She grew up with books in her hands constantly – usually having two or even three different books in progress at any time. As an adult, life drifted toward adulting things, and books became less of a priority. But she has never lost the visceral love of typeset on paper, the smell of old libraries, and the knowledge that she holds the thoughts of another human in her own hands.

Currently, Donna is a hospice nurse. She has worked in clinical care, case coordination, nursing education, and management. She is also active in dog rescue and has done fostering of more dogs than she can even remember. Her hobbies include doing counted cross-stitch, tile-mosaic work, and re-landscaping her yard over and over as the gophers constantly destroy it.

Donna’s super-power is being able to stand outside of the box, see the big picture, and know where every piece of the puzzle needs to go. She is of the age where she is ready for her third and final career, and putting together this jigsaw puzzle of organization and coordination, is the exact culmination of every skill she has developed, throughout her life.