CONVIO volunteers make their (book)mark

Today Recycled Reads was ground zero for the total energy generated by 11 volunteers from Convio, a world-leading provider of web enablement software for non-profit organizations.  These energetic young professionals brought everything a volunteer-dependent organization like Recycled Reads could hope for: speed, efficiency, intelligence, self-motivation and a sense of pride in their work.

Admittedly the store did not make a great first impression today.  Due to the delivery of a misplaced book pallet the day before,  the thermostat controlling temperatures in the back half of the store had been rendered useless – NOT a good thing in central Texas in May!.  Nevertheless, our troop of volunteers jumped right in to tackle a long list of physically-demanding projects we had prepared for them. From rearranging shelves to shifting and categorizing thousands of books, records and media, these folks had it covered. In fact, what we thought was a full day’s work schedule barely lasted until lunch!

As the group took their well-deserved lunch break, those of us on the “seasoned” team (myself, Marcia and Shane) worked through lunch to prepare for a completely new list of projects to occupy their afternoon shift. Fortunately (?) there was a LOT of work that needed to be done, so projects which we had put off for weeks due to lack of time and energy were now on the table. Suffice it to say, today was a busy but extremely productive day at Recycled Reads!

At the end of the day, when the last book had been shelved and the last cabinet cleaned, our valiant team of volunteers posed for this group photo.

Convio volunteers 2009-05-15

For those of you who have been to our store before, you are in for a nice surprise when you come in for tomorrow’s Armed Forces Day event. New categories of fully-stocked and sorted shelves await your shopping pleasure, with hundreds of new books in Fiction, Sci-Fi, Features and many other categories. Since a picture is worth more than words, here’s what you can expect:

After the Convio volunteer whirlwind

On behalf of all the staff and volunteers at Recycled Reads, THANK YOU CONVIO!