Open Books Ltd.

Open Books is an award-winning nonprofit social venture that operates an extraordinary bookstore, provides community programs, and mobilizes passionate volunteers to promote literacy in Chicago and beyond. Open Books is an award-winning nonprofit social venture that operates an extraordinary bookstore, provides community programs, and mobilizes passionate volunteers to promote literacy in Chicago and beyond. On May 1, 2006, Stacy Ratner founded Open Books Ltd. on a simple and entrepreneurial vision: a funky, fun, colorful and eccentric used bookstore whose proceeds would help support a spectrum of unique literacy programs. By September of that year, Open Books had acquired the first 10,000 of those books (and the first of many storage units) and was hard at work developing the creative, collaborative, and colloquial heart of the organization. Word of the new venture and its willingness to pick up used book donations quickly spread throughout Chicago, fueled by a January 2007 article in Daily Candy which brought in a flood of books, a rush of volunteers, and an outpouring of general support. That June, the IRS certified Open Books as an official 501(c)(3) charity, and the quest to grow impact for literacy began.