So, that's just what I want to talk about, and I love how you put this with the heart in the social sector and the head in the private sector. Another way people talk about organizations like yours is as hybrid organizations. They can be for profit. They can be nonprofit, but there's a strong social mission and a revenue generating model as well. So, how does that work in your case? At this moment we have two big jet engines. One is called the First Book National Book Bank, and what that does is it accepts. Fundamentally it's focused on books, but there are other products as well. It accepts large-scale contributions from really almost every major publisher in the US and Canada, and we take that inventory in and we make it available through an online system to our expansive network of classrooms and programs who have signed up with us and who are eligible to receive resources. That one line is essentially a donor model. Yes it is. Where companies are donating books and you're distributing them. While that sounds more traditional in its design, the people who received the books, the books remain free, but they pay a shipping and handling fee. On average, it's about 55, 60 cents per book. But, what that fee allows us to do is not only pay shipping and sort of the hard out of pocket cost, but it allows us also to pay a 100 percent of the costs related to running the National Book Bank, and so, what that means is that that is completely revenue neutral for the organization and that places 14 million books a year, something like that. So, it's a powerful engine. Right, and then the second engine. The second engine is called the First Book Marketplace, and about 10 or 11 years ago, what we realized is that though we loved the Book Bank, it's wildly efficient. It places enormous quantities of books and resources out there. But, what it doesn't do is fix the problem for publishing. Publishing is a consignment industry and what that means is that they know that when they hit the print button every year on whatever titles they select that, 25 or 30 percent of that inventory is coming back to them. That means that they elevate the price at retail to reflect it. So, we have a market now, where a premium picture book for kids in the US runs up just a hair over $18. So, you have a entire publishing industry that really has a restricted market to about the top five percent of the US socio-economic ladder. Well, that's not good for the industry. No one wants to have that kind of constriction. So, we went to them and we said, we are going to crack open the bottom of the market for you. We will aggregate the market. We will take care of talking to them, so there'll be no advertising costs, and we will buy for the first time ever on a non-returnable basis, which took the consignment risk off the table as well. So, we now offer about, I think, it's 6,500 titles. It changes. It goes up and down, but about 6,500 titles and the average price of a picture book through us is 285. Amazing. It includes shipping, and so, we waived- Often these might be paperback books, slightly different. It's the same picture, same story, same everything, but maybe not hardback. Maybe not hardback. Sometimes they are hardback and the cost is a little higher on those. But, you're right, we change format sometimes to keep the costs. So, it's accessible. Yeah. But, it also works for the publishers. It's a brand new market and they're still making money on those sales. How are these groups that you are selling these books to. How are they paying whether it's a community center, a school system, you said, the local barber shop. It depends on the program. Sometimes it's Title 1 Funds, which are governmental funds. A lot of times what we know is about more than 90 percent of teachers in the United States take money out of their own pocket to pay for resources in their classroom, and if you're a teacher at a Title 1 school, the needs are so high. That first book beliefs that none of those people should be first of all paying for it themselves, but secondly paying $18 a book. So, we're able to make those dollars that they do bring to the table whether they're out of their own pocket, whether they're school funds. Sometimes its local foundations or affluent folks who come to the table and recognize a need. It's a huge range and we just want- all we care about is making sure that every dollar that comes in pushes the maximum number of resources out the door. So, with your model, it sounds like there's not really. You're not experiencing a tension between the revenue-generating aspects of the model and the social impact. The more books that are getting donated, the more books that you're selling, the more books you're contracting, the greater your impact. That's not always the case, and I wonder if there are things that you've learned along the way. If you were giving advice to others who are looking for this, a successful hybrid model, where you get that win-win. Do you have advice, do you have insights about how you find that? I do think that we're particularly fortunate to have. Our model is directly on point with our mission. It means that there really is no distraction between the two. I think that if I were advising somebody to design one, what I would suggest is a couple of things. One is, I'm a big believer in writing a business plan. It may sound old fashioned. It may sound boring as hell. But, what you need to do is you need to sit in front of your computer and you need to make sure that you can clearly articulate exactly what you intend to do, exactly what the risks are. You need to do it fearlessly, and ask yourself every tough question. Also I think young people especially who are trying to start social enterprises, I think they need to step out and ask for help. I talked to a lot of classes and I think what they say a lot of young people, even people who are very highly educated. They have MBAs from great programs like Wharton, and they're still worried that they don't know enough. They don't know enough about logistics or whatever the topic is, and I think that the best minds recognize that team leadership is a way to go, and what you really need to do, you're never going to know enough, and even if you do when you start it, within six months you'll be facing challenges that you really couldn't even foresee. So, you need to routinely get yourself in the mode of reaching out, asking for help, asking people who you know will give you great advice, but who will also ask you the tough questions, so that you don't run the risk of falling so in love with your design, that you lose track of your business model. So, I think there are lots of wonderful models where they don't have the alignment, where they're running a restaurant to fund a homeless program, and many, many fantastic models, but I do think the centerpiece of that is refined thinking, forcing business practices, forcing yourself to answer the tough questions.
