Ellen Gierlach’s plans to use her non-profit Gems Donation Station store “to benefit this area” will now include help given to the Oil Region Library Association.
When Gierlach’s second-hand store opens Friday in the former Salvation Army building in Sugarcreek Borough, it will include a room for selling books set up by Mr. Bookman, a business that works with the Oil Region libraries to help that organization raise money.
Mr. Bookman, according to its owner Ben Wilkinson, of Sandycreek, “provides service that can generate income from media items that are donated to the library. We will work to provide this service to any non-profit or charitable organization.”
The upcoming Venango County Multi-Library Books and Media Sale will offer 100,000 items that have been donated to the local libraries, said Wilkinson. The sale will include books, CDs, DVDs, LPs, tapes, magazines, VHS and audio books.
The sale will be held on three consecutive weekends beginning April 19 and on one Wednesday, May 1. Each weekend the prices will drop from the weekend before.
Wilkinson said that in addition to the biannual library sales in the spring and fall, he will also rent a permanent space at Gems as a vender of both used and new books.
That bookstore will also benefit the libraries, said Wilkinson, as a portion of every book sold will go to the library.
“If I can get this model set up in Venango County, and the libraries and communities benefit from it, I could use the model in other nearby counties,” Wilkinson said.
Wilkinson, who is originally from England and moved to the U.S. when he was in his 20s, said he didn’t like reading when he was young, even though “my mother was also my English teacher.”
The store will include a third vender besides Mr. Bookman and the donation station Five O’clock Finds and Consigns will provides a consignment shop for furniture and other items whose proceeds will benefit both Gems, the donor and the vender.
Gierlach, of Franklin, said in December that Gems would be “a store similar to the Salvation Army with one big difference – all the benefits will stay in Venango County. That is one message I want to be clear – it will benefit this area.”
Gierlach has been donating to three families in need even before the Gems Donation Station will open. She has passed on donated furniture, clothing and household items to the families.
She also said that she envisions donating items to the Franklin YMCA and Collins House (the VNA hospice) and collecting and donating construction items to non-profits such as Habitat for Humanity, similar to the approach of Construction Junction in Pittsburgh.
