GGB St. Louis Metro – Books & Brunch
On July 16th, the ladies of the Geek Girl Brunch St. Louis Metro chapter got together for their second GGBDoBetter event. Having decided that the chapter needed to host at least one charity themed event each year, this brunch was very hyped up and advertised throughout the social media pages for several months in advance.
After seeing that some of the other chapters had done a fun “Blind Date with a Book” exchange, we knew we wanted to do something similar! So the decision was made to make our charity brunch centered around books. One of our officers picked a local charity to help and we saw that they accept donations of gently used books. Voila! Easily enough, the idea came up to host a book drive for the charity and a blind date with a book exchange for the brunchettes!
In order to entice the brunchettes of the chapter to gather as many books as possible to donate, we kept showing sneak peeks of prizes to be won if you brought the most books! Our officers put in some serious time creating three “Loot Crate” style gift baskets with prizes from as many fandoms as we could think of! Doctor Who notebooks, Harry Potter light switches, Lord of the Rings wall decor, Twin Peaks coffee mugs, a Geek Girl Brunch tote bag, some classic sc i-fi movie drink coasters, the list goes on!
Our brunchettes ended up exceeding the officers apparently modest book counts for donations and we estimated over 1400 books went to our charity! We were amazed at the generosity and ferocious book gathering that these geeks have! The third place winner donated 272 books, the second place winner donated 400, and the first place winner totaled 412 books! Simply astounding!
After being in awe at everyone’s fabulous donations, we played our Blind Date with a Book exchange. Each lady picked a number, then picked out which wrapped book seemed to catch her eye. Some books had clues, some were blank, and one even had a beautiful horse drawn on it! All the ladies ended up very intrigued and all went home with a new novel to read! And strangely enough, the book I ended up picking was by an author whom I have read a few times, but am “personally” attached to through our passion for the retired (*tear*) game City of Heroes. It was like it was meant to be!
We were so thrilled at the participation of all the ladies that came out and were part of our GGBDoBetter event. Each of the prize winners won the chance to pick out the themes for our next three brunches and have already done so with our August theme being Middle Earth (and our first Friday night event!) We are excited for our next brunch, and the officers are all relieved and ready to take it easy until the next GGBDoBetter event!
*UPDATE*
The week after 
the brunch, the officers were able to drop all of the books off at The Little Bit Foundation. We were so happy that all of us could be there to see the donations put to good use and also to get a mini tour of their warehouse! The foundation started 15 years ago when a woman’s heart was changed after holding a small coat drive. The have since grown to being able to hand out clothes, shoes, hygiene products, toys, school supplies, and books to many St. Louis area schools and children. And when they get donations of stuffed animals, they try to match them up with a book so the children can have a physical representation of a character from that book! What a cool idea!