What to help get manga to MS & HS students?
By day, I run a school library in a small town. When I was hired, they had only 1 shelf of manga and no complete series. Stuff such as only 1 & 2 of Fruits Basket and only 1 & 7 of Naturo (why 7 instead of 2, idk). So I've been working on expanding it to a fully properly sized section. I'm not finished, but it's already turned into our most popular section and has generated a huge influx of requests for more manga series.
Though in our state, library funding is based on enrollment numbers. Because we're a small school, that means we don't get much. Our school as 48% free/reduced lunch eligibility rate, stats & source: https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?Search=1&DistrictID=1803940&ID=180394000672
These two things combined mean that we have students who have been waiting over a year for some of their manga series requests to be ordered, but the 2026 budget is all but spent. A lot of it went to manga, but they want so many series. I don't want to have to tell these kids they have to wait until at least 2027 for the pokemon & kirky volumes they want to read now. Over the past year or so, I've personally donated $368 of books (including MHA 1-20), but I can't do this alone (for one thing, I make even less than a teacher), so I'm trying a crowdfunding project.
I'm here to ask if anyone can share this project to get the word out. We need help building momentum for this project so we can get more (requested by name) manga series in the hands of young manga fans.
TL;RD: Please share the code LIFTOFF (it doubles the money donated, up to $50 per person) and the link https://www.donorschoose.org/sl/AmREjqFBNn to help us get students the manga series they are asking for by name.
P.S. If you want, you can verify that I'm a current (not former) employee of GCCS here: https://www.gccschools.com/home/library/ (scroll down to & open New Wash MH). Also, we're using DonorsChoose because they are fully transparent about how every penny is spent: donations will never even reach the school, let alone me. Donations will be spent by DonorsChoose on the books in the project so they can be shipped to the school and added to our library for students to read.
Posted Apr 4, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC