Friends! If you missed the news, this month we are celebrating our three-year tome gnome-iversary and kicking off our FOURTH year of hiding and sharing books with our local Tucson community. As part of the celebration, we launched our anniversary celebrations by hiding 30 copies of TJ Klune’s newest book (Somewhere Beyond the Sea) this past weekend, along with a bunch of very fun goodies from Tor (the publisher) and Kingdom of Threads (TJ’s amazing merchandise partner). We’ll be sharing more on that in a future post this weekend.

As we look to launch our fourth year of book hiding, we’re reaching out (as we do every year, LOL) to ask for your help with our fundraising efforts for 2025! As you all know, the Tome Gnome strives to bolster a culture and community united in the joy of reading by providing free books to the community to inspire literacy, reading, and happiness. We need your help to keep the book joy going!

You can donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/hiding-books-in-2025

WHAT WE DO:

Founded by three friends in 2021, the Tucson Tome Gnome runs a monthly bookish scavenger hunt. Every month, we select a book and hide 45 copies of it all over Tucson and surrounding communities for our friends and neighbors to find. We then ask people to read, enjoy, and hide their found book for the next person to discover. In addition to our monthly book hiding, we also host a regular “Solutions Focused Community Book Club,” and we collaborate with local businesses and other nonprofits in Tucson on events that create book joy for older teens and adults!

HOW WE USE YOUR DONATIONS:

We have no paid staff – everything is run off of volunteer hours from a few dedicated folks. Thus, all the money we raise goes directly into buying the books we hide every month, supplies, and participating in various community collaborations and partnerships to spread the joy of reading! $10,000 will not cover ALL our operating costs in 2025 (it covers about 1/2 of our budgeted expenses), but these resources help cover basic expenses and give us some flexibility to engage in new activities when opportunities arise!

IN SUMMARY:

Although we all have other full-time commitments, we love doing this work and would love to keep it going! So, if you like what we’re doing, we’d love to have you support us with a donation! We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so your gifts to us are tax deductible (EIN: 88-3343983) 🙂

You can donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/hiding-books-in-2025

Thank you so much for investing in us and our bookish Tucson community!