U.S. (2024)
Penguin Random House and First Book joined forces to celebrate teachers throughout the month of May. As part of this initiative, we gave away 10 gift credits worth $500 each to educators for use in the First Book Marketplace, ensuring that students had plenty of reading material to enjoy during the summer break.
Penguin Random House marked the 10th anniversary of our meaningful partnership with Save the Children via a special Giving Tuesday campaign in 2024. Over the past decade, we have worked together to improve the lives of countless children around the world, providing them with the resources and support they need to thrive.
Through December 10, we offered a special matching program for Penguin Random House U.S. employees, matching donations made to Save the Children’s Make Childhood Fair Fund, up to $10,000. This fund supports early education and literacy programs in rural communities throughout the U.S. During the same period, each book purchased through penguinrandomhouse.com resulted in a $1 donation to Save the Children, up to a total of $10,000.
NEW YORK, NY (2024)
Penguin Random House volunteers ran this year’s Botanical Book Bike at Madison Square Park, choosing a children’s book from the bike and reading every half hour from 12pm – 2pm. During non-storytime periods, volunteers helped the Botanical Book Bike Associate (a Madison Square Park Conservancy staff member) answer general questions about the books, lending/borrowing procedure, and other inquiries. For more information about the Botanical Book Bike, click here.
U.S. (2024)
In spring 2024, Read Ahead hosted its first-ever Read-a-Thon! Penguin Random House has been a proud partner of Read Ahead since 1997, supporting their vision of unlocking students’ full potential through mentoring relationships based on a love of reading. To learn more about Read Ahead and this team-based fundraiser, click here.
NEW YORK, NY (2024)
On Thursday, May 30, 20 NYC-based Penguin Random House employees volunteered with the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Volunteers engaged in some light physical activity and got in the weeds—both literally and figuratively—to plant hundreds of blooming plants in the park for visitors to enjoy. To learn more about Madison Square Park Conservancy, click here.
Penguin Random House participated in City Harvest’s Share Lunch Fight Hunger campaign for the 16th year, supporting efforts to address food insecurity in New York City. In addition to fundraising, we hosted a dedicated volunteer repack shift at City Harvest’s Cohen Community Food Rescue Center in Brooklyn, where employees helped prepare food for local distribution.
In a time of great need, with 1 in 4 children facing food insecurity, Penguin Random House is proud to partner with City Harvest to feed NYC kids and their families. Learn more about Share Lunch Fight Hunger here.
SARASOTA, FL (2023)
Penguin Random House donated over 150 LGBTQ+ books across eleven divisions for a student-led Pride event at the New College of Florida. The school has been in the news recently as a site where partisan politics and educational freedom are clashing in a way that’s not unrelated to the wave of book banning we’ve been seeing throughout the nation. As a result of the recent appointments by Gov. DeSantis to the New College Board of Trustees in support of his views, students have been restricted in the kinds of activities they can do with school funds—including DEI and LGBTQ events like Pride.
NEW YORK, NY (2023)
We are proud to continue our partnership with the New York Public Library (NYPL). This program is part of our ongoing commitment to support a culture of reading and build the widest audiences for authors. This partnership with NYPL, where we tripled all donations made to the organization, helps to ensure that New Yorkers can utilize the vital services provided by their libraries free of charge, including access to books, computers, early literacy workshops, and job training classes.
U.S. (2023)
Through a new partnership with Little Free Library, we are sponsoring 20 Little Free Library book-sharing boxes granted to high-need communities via Little Free Library’s Impact Library Program across the U.S., providing more than 500 mental health–focused books and over 30 titles for these libraries, and offering an additional 2,000 books for a national giveaway.
U.S. (2021)
In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in May 2021, we announced the launch of Uplift AAPI Stories. Expanding on last year’s #ReadAsianAuthors initiative, we’re inviting readers to uplift AAPI stories and #ReadAsianAuthors. This initiative aims to celebrate and uplift the stories of our AAPI authors, and we partnered with AAPI influencers across social media platforms to reach as many diverse readers as possible.
To continue our support of the AAPI community, we donated 15% of net proceeds from PRH.com sales in the month of May to Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, an organization “fighting for civil rights and empowering Asian Americans to create a more just America for all.” We have previously worked with AAJC, as well as Stop AAPI Hate, with donations made to both organizations earlier this year. We also partnered with non-profit writing organization Kundiman by sponsoring an eight-week creative writing workshop, giving twelve AAPI writers the opportunity to attend free of charge. Internally, we hosted a bystander intervention training with Hollaback! for employees, in addition to a Q&A featuring the President & Executive Director of AAJC, John Yang.
