Four years ago, Beth Wendling wanted to get rid of a bunch of books stored in the basement of her Champaign home. She posted eight of them on Amazon.com and sold four of them in just one day. 

Little did she know, her business, Orphans Treasure Box, would eventually blossom into a book outlet in Champaign, where she could sell books and receive donations at the same time. 

Orphans Treasure Box is an organization that sells thousands of books every year online and through their used-books outlet located at 826 Pioneer St. in Champaign. Every day, the shop receives book donations, which are then sold in the outlet and online in places such as Amazon.com, AbeBooks.com and Half.com. The net profit is given to charitable causes that provide aid for orphans. 

Wendling, founder of Orphans Treasure Box, said the vision to start the shop began after reading “Radical” by David Platt, which told the story about a donation to a water project in Africa. She said the passage had a strong impact on her.

“I thought, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ I just prayed to God, and it was instantly like a curtain pullback,” Wendling said. “I saw what I have been playing around with – books.”

Less than four years later, 28,000 books are being sold online, and roughly 10,000 books from donations are purchasable to the public in the outlet.

Barbra King first started volunteering for Orphans Treasure Box about two years ago and is now the warehouse manager and coordinator. She said the business is continuously developing, and volunteers play a huge role.

“We have volunteers in every department,” King said. “The truth is that as we’ve been growing – and we’ve been growing a lot – we have a need for much more than we actually have as far as hours worked.”

Hundreds of books are sold every week, and all kinds of book donations are given to the outlet, including non-fiction, suspense, biography and children books. 

The outlet currently sells their books for a quarter each, while the online prices can vary based on a book’s worth.

“We have a lot of people who would come and get boxes of books,” Wendling said. “They’ll read the books, and three or four weeks later, they would donate the same books back because they only spent a couple of bucks in the first place. It’s like a library without the deadline.”

King said any books they receive that are not in good enough shape for purchase don’t go to waste.

“Every box we open is kind of like a treasure box,” King said. “We don’t know what’s going to be in there. It could be a lot of things that we just need to send to recycling, or it could be that $600 book that we were able to sell to an antique book dealer. Then with that money, we can help (orphans and other vulnerable kids).”

Since January 1, 2015, Orphans Treasure Box is close to giving away $10,000 in donations. 

Four times a year, “Profit Day” takes place, in which the staff and board members of Orphans Treasure Box decide where to donate their net profit. Some of the organizations currently listed to receive donations include C-U at Home, which provides support for homeless people in Champaign-Urbana; Delivering Hope International, which aids with maternal, newborn and child health in Ethiopia; and Hogar de Esperanza, which provides care for abandoned children in Peru.

Julie McClure, promotions manager of Orphans Treasure Box, said the book donations from people are vital to the organization’s growth.

“We’ve come a long way in people knowing who we are,” McClure said. “I really think that we started to kind of work our way into the community a lot more and put our name and our faces in more peoples’ minds than where we were a year ago. The biggest thing is getting those donations because then that just increases our funds to be able to donate (to the charitable causes).”

Wendling said she wants Orphans Treasure Box to not only be recognized for the generous donations they give to orphans but also as one of the best book businesses.

“We have just started where we’re headed,” Wendling said. “We have volunteers that do most of the work – I’m a volunteer. We’re able to get money out of (books) that a lot of people think are trash or garbage, or that are sitting in their basement or garage, and we’re able to do so much for kids. If we can build this here, why can’t it be built in a lot of other communities? That’s what excites me the most.”

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