Community-wide celebration, digital strategy, and parent leadership fuel record-breaking results.
When St. Anne Catholic School decided to bring its book fair back on campus since the pandemic, expectations were high. What followed exceeded them all.
Originally projected to generate $9,136 in sales, St. Anne Literati Book Fair closed at $20,212.21 — almost double the projected sales. Even more notably, $8,305 of that total came directly from teacher wishlist donations, representing 46.9% of total sales.
The result wasn’t accidental. It was strategic.
A Community Effort from the Start
The fair was led by a dedicated team of parent volunteers and PTO Chairs, alongside an active and engaged school administration and librarian. From the outset, the school fully embraced promotion efforts — particularly by encouraging and supporting online teacher wishlists and hosting special shopping days for the entire St. Anne community — which helped drive excitement and participation throughout the event.
St. Anne found great success by following the checklists on OpenBook. Teachers were reminded to create and share their lists, which were then promoted weekly through school communications and across multiple digital platforms.
In person, the team created a teacher wishlist display board featuring a QR code directing families to their online fair page. Families could scan and donate instantly.
“We can’t believe how many books they got to teachers,” organizers shared afterward. “The book impact was amazing.”
For the St. Anne Community, books in classrooms mattered even more than funds raised.
Turning Foot Traffic into Book Impact
Timing also played a critical role in the fair’s success.
The event was strategically paired with several major community gatherings, including:
- The Diocese Parish Centennial Celebration
- Homecoming festivities
- Grandparents Day
With more than 600 grandparents registered to attend Grandparents Day, organizers anticipated heavy foot traffic. Instead of hosting the fair inside the school, they made the unconventional decision to hold it in the parking garage building, positioning the fair directly along the path families would take back to their cars.
The result: maximum visibility and consistent traffic throughout the day.
To manage large crowds efficiently, St. Anne ran a cashless fair and promoted online gift cards in advance. Volunteers also directed in-person shoppers to complete teacher wishlist purchases online by scanning QR codes. This streamlined checkout lines while channeling significant sales through the online fair.
The approach proved transformative.
The Power of Starting Early
One of the biggest drivers of success for many schools is an early launch window.
Literati automatically opens each school’s online fair four weeks prior to the in-person event. During that time, teachers can create digital wishlists that are shareable with the entire community, allowing supporters to purchase classroom books from anywhere, at any time.
Because wishlist purchases are direct classroom donations, they don’t deplete inventory from the physical fair shelves, leaving more books available for student shoppers while increasing overall impact.
For schools, this means sales momentum built weeks before fair week even begins.
A First-Time Shift That Paid Off
This was St. Anne’s first time using an online wishlist program and their first time since the pandemic hosting a fair on campus after previously partnering with an off-site retailer.
Bringing the event home created excitement. Pairing that excitement with a clear promotional strategy unlocked unprecedented results.
By fully embracing digital tools, promoting consistently, and making it easy for families to give, St. Anne doubled their sales—and the impact multiplied from there.
Because wishlist purchases are direct book donations, the school saw a 5.8x increase in book impact compared to traditional fundraising models, dramatically expanding the number of books placed directly into classrooms.
Looking Ahead: Paying It Forward
The success has inspired even bigger plans.
For their next fair, St. Anne hopes to “adopt” a local school in an under-resourced community, using their wishlist strategy not only to support their own teachers, but to help fund books for a community that may not have the same fundraising opportunities.
It’s a reflection of what made this fair so successful in the first place: a community focused not just on revenue, but on impact.
And at St. Anne, that impact is measured in books, thousands of them, now headed straight into students’ hands and classrooms where they’ll make a difference every day.
