VBS Book Donations in Albuquerque
— After Vacation Bible School

The Post-VBS Inventory Problem

Last verified May 2026 · Original research by Josh Eldred

What VBS Leftover Materials Look Like

I am Josh Eldred, and I run the New Mexico Literacy Project from my warehouse at 5445 Edith Blvd NE in Albuquerque. I have been picking up books and curriculum from churches across the city for years, and every summer the pattern is the same: Vacation Bible School ends on Friday, and by Monday the children's ministry director is staring at a fellowship hall or a closet full of materials with no clear plan for what to do with them.

VBS curriculum kits are substantial. A typical complete kit from Group Publishing, Lifeway/LifeWay, or Cokesbury contains a remarkable volume of physical material. There is the leader guide — sometimes a spiral-bound book, sometimes a full binder — that coordinates every aspect of the program across the week. There are station director guides for Bible story, crafts, recreation, music, and the snack areas. There are student activity books, one per child across every age group you ran. There are promotional pieces, large-format decorating posters, theme-specific room decorations, and often a CD or DVD set for music and teaching segments. Cokesbury and Group both include extensive music resources — the VBS theme songs, the motions, the background tracks — on physical media that most children's ministry leaders spend two or three months learning before the program starts.

Beyond the main curriculum kit, churches typically accumulate additional materials that orbit the VBS program. Children's Bibles — the ones purchased for children who do not have one at home, often bought in bulk for giveaway. Bible story books keyed to that year's VBS theme, frequently available as tie-in products from the same publisher. Activity books and coloring books ordered alongside the curriculum. Craft supply leftover packs — foam sheets, pipe cleaners, pre-cut felt pieces, adhesive gems — that came with the craft portion of the curriculum and were not completely used. Decorations with printed Scripture references and theme-specific artwork. Music CDs with that year's VBS songs.

If your church runs multiple age-group rotations — separate tracks for preschool, early elementary, upper elementary, and middle school — you have multiplied all of this. Each age track gets its own leader guide, its own student materials, and its own supplemental resources. A large church running four age-group tracks of VBS can easily generate twelve to twenty boxes of materials from a single week-long program.

None of that accounts for the materials from previous years sitting in the closet. The accumulation in church storage is almost always multi-year. The 2024 kit is on top. Under it is the 2023 kit. And the 2022 kit. And sometimes materials going back a full decade, each in various states of completeness, each representing a week-long program that nobody is going to run again because the publisher releases a new theme every year. The post-VBS cleanup problem is not just about this summer. It is about the weight of every summer that has come before it.

I take all of it. Current kits, multi-year accumulations, partial kits missing their leader guides, boxes of student activity books that never got distributed, music CDs from themes that are now several years old, decorations with Scripture references on them that nobody wants to throw in the recycling bin. Call or text me at 702-496-4214, and I will schedule a time to come get it.

Hundreds of Programs, Every Summer

The Albuquerque VBS Landscape

Albuquerque is a city with a dense and diverse faith community, and that means it is a city with hundreds of Vacation Bible School programs running every June and July. The scale is worth understanding, because it helps explain why VBS material is one of the most consistent post-summer donation flows I handle.

The Protestant evangelical community drives the largest portion of VBS programming. Baptist churches — Southern Baptist, American Baptist, independent Baptist — are among the most active VBS hosts in the city. Churches like Hoffmantown, Calvary, Sagebrush, and Crosspoint are large enough to run week-long programs with hundreds of children. But the smaller Baptist churches on Rio Grande, on Central, on Menaul, on Montgomery — the ones with fifty or a hundred and fifty regular attenders — also run VBS every year, often in more compressed formats. Lifeway's resources dominate the Southern Baptist market, and Lifeway releases a new curriculum theme annually that the SBC-affiliated churches in Albuquerque track closely.

Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Episcopal churches in Albuquerque are active VBS hosts as well, often drawing from Cokesbury's curriculum (Cokesbury is the publishing arm of the United Methodist Church and serves the broader ecumenical market). Group Publishing's VBS materials — long popular for their multi-sensory rotation station format — are used across denominations and are particularly common in nondenominational and community churches. The nondenominational sector in Albuquerque has grown considerably, and many of these churches run ambitious VBS programs with strong production values and high attendance.

The Catholic community in Albuquerque adds another significant dimension. Vacation Bible School is not uniformly labeled as such in Catholic parishes — it may be called Summer Faith Formation, Vacation Bible Camp, Summer Religious Education, or simply VBS. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe covers dozens of parishes in the metro area, from long-established neighborhoods like Old Town and the South Valley to newer communities on the West Side and in Rio Rancho. Catholic VBS curricula tend to be published through Catholic-specific houses like Twenty-Third Publications, RCL Benziger, or Loyola Press, though some parishes use nondenominational curricula and adapt them. The volume of material Catholic parishes accumulate mirrors that of Protestant churches.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints operates Primary programs for children that run year-round through wards and stakes across Albuquerque, but many LDS congregations also run or participate in community VBS programs or summer faith formation activities that generate curriculum surplus. Seventh-day Adventist churches run their own summer programs. Pentecostal and charismatic churches — Assembly of God, Church of God, Foursquare, and independent charismatics — are often among the most energetic VBS hosts in any given neighborhood, with programs known for elaborate theming and high energy.

I have worked with children's ministry leaders from all of these traditions. The VBS materials are different in branding and content, but the post-summer storage problem is identical. Call after your program ends — or call now to set up the pickup in advance — and I will handle the rest. 702-496-4214.

Beyond the Summer Season

Year-Round Church Library Partnership

VBS is the most obvious moment of material surplus in a church's annual cycle, but it is not the only one. Churches that call me for post-VBS pickup often find that the relationship becomes something longer-term, because VBS materials are just the most visible layer of a much deeper accumulation problem.

Sunday school curriculum operates on a quarterly cycle. Every three months, teacher guides and student workbooks for the previous quarter become surplus. Over a decade, that cycle produces a remarkable volume of material — quarterlies from Lifeway, Cokesbury, David C Cook, Standard Publishing, and dozens of other publishers. The quarterly transition moments are a natural opportunity to route surplus materials out of the building rather than into storage. I can work with your education director to schedule periodic pickups that keep the accumulation from reaching crisis level.

Church libraries are a category all their own. Most congregational libraries grow without a corresponding weeding process — books come in through donations, memorial gifts, and pastoral recommendations, but they almost never go out. The result, after two or three decades, is a collection that has become a storage problem. Shelves double-stacked. Boxes behind the shelves. The browsing experience so overwhelming that circulation has dropped to almost nothing. When a church finally decides to refresh its library — or when the longtime library volunteer retires and the incoming volunteer faces the project for the first time — I can help. I walk the stacks, assess everything individually, and take what the library no longer needs. The full picture of that service is on the church book donations page.

Pastoral study library transitions happen more often than churches expect. A retiring pastor often has thirty years of accumulated commentaries, sermon illustration books, biblical language resources, and theological journals that need to find a new home. The incoming pastor may have their own collection and different research preferences. The parsonage bookshelf or the office library that was the previous pastor's working library can easily represent several hundred volumes. I handle these transitions with respect for the work those books represent, assessing individually and routing accordingly. Hymnals are their own category — when a congregation switches from one hymnal to another, the old ones need somewhere to go, and there is a full discussion of that on the church music and hymnals page.

Beyond books, churches also accumulate media. CDs of recorded sermons, worship music, Christian radio broadcast collections, and educational DVDs pile up in the same closets as the books. I accept all of this as part of a church pickup — you can read more about media donations on the media donation page.

Several Albuquerque churches have established a standing relationship where I come out twice a year — once after VBS in late summer, and once in January for a general storage cleanout after the Christmas programming season. This rhythm keeps the accumulation from building to crisis level and gives the children's ministry and education staff a predictable timeline for their own planning. If a semi-annual or annual pickup schedule would help your church's operations, call me and we can set something up. 702-496-4214.

Scheduling, Access, and Quantities

Bulk Donation Logistics for Churches

Church schedules are complex. The fellowship hall that serves as the VBS staging area on Monday is needed for the senior luncheon on Wednesday. The storage room the children's ministry director wants cleared is also accessible through the hallway that gets locked after 5 PM. The volunteer who knows where the oldest boxes are stored is only available on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I have worked with enough churches to understand that the logistics of a book pickup are always embedded in a larger calendar that I have to respect.

When you call to schedule a church pickup, here is what I need to know: the approximate volume (a rough estimate in boxes or the number of rooms involved is sufficient), the access situation (ground floor or stairs, parking lot access for a truck, whether you need me to coordinate with a facilities manager), and the available windows in your church's calendar. I can work early mornings before the building gets busy, weekday afternoons, or Saturday slots when many church buildings are quieter. I am flexible because I understand that church volunteer schedules are the opposite of flexible.

For very large pickups — an accumulation of VBS materials going back many years, combined with Sunday school curriculum and a church library refresh — I may schedule a preliminary walk-through visit before the actual pickup. This lets me see the scope of what is there, identify anything that might need special handling, and confirm the logistics with your team before the pickup day. The walk-through takes about thirty minutes and is free. It also gives you a realistic sense of how many trips the pickup will require so you can plan your storage space accordingly.

You do not need to have everything boxed before I arrive. I bring my own boxes, and I can pack loose materials directly into boxes as I load. If your materials are already in boxes, I prefer that the boxes not be sealed — I assess each item as I go, and a sealed box means I am either taking items sight-unseen or opening each box, which slows the process. Loose books and materials in an open staging area are actually the fastest format for me to work with.

There is no minimum quantity for a church pickup, and there is no maximum. I have picked up a single box of post-VBS activity books from a small congregation with thirty families, and I have loaded a sixteen-foot truck from a large church clearing a decade of accumulated materials across multiple storage areas. Both pickups were free. The free service is funded by the resale value I can extract from the books and curriculum that have a secondary market — which I am well positioned to identify because this is what I do every day.

For smaller quantities — a box or two of leftover student activity books, the extra music CDs from this year's program — the 24/7 drop box at my warehouse on Edith Blvd is often the most convenient option. It is available around the clock with no scheduling required. Drop off what you have, and it is handled. Call 702-496-4214 if you are not sure which approach fits your situation best.

When in Doubt, Bring It Anyway

What Not to Donate — and What to Include Anyway

I want to be honest about the one category of VBS materials that has the least downstream value, because I think it saves church volunteers a lot of worry when they understand the realistic limits of the secondary market — and because I want them to know that the limits do not change whether I will accept the donation.

Student activity workbooks that are 90% or more filled in are the one item I cannot route to a meaningful secondary use. These books — the kind where every child at every station spent time filling in answers, drawing, completing Bible verse activities, and working through discussion questions — are personalized records of the children who participated in that program. They have no resale value because no other child will use a workbook that someone else has already completed. They have limited reuse value because the content is so thoroughly filled in that there is little blank space remaining. If the workbooks are completely full and the children did not take them home as keepsakes, they realistically go to recycling.

But here is the important thing: bring them anyway if you are not sure. The threshold for "mostly filled in" is not obvious when you are looking at a box of workbooks from five different children's programs. I sort at the warehouse. A workbook that is 40% filled in — where the child attended only part of the week, or where some activities were skipped — still has some potential. A partially used craft supply packet attached to the workbook is still useful even if the workbook itself is not. A workbook from a younger age group where the activities were lighter and the blank space is more substantial is different from an upper elementary workbook where every page is dense with completed exercises.

The principle I want church volunteers to operate on is this: if you have any doubt about whether to include something, include it. Do not make sorting decisions on behalf of the donation. The cost of including something that ends up being recycled is zero to you. The cost of leaving behind something that I could have routed to a good use is real. I am the one who knows what has value and what does not, so let me make those calls rather than having your volunteers spend thirty minutes over a box of workbooks trying to determine which ones to keep and which to discard.

Beyond the filled-in workbook question, there are no categories of VBS material I refuse. Water-damaged materials from storage in a building with inadequate climate control — still accepted, goes to recycling. VBS kits from publishers that have since gone out of business — still accepted. Decorating materials that are torn, sun-faded, or missing components — still accepted. Music CDs from a theme that was current eight years ago — still accepted. The leader guide for a VBS that was discontinued by the publisher — still accepted. Old is not a disqualifier. Worn is not a disqualifier. Partial is not a disqualifier. If it came out of your church's VBS storage, bring it. 702-496-4214.

Transparency About the Process

Where VBS and Church Book Donations Go

Faith communities deserve to know what happens to their donated materials, and I am going to be completely direct about every stage of the process. The New Mexico Literacy Project is a for-profit business. I fund free pickups through the resale of books and curriculum that have collector or secondary market value. I say this plainly because trust matters, and it matters especially when congregations are handing over materials that carry spiritual significance to their community.

Everything that comes through my warehouse at 5445 Edith Blvd NE is individually assessed. I do not bulk-process. I do not weigh materials by the pound and sell them to a recycler. Each item gets picked up, examined, and routed to the best available destination. That individual assessment is what makes NMLP different from a junk removal company, from Goodwill, and from the recycling bin. You can read the full breakdown of the book lifecycle on the where donated books go page.

For VBS and church curriculum specifically, here is what the routing looks like:

Complete or near-complete VBS curriculum kits in usable condition — especially recent editions from Group, Lifeway, and Cokesbury — get routed to smaller congregations, mission churches, and church plants that cannot afford to purchase new curriculum at retail. A small congregation in Belen, Estancia, or a rural community that has never been able to justify the expense of a full VBS kit can put a lightly used kit to excellent use. I maintain relationships with rural and small-congregation contacts throughout New Mexico who specifically look for this kind of material. The curriculum that was too expensive for those churches to buy new arrives at no cost through NMLP.

Children's Bibles, Bible story books, and children's devotionals in good reading condition go to a network of distribution partners across Albuquerque. Little Free Libraries throughout the city receive regular restocks of children's books through NMLP — a children's Bible or a well-illustrated Bible story book from a VBS donation is exactly the kind of quality content that belongs in a neighborhood Little Free Library. La Vida Llena, a senior community in Albuquerque, has a reading program that receives book donations for their residents. APS Title I schools and McKinney-Vento program families — families experiencing housing instability whose children often lack home libraries — receive children's books through NMLP's distribution partnerships. A Bible story book that helped a child at VBS can find a second life with a child who has never had a book of their own. The full story of those partnerships is on the where donated books go page and the children's book donation page.

Books and curriculum with resale value are listed through my online sales channels, primarily on Amazon and eBay. A complete VBS music CD set from a recent Group Publishing theme has buyers among churches learning the songs. A Lifeway VBS curriculum kit from two or three years ago has buyers among congregations that want to run a proven theme without paying full retail for a current-year kit. The resale revenue from these listings is what funds the free pickup operation — without it, there is no truck, no warehouse, and no free service for Albuquerque-area churches.

Materials that are genuinely past their useful life — heavily damaged by heat or moisture, structurally compromised, or so thoroughly completed that no downstream use is possible — go to my paper recycling partner. The paper fiber is recovered and reprocessed. This is the commitment I make to every congregation, and it is the one that matters most to faith communities who feel uncomfortable putting materials bearing Scripture references in a landfill: your books do not end up in a landfill. Nothing is landfilled. Call 702-496-4214 to discuss your church's specific situation.