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Success Story
How Zebra kiosks & mobile computers help Bernie's Book Bank’s volunteers deliver 30M+ books
What began with the distribution of 140,000 books in its first year, Bernie's Book Bank has grown into a highly scalable nonprofit that has now delivered more than 30 million books to children who need them most. At that scale, the operation required technology that can keep pace with volume, accuracy, and speed.
Zebra Success Story: Bernie's Book Bank
Overview: Warehouse and Distribution Challenge
Bernie's Book Bank sought to streamline volunteer check-in and book processing at scale, eliminating outdated systems and manual workflows that slowed operations, reduced accuracy, and cut into valuable volunteer time.
Benefits / Outcomes
- 17,000+ volunteers supported annually
- Up to 1.5x faster volunteer check-in
- 900,000+ books scanned and accurately classified in a single year
- 1.9 million books sorted through streamlined workflows
- 46,000+ volunteer hours used more effectively
- Accessibility that supports inclusivity
Customer
Bernie's Book Bank
United States
Industry
Warehouse and Distribution
Solutions
About Bernie's Book Bank
Books can change a child’s life—that belief inspired Brian Floriani when he founded Bernie’s Book Bank in 2009, driven by a mission to put free, high-quality books into the hands of children every year to build them a library of books to call their own. According to the National Literacy Institute, children who develop strong reading skills are far more likely to succeed in school and beyond, while those without them face limited educational and economic options later in life. When books are missing at home, the effects often extend far beyond the classroom—especially in communities already facing financial hardship. “Our vision is to ensure literacy for children tomorrow by building a library in every home today,” explains Megan Leahy, National Director of Brand and Marketing at Bernie’s Book Bank.
Operating from its processing center in the Chicago area, Bernie’s Book Bank sources, processes, and distributes about 2.5 million books every year to children from birth through sixth grade. That scale is made possible by a passionate collective of volunteers and corporate allies who power nearly every aspect of the operation—and it’s why Bernie’s Book Bank is always looking for ways to improve the volunteer experience. That’s where Zebra comes in, not just as a philanthropic partner of more than 13 years, but as a technology enabler that helps volunteers efficiently get books to as many children as possible.
The Challenge
What began with the distribution of 140,000 books in its first year has grown into a highly scalable nonprofit that has now delivered more than 30 million books to children who need them most. At that scale, the operation required technology that can keep pace with volume, accuracy, and speed. The previous volunteer check-in system created bottlenecks, since staff were often troubleshooting issues on aging desktop computers. Screens froze. Clicks didn’t register. Staff also had to spend up to 30 minutes powering the computers up in the morning.
Earlier on, book processing itself was becoming increasingly difficult to manage at the required scale. On busy days, thousands of donated books moved through the processing center, and volunteers sorted them one by one by flipping through pages and guessing reading levels. The process was slow, subjective, and prone to inconsistency.
Volunteer check-in is about 1.5 times faster than before, which means more people moving onto the warehouse floor and more books getting into children’s hands.
The Solution
On a typical day, Bernie’s Book Bank runs three volunteer sessions, with up to 100 volunteers arriving for each one. That’s why it’s essential to have streamlined check-ins that keep volunteers moving onto the warehouse floor. By installing Zebra KC50 Kiosk Computers into its Welcome Center, volunteers now check in through a simple, self-service, interactive touchscreen-driven experience.
When a volunteer arrives, they enter their name at the kiosk and select their profile from a dropdown menu. New volunteers can create an account in just a few taps, with clear prompts and an audible confirmation once they’re checked in. “They’re extremely intuitive,” says Megan Lantz, Director of Community Development and Grants at Bernie’s Book Bank. “As soon as volunteers realized this was actually easier to use than the old systems, they were completely on board. That leaves them with a positive impression to keep coming back.”
Data integration was a crucial aspect of deployment. “Our customer relationship management (CRM) system is incredibly important to us,” explains Leahy. “Not just from a volunteer perspective, but also from a donor and support perspective. Many of our donors are volunteers, so having that data transfer cleanly from one system to the next really matters.” The kiosks run CERVIS Volunteer Management Software, and all the information logged into the interface flows automatically into Bernie’s Book Banks’ Salesforce CRM platform, ensuring volunteer and donor data is accurate, up to date, and easy to manage.
Accessibility was also a key consideration from the start. The kiosks feature large, clear displays that are especially helpful for visually impaired volunteers, and one kiosk is positioned at an ADA-compliant height to ensure that volunteers using wheelchairs can check in independently and comfortably. “The size of the screen, the ability to rotate it, and having an accessible-height option have been amazing,” Lantz explains. “We pride ourselves on being a place where anyone can volunteer, no matter their age or ability, and this really supports that.”
The Zebra Difference: Outcome and Benefits
On the warehouse floor, Zebra TC5 Series mobile computers have fundamentally reshaped how books are processed. Instead of relying on subjective judgment, volunteers now scan the barcode on the back of each book, instantly linking it to a custom-built database that assigns the correct grade level. “If you scan a Harry Potter book, it immediately tells you that it’s a sixth-grade book,” Lantz explains. “The volunteer doesn’t have to manually read through it and subjectively decide.”
Since then, volunteers move confidently from book to book, knowing they are categorized consistently. “The mobile computers genuinely revolutionized the process for us,” says Lantz. “You can imagine the difference in speed between reading through a book and scanning the barcode. It’s night and day.”
Over the course of a single year, volunteers scanned more than 900,000 books, sorted nearly 1.9 million, and bagged more than 2.2 million books for distribution. In total, volunteers contributed more than 46,000 hours (about 5 years) in 2025 alone; time now used far more effectively thanks to streamlined workflows.
The benefits of the new system are both tangible and cumulative. Volunteer check-in is estimated to be about 1.5 times faster than before, allowing more people to move quickly through the Welcome Center and onto the warehouse floor to process and distribute more books.
Operationally, staff no longer need to spend time restarting computers when they open. The Zebra kiosks automatically manage power states, going into sleep mode when they’re not in use and quickly starting back up when needed. “It seems like a little thing,” Leahy reflects, “but when you’re doing it every single day, the small conveniences matter.”
For Bernie’s Book Bank, the relationship with Zebra extends far beyond hardware. “When we think about needing a technology solution, we think of Zebra,” says Leahy. “Zebra has been with us almost from day one. The collaboration is really interwoven into our daily interactions.”
That collaboration continues to evolve as Bernie’s Book Bank looks to scale its impact even further. The organization is preparing to open a new Greater Milwaukee facility, where the same Zebra-powered workflows used in Chicago will be implemented from the start. At the same time, Zebra engineers are collaborating with the team to explore how artificial intelligence can enhance the organization’s book database, using technology to support and strengthen what they do.“Zebra technology helps us remove friction from everyday work, so volunteers can focus on what matters most: delivering more books, more efficiently, to children who need them,” Leahy concludes.
You can learn more about the fantastic work of Bernie’s Book Bank at: https://www.berniesbookbank.org/
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