Please note that we are unable to accept donations at our Book Shops.
Please refer to the details below and choose the drop-off location that is most convenient for you.
Not only will you feel good about saving them from landfill, all funds raised go back into our services – and you'll have more space to buy new books! Donating books to Lifeline contributes to a circular economy and allows us to channel profits into purpose.
Drop-off points
Learn more
Book Donations
All donations in good condition are gratefully received
and help fund our crisis-support and suicide-prevention services.
Please place donations in a small cardboard box or bag that is light enough for our volunteers to carry easily. Labels are helpful.
We treat rare, antique or collectible books with great care, so please let us know if your donations are valuable. Thank you!
Book donations we accept
If you have books in good condition you’d like to donate, we'd love to hear from you. We accept:
- new and used books
- comics, graphic novels and manga
- textbooks (recent school and university textbooks (within three years) that are clean and in good condition.)
- maps and atlases
- CDs, DVDs, vinyl records and sheet music
- audiobooks on CD
- foreign language materials
- computer games
- postage stamp collections
- jigsaw puzzles.
We also welcome rare, valuable or antiquarian books. Offered at our Special auctions at major book fairs, these books generate a lot of interest and raise significant amounts for our services and are particularly appreciated.
What we don’t accept
We only accept high-quality donations. If items are yellowed, mouldy, torn, dirty, have been written in or defaced, or have pages stuck together or are in any other way damaged, please do not donate them. We also don't take:
- Reader's Digest magazines
- condensed books
- adult encyclopaedias (no matter how new)
- magazines (including National Geographic and Australian Geographic)
- videotapes
- books that are left over from other organisations' book sales, fetes or fundraising events
- books that have been retired from school or public library collections.
Our volunteers spend a lot of time processing the books we receive, and it costs Lifeline money to dispose of those that don’t make the grade, so please don’t donate anything you wouldn’t pass on to a friend or see at one of our fairs or shops. Put them in the recycling instead – you’ll still be doing good.
