Pencil pusher | Nonprofit: Ruth Libby, Executive Director, Ruth's Reusable Resources
Photo/David A. Rodgers
Ruth Libby, executive director of Ruth's Reusable Resources in Portland, collects discarded office supplies to redistribute to Maine's classrooms
Photo/David A. Rodgers
Ruth's Reusable Resources has provided $25 million worth of pens, notebooks and various donated goods to Maine classrooms since Ruth Libby started the nonprofit out of her basement in 1996
Office supplies are typically an afterthought when it comes to running a business. No one pays attention to the manila envelope containing the pages of a winning proposal, or the mechanical pencil used to draft a promising grant application. But at Ruth’s Reusable Resources in Portland, office supplies are the business.
The nonprofit is the brainchild of Ruth Libby, who, along with her husband, Tom, and 400 volunteers, collects office supplies from businesses and distributes them to teachers, students and other nonprofits across the state. Ruth’s Reusable Resources has given out $25 million in pens, notebooks and various donated goods since 1994, when Libby founded the organization in the basement of her Scarborough home.
Today, the organization is housed in a 27,000-square-foot warehouse and serves 207 school districts and nonprofits. Some teachers drive more than four hours each way to visit Libby’s Portland store.
Dressed in jeans and sneakers, Libby, 48, takes a break from stocking shelves at the warehouse and reflects on the growth of the organization. She had no business experience when she started. “I didn’t dream this, I didn’t put this in my yearbook,” she says, adding that she originally thought she’d work as a hotel clerk. “It’s not something I learned about in school. I love what I do and it makes sense.”
The nonprofit collects new and used goods. Three-ring binders with old company names and boxes of letterhead with outdated logos find a home next to loveseats that no longer match their conference rooms’ décor. Libby points out a barrel of thin red ribbons, decorations once meant to adorn greeting cards. Another barrel is filled with blank wood segments sent by a ruler manufacturer. On the shelf behind her, small red containers labeled “infectious waste” from a medical provider are lined up near stacks of empty clam dip tubs. All of it will make its way to a classroom in Maine.
School districts pay $2 per student to participate, which gives all the teachers in that district access to the inventory. Teachers can take whatever and as much as they want. Hall Elementary School in Portland, for example, paid $960 last year for 480 students. Its teachers loaded up on $65,000 worth of supplies. “Their eyes just bug out like it’s Christmas morning,” Libby says of teachers arriving at the store.
Ruth’s Reusable Resources enters its 16th season on Aug. 15. Despite unrelenting demand for its supplies and steady contributions — Libby says she’s never had to request donations — the organization reached a crossroad in 2007. The former school that housed the nonprofit was snatched up by developers, and Libby was forced to look, and pay, for a new location. She managed to convince Unum, a longtime supporter, to sell her their vacant warehouse on Blueberry Lane for $635,000, well below the $1 million-plus asking price. Libby raised the funds over a span of two and a half months through grants, donations and loans. “I knew it would work out,” she says.
It’s easy for Libby to forget the scope of her organization’s reach. She spends most days unloading trucks, sorting through products, answering phones and tending to all of the other tasks required of a business that employs only Libby, her husband and one other employee. She’s also making plans to open satellite stores in Bangor and eastern and western Maine. But when a teacher brings in a student’s craft project, made with materials from her store, it hits her, she says.
“I walk in here, still, and I go, ‘How did I get here?’” Libby says, surveying the warehouse, which looks like an oversized classroom with its walls painted in primary colors. “Tom and I, when it’s quiet, will just stand here with the lights off and go, ‘How? Thank you God, but how?’”
Jackie Farwell
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