ARI employees were up bright and early this week at a nearby warehouse collecting copies of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and Anthem to distribute for our Free Books to Teachers program. Twenty thousand books to be exact.

Thanks to donations given on #TradingTuesday, forklifts brought out five pallets of books that will be sent to middle school, high school and college classrooms across North America.

Money for these books was raised on November 28, a day commonly known as #GivingTuesday. On that same day, ARI launched its own campaign, #TradingTuesday, encouraging fans of Rand to advance their values by contributing to ARI’s Free Books to Teachers program. The program places Rand’s novels in the hands of students across the country.

Our goal was to raise a hundred thousand dollars in one day. That translates into twenty thousand free books for students — that’s enough books to cover requests from a typical state, like Illinois or Virginia. With your generous support, we even exceeded our goal, and money is still coming in.

Thank you from all of us at ARI for making #TradingTuesday a big success and for helping us introduce many more young people to Rand’s ideas this holiday season. You can help put Ayn Rand’s novels into the hands of students by donating to the Ayn Rand Institute.