Capitola Book Café
1475 41st Avenue
Capitola, CA 95010
831.462.4415
Store Hours:
Mon-Thurs: 9am-9pm
Fri-Sat: 9am-10pm
Sunday: 9am-8pm
Café Hours:
Mon-Thurs: 9am-8pm
Fri-Sat: 9am-9pm
Sunday: 9am-7pm
In the Café
Capitola Book Cafe is now the home of Capitola Coffee Roasters & Patisserie!
Dishing up fresh baked Village Buns, pastries, savories, panini, soup & more.
Serving Vertigo coffee, housemade chai and infused syrups, as well as wine and beer.
We Buy & Sell Used Books
Book Café Marketplace
Treasures and artisan crafts from around the corner and around the world.
SURVIVE & THRIVE Fundraising Campaign
At the end of May, Capitola Book Café announced the beginning of our Survive & Thrive Campaign, launched in order to restructure the business and create a solid financial foundation moving forward. The result was an outpouring of goodwill and generosity that caused us to extend our fundraising deadline from June 30th to July 31st. In the beginning of August, we had a decision to make. Should we keep going?
To answer that question, we looked at what we’ve accomplished and what we’ve learned. We raised $45,000 in contributions and renegotiated $100,000 worth of the debt included in our initial fundraising target (thereby eliminating $145,000 from the total amount). We restructured our fundraising efforts so that our short-term financial goals could be more easily achieved by extending our long-term goals over several phases. We learned of new opportunities to raise funds and seized them. Perhaps most importantly, our story attracted talented professionals who were eager to come aboard and help us move forward.
Through our partnership with a leading strategic planning consulting firm, we learned about a business model only available in California since January 2012. It advances our original goals: to streamline and improve our business; to create a non-profit 501c3 to manage our events, education and outreach; and to combine the benefits of both to enhance our role as a community and cultural hub. This new business model, which was adopted by Patagonia the very day it was available, is called a benefit corporation.
Restructuring as a benefit corporation will allow Capitola Book Café to formally acknowledge what we’ve always known is true: our purpose and intention is to create a materially positive impact on our community. In a holistic sense, the B-Corp. framework will allow us to harness government expertise, for-profits’ ability to generate revenue, and nonprofits’ ability to serve communities. It will capture value from our community outreach programming as well as our core function as a retail bookseller, by creating a fiscal sponsorship and/or a corporate advised fund rather than a 501c3. This difference allows us to seek grant funding and tax-deductible donations that will diversify our income stream and monetize community outreach investments without the considerable cost in time and money of establishing and running our own non-profit entity.
Through becoming a benefit corporation, we have a unique opportunity to not only create a wholly sustainable model for our own survival, but to serve as a model for other bookstores around the country. With these new developments, we realize it’s no time to quit, so our answer is yes, we should definitely keep going. In fact, we are embarking upon the Second Wave of our Survive & Thrive fundraising campaign, which will last until the beginning of October. In this Second Wave, we will continue to welcome contributions through t-shirts and shelf-dedications, as the urgency to prepare the store for the holiday season and a sustainable future remains. But in addition, we will seek to develop a team of like-minded individuals and organizations willing to invest in a business model that will fiscally reward partnership, sponsorship, and community outreach.
Are these lofty goals? Indeed, but like neighborhood bookstores across the country, we are the town square and common ground, a place for public discourse, reflection and exploration. As such, we play a vital role in the distinct social and economic fabric of our community. An investment in our future is an investment in a strong and vibrant local economy.
Please contact us at mycommunity@capitolabookcafe.com to explore investment and/or sponsorship opportunities.
