Staff Writer

Michael Quint has more than 800 books that he's prepared to send to Israel. But the price of shipping those books just tripled.

As the international coordinator for Books for Israel, the Alexandria resident said he'll manage to find the funds to get those books to the Jewish state. But he's not sure how many of the b'nai mitzvah children who have been collecting books for tzedakah projects during the past five years will continue to do so ‹ now that the price to send 300 pounds of books overseas has jumped from $300 to nearly $900.

Books for Israel is one of many nonprofit organizations affected by the May 14 postal increase on the shipping of printed material, or m-bags. The U.S. Postal Service eliminated the shipping of m-bags via surface mail, which cost about $1 dollar a pound. That means all m-bags must be delivered by airmail, which costs $2.85 per pound to Israel, and $3.85 to many African countries.

With individuals setting up independent book drives nationwide, Books for Israel has shipped more than 60 tons of English-language books to Israel in recent years, said Quint. But in the past two months, he said such activities have dipped 75 percent because of the postal price increase.

Jack Zeller is president of Kulanu, a Silver Spring-based organization that supports "lost" Jewish communities like the Jews of Lemba in Zimbabwe. Zeller has boxes of books throughout his house that he hasn't yet sent off to Africa because of the rate hike.

He said that providing Jewish books has been "a major vehicle" for "sharing ideas." But "no one can afford to triple their budget," said Zeller, and it's difficult to raise money from donors to pay for something like postage.

USPS spokesperson Yvonne Yoerger said the change was a "cost issue." The postal service was losing money on the m-bag surface mail service, and federal law requires that all of the agency's services "break even," or "pay for themselves," and not be subsidized by other services that the postal service offers, she said.

Yoerger said that m-bag surface mail accounted for just 2.7 percent of all international mail, and that the postal service was having "difficulty maintaining adequate surface networks." Thus, in some cases before the rate change, she said, m-bag sent surface mail was actually traveling by the more expensive airmail because the postal service couldn't transport it to the destination any other way.

In response, Quint and Zeller have joined with a few dozen similar groups to try to raise awareness of the problem. An Internet petition asking Congress to take action has already garnered close to 4,000 signatures, many from representatives of organizations shipping media overseas.

Quint and a representative of the National Peace Corps Association ‹ many Peace Corps alumni run book projects supplying their former countries ‹ recently met with staffers for the appropriate congressional committees to alert them to the problem.

Shannon Brown, who runs the Portland, Ore.-based Friends of Malawi's Book Project, found Quint through a Google search after she first heard about the rate rise.

"We're reaching out to each other," Brown said. "Most people who use m-bags are volunteers" whose organizations "don't have the infrastructure" to pay the new rates, said Brown, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi whose group has shipped 50,000 books during the past 13 years.

Brown is hoping that the postal service could come up with a special rate for nonprofits, saying that even a reduction to $2 per pound would be a level at which she could manage.

Quint said other shipping methods, such as United Postal Service or FedEx, would be even more expensive than the new m-bag price.

But there may be some reason for optimism. Due to feedback on the rate change from customers and some members of Congress, Yoerger said internal discussions have taken place about trying to lower the rate, perhaps by restoring some form of surface mail or a lower-cost airmail service. She said it would be a couple of months before any decision would be made.

At a time when the U.S. role in the world is often criticized, Quint said that helping educate those in other countries with books is particularly important.

"It gives up the opportunity to act as a big brother," he said.