Are you familiar with a small square book that says Mercer Island Directory? If you live on the Island and have a telephone number listed in it, you receive a new edition every year.

The MI Directory has been published and distributed for 75 years by the Mercer Island Guild, which supports Seattle Children’s Hospital. It’s a local telephone directory of Mercer Island residents, mailed to all listed households on the Island.

The guild asks for donations from residents after they get the book. All net proceeds from donations and advertising revenues are sent to Seattle Children’s to support uncompensated care. Approximately 6,000 copies are mailed out in March each year. In 2017, the guild sent over $100,000 to Seattle Children’s, and since it has been publishing the directory, the total is over $4 million.

The directory is also available at Island Books and the Chamber of Commerce. A $10 donation at those locations goes straight to Seattle Children’s.

2018 marks 100 years that the guild has been in existence and 75 years since the directory was begun.

“We recognize that the ways of hard copy telephone directories are going away, but we also know that longtime residents on the Island love it,” said the guild’s Martha Weiss. “The MI directory is a local tradition and it’s important to all of us in the guild to keep it going, supporting Seattle Children’s.”

Weiss said that guild members will be at the Presbyterian Church at 9 a.m. on March 16 to mail the new books, and if anyone wants to join, they are more than welcome.

For more, see mercerislanddirectory.info and the guild’s Facebook page.

Submit residential additions or changes to miphonebook@gmail.com.