Academic bookseller Blackwell's has chosen the National Literacy Trust as its charity of the year, and pledged to raise £125,000 for the educational organisation.
Blackwell's chose the trust on the basis of a "shared passion" of the two organisations to raise the UK's literacy levels and create a better-educated world.
The bookstore chain will organise various activities at its 72 stores next year, including a sponsored bookstore crawl, sponsored reads and a swap-a-book scheme.
According to the Basic Skills Agency, nearly four out of 10 adults in some parts of England cannot read or write properly, and recent government research showed that 15 million adults would fail a GCSE in English.
Philip Blackwell, chief executive of the retail group, said: "Helping people to educate themselves was one of my great, great grandfather's aims for Blackwell's, so it is with great pleasure that we are able to work with an organisation that dedicates itself to this goal."
