Scarecrow Video

GivingTuesday

Scarecrow’s story of resilience is a testament to the transformative power of collective generosity. We simply would not be here this year without the support of our film-loving community around the world! 

In an age of streaming and algorithms, Scarecrow’s library proudly offers something truly unique: a physical place that rewards immersive exploration, caters to boundless cinematic curiosity and confronts the frontiers of human imagination.

Help us keep the legacy of this remarkable library alive by supporting Scarecrow on GivingTuesday!

Our goal this year is to raise $11,000 to celebrate our 11th anniversary as a non-profit and 37 total years of connecting people with each other and the art of cinema.

It’s your generosity that gives us the sustainable foundation to curate and maintain the world’s largest physical media library, to preserve access to diverse cinematic voices and to offer free and engaging community-based screenings and programs across Washington.

Make your gift today to help us reach our goal and secure Scarecrow’s legacy as a true hub of creativity, connection and community!

Who We Are

Scarecrow Video is a nonprofit cultural museum and the largest publicly-accessible physical-media library in the world, located in Seattle’s University District and accessible nationwide via our rent-by-mail program.

Scarecrow began as an independent, neighborhood video store in 1988. By 2014, facing permanent disruption to the physical-media landscape, the staff joined together to transform it into a nonprofit to keep our unparalleled library accessible and continue the stewardship and preservation of its collection, currently more than 154,000 items representing nearly 200,000 films. 

Scarecrow’s archive houses seven times as many films as all mainstream streaming services combined and showcases deep and diverse wells of cinematic history, featuring films in 127 languages from 138 countries and spanning more than 128 years of film history. 

Of Scarecrow's one hundred rarest, out-of-print titles:

• Thirty three are held by five or fewer public collections
• Eight-eight aren't even held in the Library of Congress
• Forty-four might be the only publicly-accessible copies in existence
  
  

Sustain Our Scarecrow (S.O.S.)

Last year, facing possible closure, Scarecrow launched the S.O.S. campaign in a decisive effort to prevent this irreplaceable archive from disappearing forever. The community response has been nothing short of extraordinary and has renewed public interest in the irreplaceable artistic value of this collection to the cultural fabric of Seattle and beyond. 

Our community knows the rare value of Scarecrow as a destination where anyone can access infinite multitudes of human stories at their fingertips. As a place where memories are made, where first dates can morph into something much more, where childlike wonder remains tangible to the young and the young-at-heart, and where—no matter who you are—you can truly find an authentic representation of yourself on-screen.