Basic Needs Ministry was founded in early 2003 as a church auxiliary/incubator to provide basic services to the community with the first project being a clothing closet. The churches and residents didn't limit their donations to clothing, but began bringing in books to share their philosophies and loves with others. In the first five years, books were sent to school classrooms, jails and prisons, and sold at fundraisers to pay the warehouse bills and buy food for the hungry in the community.

By the end of 2003, Basic Needs had built basic wood shelving to hold thousands of sale books and the director considered starting a lending library to let the entire community use the donated books. In 2004, it reorganized as a community based public charity and was recognized as a 501(c)(3) by the Internal Revenue Service and the North Carolina Secretary of State Charitable Solicitation Division. In 2005 and 2006, Basic Needs' volunteers surveyed its customers to see if they wanted a library, reviewed Microsoft technology grants, and had a plan to bring in up to 25,000 donated books in five years as a seed project. It would be a bootstrap project, which would be primitive, but functional in 6 months. Using its existing warehouse style building, it could not have soft carpet, fireplaces, or nice comfortable chairs and tables for relaxing and reading, but it would have books to check out, read, and return. In early 2007, five Pentium 4 computers were installed with a shared printer. Microsoft, Symantec, Adobe and others donated top quality software. Macromedia web building software lives on the hard drives beside thousands of books, maps, and reference works. But the library plans were put on hold and the books grew dusty from early 2007 until late 2008 after a member of the community promised a new library building would be built and a new book collection installed by 2009 or 2010. By August 2008, the decision was made to start lending the 5,000 books in stock and begin building the collection over a five-year period to exceed the current standard of Johnston County's libraries of 1.7 books per resident. Before Thanksgiving, the Cleveland Library held 10,000 items; before Christmas 15,000, and was looking for 130 liner feet of 6' high bookshelves.

Basic Needs Ministry volunteers started labeling and bar coding books and began lending books to community families on August 4, 2008, but on August 11 announced that it would continue selling books as a fundraiser to appease local residents. Some members of the community demanded a dual role of library and book store. The library books were still housed in the Basic Needs' fundraising area. By December 2008, a review of book sales showed no siginificant increase in book sales and that dealers were merely skimming off the library's most valuable books. The book sales continued with only selected rejections, withdrawals, and duplicates at ticketed prices from $.25 to $2.00.