“Bigger than [Andrew] Carnegie and faster than Starbucks” is how Room to Read founder John Wood described the growth of the 10-year-old nonprofit to a crowd at The Lovett School in Buckhead last Monday.

“Large problems require scalable solutions,” the former Microsoft employee said, explaining his approach to tackling under-education in developing countries in Africa and southeast Asia.

Wood’s solution, which includes shaving unnecessary costs and focusing 83.5 cents of every donated dollar directly to its programs, has translated into creating 10,000 libraries and 1,129 schools reaching 4.1 million children.

“We’ve given almost 7.5 million books to children to help them learn to read,” he said. “If you stacked all of those books up, it would be 14 times higher than the world’s tallest building.”

Wood told the story of how he was inspired to start the nonprofit with a goal to change the world by educating children after visiting a school with 450 students and 20 books on a backpack trip in Nepal.

He returned to that same school later with hundreds of books for the school’s library

“I saw how much this meant to the kids and parents and teachers,” said Wood. “It was a down payment of hope to these people. They could use education as a hand-up not a handout to basically be able to help their kids.”

The nonprofit partners with separate groups from communities within countries like Zambia, Laos, India and Bangladesh that show vested interest and investment in creating a school.

“You can look at all the world and see an inverse relationship in how much school a child gets and how the economy is long term,” said Wood.

His visit was the culmination of a year of student support for Room to Read. The senior class donated $16,000 to the cause, while lower- and middle-school students donated more than 50 children’s books to the newest library.

Wendy Guiles-Trombetta, a Lovett parent, helped bring Wood to speak to the school.

“I hope we can begin a relationship [with Room to Read],” she said. “I hope our kids can learn that they are empowered and can change the world.”

Allison Smith, co-leader of the nonprofit’s Atlanta fundraising chapter, said building awareness of the organization’s success is just as important as raising funds.

“The organization focuses on what is basic and fundamental,” she said. “In changing the lives of children, it comes down to being able to read so that their education can be built upon that.”

After his speech, he challenged the audience to raise $100,000. The crowd gathered $76,000 including the 2010 graduating class’s donation as well as a $5,000 check from a Georgia Tech group. By Thursday, the school had reached the fundraising goal. The gift will be enough to build two new schools in Sri Lanka by 2011.