Literacy Connects

“The organization provided a draft of its form 990 to its finance committee for review and distributed the completed form to all members of the board of directors prior to filing.”

“The conflict of interest policy is discussed and signed by the board each year.”

“On an annual basis the board reviews salary comparability data when setting compensation for the organization's executive director. The decision process is documented in the board minutes.”

“The annual return is available on guidestar.org and applicable information is available upon request.”

“The statement of functional expenses is prepared on the gaap basis and therefore fails to account for the value of volunteer labor. Program expenses are kept very low due to the organization's use of volunteers to deliver most of the program's teaching. Volunteers gave over 24,205 teaching and preparation hours during the year. The independent sector has set 30.13 per hour as the value for volunteer hours in arizona. This means the work done by volunteers was worth approximately 729,297.”

“Literacy connects' reading seed program trained and supported 202 volunteer reading coaches to work one-to-one with 605 kindergarten through second grade students in title i schools. The students were provided extra support in improving their literacy skills and developing healthy relationships with books and reading through the mentorship of a caring adult. Reading coaches contributed 10,843 hours of service, resulting in students averaging 18 hours of reading support throughout the school year. The program offered a lending library of 19,000 books that match students' interests and distributed over 15,983 free books throughout the county to help children build home libraries and become independent readers so that they can become lifelong learners. The objective of reading seed in 2021- 2022 is to rebuild our volunteer numbers in order to return to pre-pandemic service levels. Our long-term goal is to expand our intensive kindergarten program to increase our impact at each school, resulting in an increased number of students reading at grade level by the end of third grade.”

“Reach out and read southern arizona (rorsa) promotes healthy brain growth, positive social-emotional development, and school readiness by giving families resources and information to make reading aloud part of their daily routine. By integrating reading into pediatric practices, rorsa partners with doctors in 56 clinics, reaching 42,414 children from birth to 5 years old, to prescribe 84,830 free books that serve as a catalyst for healthy childhood development.”