Tree House Books

“The 990 is reviewed by the executive director and treasurer with the auditor. A completed copy of the form 990 is then provided electronically to the full board prior to filing.”

“The executive director monitors the conflict of interest policy on an on-going basis throughout the years.”

“Tree house books makes its governing documents, conflict of interest policy and financial statements available to the public upon request.”

“At tree house books, our vision is that every child in philadelphia has access to books, and every opportunity to pursue their dreams. We are on a mission to grow and sustain a community of readers, writers, and thinkers. Since 2005, tree house books has provided out of school time (ost) programs that spark a lifelong love of reading and writing in children from their earliest moments, through high school and beyond. Our space is a warm, safe haven for children to explore their interests. We support the crucial role families play in creating a literacy-rich environment, and actively work to promote families reading together at home. Everything we do is made possible through the investment and support of the community.”

“As tree house books enters our 20th year, we can say with confidence that 2024 was one of our most impactful years yet through our literacy programs, we were able to demonstrate both academic success as well as program strength through recruitment and retention. The programs associated with our access to books (building home libraries) portfolio also saw large steps forward, ending with the most books distributed ever in one year. Tree house books remained an important part of this north philadelphia community, continuing to grow our staff and board to better reflect the neighborhood. Our expansion and growth plans took off in a major way with the purchase of the building weve been renting since 2005. Plans are underway for construction to begin in late 2025 or early 2026. The year ended with some volatility as our building experienced a christmas day water emergency, but our community and supporters rallied around us to ensure our operations continued with little negative impact. To begin, our access to books programs continued their strong growth, getting 95,896 books into homes this year. We receive these books through the generous contributions of individuals and groups, including 46 book drives. One of the most unique ways we get books in homes is through our traveling tree house bookmobile. The bookmobile made 313 stops in 2024, giving away 15,652 books. Our public space, the giving library, continued to grow, surpassing 12,000 members. This year, we added 1,847 new members. We also added 5 new branches which are book shelves for distribution in public spaces - rec centers, mixed income apartment buildings and healthcare centers. Our youth programs, teaching literacy and a life with books included our after school and summer literacy studios and our teen program. The after school studio and summer camps experienced structural growth as we separated the instruction for kindergarten to 4th grade students and 5th to 8th grade students, hiring specific teachers for each grade level. The after school program served 43 students. The summer studio served 42 students. Our literacy metrics and measurements also showed that students participating in our literacy programs out-perform their peers in literacy benchmarks. This summer, we piloted a 2 week partnership with theater company, yes and collaborative arts to teach literacy through performing arts. Another popular program is our summer words on wheels, a book delivery and targeted intervention program that served 194 youth in 123 participating families. 55 students were targeted to receive literacy interventions with a 96% success rate in those interventions. 7 teens were engaged as junior staff in our programs. Structurally, our board of directors saw little change as we settled into a rhythm of 2 board members joining and 2 leaving per year, which has been our goal for the past 6 years. We also continue to prioritize bringing into leadership populations who have been historically marginalized. In the community, we served almost 700 neighbors at our day-long philadelphia literacy day street festival. We were honored to be the recipients of impact100s annual award, which came with a 100,000 unrestricted grant. Our staff grew as we added leadership in the form of a managing director and hired a new program coordinator. Our work with teens was featured in the academic book, ecosystems for youth leadership development. With the purchase of the building, we were able to start to see movement towards our years-long expansion plan, which should see some significant progress in 2025. We began a relationship with pro-bono attorneys at duane morris as well as engaged with firm becker and frondorf as project managers. Though the year-end water emergency had some negative impact, especially in the loss of over 5,000 books in our inventory, we also ended the year with the most year-end financial support for our annual campaign. Looking forward, we are positioned to continue to make stride”