Today is the first day of November, and we still have 120 spaces to fill for our November 10th "Sports, Fun, and Games" Reading Clubs. That's only 9 days away, so we need your help to fill them up!

Please sign up today, then reply to our November 10th Facebook Event that you are going, and invite a friend or two to volunteer with you.

Please also email, post, and tweet about our November 10th Reading Clubs to all your friends. When you do, be sure to include our website, www.readingtokids.org. Our greatest needs are at Magnolia Elementary, Politi Elementary, and Gratts Elementary.

If you have signed up and can't make it, please cancel to make room for another volunteer.

November is also our College Spirit month, so be sure to wear your college's logo. The competition is on to see which college can get the most volunteers to wear their school logo at the November 10th Reading Clubs!

At the November 10th Reading Clubs, every volunteer will be invited to donate to our 2012 Annual Fund Drive with either cash, check, or credit card.

We launched the Annual Fund Drive at the October 13th Reading Clubs, and the school who had the largest percentage of their volunteers donate that morning was Los Angeles Elementary! On November 10th let's see which school can collect the greatest number of donations from their volunteers!

This year we've set a goal of raising $45,000 from over 1,000 donors, and so far we have already raised $12,593 from 95 donors!

You can see all of their names on our 2012 Annual Fund Drive page, and if you have not yet donated, be sure to donate today so we can add your name there, too. 

Monday was Skylar's birthday (hooray, Skylar!), and she created her own Causes Birthday Wish to raise $260 for Reading to Kids!

Creating a Causes Wish is just one of the fun, clever ways you can help us raise money during our Annual Fund Drive, and we provide a link to create your own Causes Wish on our 2012 Annual Fund Drive page, under the "Help us Fundraise!" header. 

As you create your Causes Wish, just enter "Reading to Kids" as the nonprofit you are raising money for, then press your Enter or Return key to find us.  When you get to Step 3, you'll see we even provide a handy cheat sheet to help you finish creating your Wish. 

Although our main source of funding is grants from foundations and corporations, support from individual donors is vital to our organization. We list our large number of donors to demonstrate to foundations and corporations that we have broad support in the community, which in turn prompts them to support us too.

How Can You Help?

1 - Make a pledge to donate by check or donate online today by visiting our 2012 Annual Fund Drive page. Contributions of any amount are greatly appreciated!

2 - Show your support by asking friends and family to contribute! Visit our 2012 Annual Fund Drive page and look under the "Help us Fundraise!" header for resources, including information on creating your own personalized fundraising page, our handy donor form for raising money with your friends and co-workers, tips for fundraising, and so much more.

If you have any questions about the Annual Fund Drive, please let us know. Once again, please donate any amount to help us meet our goals, and thanks for your support!

We would like to thank the Kleiner Cohen Foundation for its continued support of Reading to Kids. Their recent $2,000 grant will support our monthly reading clubs, enabling us to inspire children with a love of reading.

At the "Sports, Fun, and Games" November Reading Clubs we celebrate College Spirit Day, featuring our competition of which college will have the greatest number of volunteers wearing that college's logo.

At the November 10th Reading Clubs we want to give each child who attends something small with a college insignia on it. To do that, we reach out to as many local colleges as we can to ask for donations of items, so if you have any connections at a college or university, please let us know!

If you are able to gather and donate to us college-related items, for the younger kids, stickers and fake tattoos are always a hit. For the older kids we like to give them pins/buttons, pens, pencils, notebooks, etc. But really, anything with a college logo will help plant the seeds of college interest.

If you work at or have a connection with a college, please help us by asking for a donation of items with that college's insignia. If you like, you can click this link for a request letter/email you can send.

To "sponsor" one grade at one school, we need about 30 of one item. To sponsor all of one grade at all 7 schools, then we need about 170 of one item. And anything in between would very helpful!