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Happy New Year!
This Saturday's January 8th Reading Clubs are shaping up to be a great way to start the New Year - shake off those rainy winter blues by coming out to read with enthusiastic, bright kids! Sign up for the first Reading Clubs of 2005 by clicking here to RSVP!
We're giving away computers that were donated by volunteers at a few schools this Saturday. We have a printer to donate with one of the computers but it needs toner (HP 26 black toner, to be exact). If anyone has an extra toner cartridge available, we'd love to add this to the set-up before donating the printer. Please contact us at at (310) 479-7455. Additionally, if any of you have computers you'd like to donate to the kids, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Also, we're looking to purchase or locate two new pieces of office equipment in 2005 -- a small stepladder and a new desk chair (we prefer an Aeron, but we're not picky)! If your office (or your garage!) has either of these things, please give us a holler!
2004 Successes!
2004 was an incredible year for Reading to Kids, as I'm sure our myriad celebratory e-mails implied. What you may not realize is just how many records we broke and milestones we reached in this successful year:
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We celebrated our 5th Birthday
last May at a great event that welcomed volunteers and friends to El Cholo, our
favorite spot!
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Reading to Kids welcomed 1,097
kids in December 2004, bringing our running 6-month average of kids in
attendance up to 824! Our average number of attending kids was 585 at the end of
2003.
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We welcomed five volunteer Santas at four schools to give away
hundreds of prizes donated by our generous volunteers!
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We reached a milestone of 27,000 books
donated to children at the Reading Clubs!
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The year ended with a record 278
volunteers, bringing our running 6-month average of volunteers in attendance up
to 235 volunteers. We ended last year with an average of only 197
volunteers per month!
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We held a great Second Annual College Spirit Day in November
2004 that brought hundreds of college students and fans out to read!
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We now have more than 2,300 subscribers to our e-mail lists -- that's 700 more since January 2004!
We had such a great year because we have such great volunteers. Thanks to all for the hard work and dedication!
Fundraising 2004
Wow! 2004 was also a record-setting year for Reading to Kids' fundraising, thanks to our generous volunteers and friends and our outstanding fundraising committee.
At last count, we had raised a record $124,166 in 2004 and just over 300 donors! Our Annual Fund Drive was hugely successful; not only did we increase the number of individual donors to our goal of 300 in 2004, we also saw individual contributions increase from September 1st through December 31st -- the Annual Fund Drive period -- by over 40% from 2003 to 2004:
2003
Individual contributions (9/1/03 - 12/31/03): $15,081
2004
Individual contributions (9/1/04 - 12/31/04): $21,265 and counting...
Volunteers gave donations from $1 to $2,500, and every little bit helped us reach our goals of $15,000 and 300 donors for the Annual Fund Drive. Please click here to see a complete list of our 2004 donors (with the exception of the checks received today)...
Many, many thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make this a successful year!
We look forward to seeing you at the January 8th Reading Clubs --they should be a blast!
Maryanna Abdo
Reading to Kids
1600 Sawtelle Blvd, Suite 210
Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 479-7455
(310) 479-7435 (FAX)
MaryannaAbdo@readingtokids.org
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