From the Annual Report: Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library
From the Annual Report: Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library
One of the key things that makes philanthropy with London Community Foundation so impactful is that it’s sustainable and lasts forever. Many of the organizations that hold funds with us also take a sustainable approach to their work by tackling the issues they’re working to solve at source. One such organization is the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, whose London affiliate opened a fund with the Foundation in 2022.
The Imagination Library sends children up to the age of five a book every month, encouraging them to take an early interest in literacy before they start school. “If you get kids already interested in literacy before they get to kindergarten it’ll make their work so much easier, and the parents are usually so motivated to help those kids as well,” says Sue Carlyle from the London affiliate of the Imagination Library. “There are people that can’t afford groceries right now, but this [literacy] is such a key part of a child’s success that anything we can do to help is important.”
The program is free for those enrolled in it and runs at a cost of just $3.85 per month, per child. Sue describes the impact of the project as “a miracle” given the relatively low cost of it.
A local affiliate starts when someone in the community sees a need for the program and steps up to start fundraising for it. In London, that person was Betsy Reilly, a retired teacher who taught all three of Sue’s boys and was connected to Jeanne Smitiuch, the Imagination Library’s Regional Director for Canada, by a former student. Throughout her career, Betsy saw first-hand the importance of children having books in their homes.
“The first part of my teaching career was in some of the toughest schools in London. I was giving kids Cheerios and getting them on a milk program because some of the kids didn’t have enough to eat,” Betsy told us.
“What I saw in teaching was that the kids who had books in their home were more likely to be plugged into literacy, and now the educational research is supporting this in study after study around the world. Kids can go back to those books time after time and embed all that vocabulary.”
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library volunteer Betsy Reilly at London Central Library
Jeanne describes Betsy and the experience, knowledge, and passion she has for literacy as “the biggest asset the London affiliate of the Imagination Library has, along with the endowment fund.”
Betsy’s passion for literacy is incredibly similar in its roots to Dolly Parton’s. Both Betsy and Dolly’s fathers grew up in Appalachia region of the United States unable to read. “My father was pretty successful for a guy who had such minimal education and became the president of his Rotary Club and the president of the Barbers’ Union in Miami, but he had to pass everything through my mother, or me, or whatever secretary was working for him,” Betsy recalls.
The Imagination Library’s work tries to ensure such barriers to literacy don’t exist for children, so they can be set up for success as much as possible.
Both Betsy and Sue reference poverty as being a key factor in illiteracy. They keep this in mind when recruiting for the program. Every child up to five years old can enroll regardless of their family’s income level – something Dolly herself insists on. Betsy and Sue have created partnerships to make sure the London affiliate reaches children experiencing poverty or who otherwise don’t have the resources to access books, working with organizations like Childreach, Crouch Neighbourhood Resource Centre, the Child & Parent Resource Institute, and Thames Valley District School Board. Another example of such a partnership is El Sistema Aeolian, a free after-school music program for young people between the ages of six and 19. Betsy describes the younger siblings of El Sistema’s participants as “ideal candidates” for the Imagination Library.
Thanks, in part, to an annual commitment from Carlyle Peterson, the law firm at which Sue is a Partner, the London affiliate is already able to sustainably support over 75 children receiving a book every month through the program, but Betsy and Sue have much bigger goals – “Dolly established the Foundation as a program for everyone,” Betsy explains. “Everyone”, in London’s case, is around 20,000 children under the age of five, according to the 2021 census, meaning there’s still plenty of growing and fundraising to do.
“The fundraising piece is the hardest piece of the program,” Jeanne explains. “The program itself – to get the children in and to promote the program is easy; it’s the fundraising that the local groups struggle with. The endowment fund is an easy and nice way to make it last. It’s sustainable; it’s a forever gift.” Having an endowment fund, which generates annual income, is unusual amongst local affiliates of the program, but it’s something Jeanne is now suggesting to many of the volunteers she works with.
Given the amount of work required to raise funds, it’s a huge boost for the London affiliate of the Imagination Library to be able to rely not only on London Community Foundation for support with all the administration of the endowment (something Betsy says would have “finished me off,”) but also on the Dollywood Foundation to handle all their marketing and database support needs. This means that the Imagination Library runs without any overhead on a local level, and all donations to the Library and its fund go straight to getting books into the hands of children, as Sue explains:
“The great thing about Dolly and London Community Foundation is we don’t have any staff or any auditing. All we as volunteers have to do is raise the money. All 20,000 kids would cost less than a million bucks a year, which isn’t a lot of money in a city the size of London.”
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library sends out over 2.7 million books worldwide every month, all of which are fundraised for by volunteers on a local level just like Betsy and Sue. By working in partnerships to ensure that all the passion and expertise we have in our community can be applied impactfully and efficiently to create sustainable systemic change, the Imagination Library is an organization that truly embodies the spirit in which London Community Foundation operates.
To learn more about the London affiliate of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, visit www.lcf.on.ca/dolly