| Submitted by Ron Klaphake Assistant Governor The Rotary Club of Surprise & Sun City West (a recently merged Rotary club) entered into an agreement on January 15, 2025, with The Dollywood Foundation, a 501 (C)(3) non-profit organization, to become a local partner to provide Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library – a Book Gifting Program – in the Surprise, Arizona, geographic area. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library (DPIL) has, for 30 years, been and continues to work with local Partners in providing FREE BOOKS to children ages zero to five, once a month with the express intent to assist in early educational development of children, i.e., literacy. For several years, Rotary Clubs in the United States have been Partners in this effort. As the local DPIL Partner, our Rotary Club has committed to pay for the wholesale cost of the books and postage using a non-profit USPS mailing permit obtained by our own 501 (C)(3), the Surprise & Sun City West Rotary Charitable Fund. The current obligation of our Rotary Club is $31.20 per child, per year. Our local program became fully operational on March 14, 2025, and our Charitable Fund, upon the recommendation from our Rotary Club, committed $10,000 for the FY ending June 30 of this year. This amount was expected to cover the initial start-up cost (approximately $1,000) plus allow for the enrollment of 300 children this year. With our first official event on April 5, the Surprise KIDZ Jamboree, we started signing up children but noted that a sizeable number were from nearby El Mirage. As a result of our initial experience, we approached the Dollywood Foundation on April 8, 2025, and added El Mirage, with another 2,627 children under the age of five, to our geographical area. We also heard directly from parents asking us to allow “on-line” registrations. We opened “on-line” registrations on April 9, 2025, and within hours had an additional 265 registrations. Knowing our limited funding of $10,000, we paused the on-line process after four days as we had already exceeded our goal and approved 330 registrants. The total eligible population for our program is now at 10,488 children. The average participation/penetration rate for a Partner like us, according to the Dollywood Foundation, is approximately 15%, which means a demand of more than 1,500 children expecting to receive FREE books each year. Hence, we are seeking more individuals and partners to help fund this remarkable literacy program now and into the future. (1,500 X $31.20 = $46,800 per year.) Major funding of our local Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is from the Surprise & Sun City West Rotary Charitable Fund at $10,000, which is expected to continue. (Administratively, the Charitable Fund has set up a separate bank account to monitor and account for all receipts and disbursements.) In addition, we are extremely excited to announce that the Sun City Rotary Foundation and the Kellam Foundation have joined us as funding partners for FY 2025-2026. As a result, we have reopened the online registration process and currently have 443 youngsters between the ages of 0 and 5 registered to receive FREE books from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in the coming months. The Rotary Club of Surprise & Sun City West is also planning additional fundraising events this year, including the reinvented Taste of Surprise & Arts Festival. In addition, we have created a “donation” form for individuals desiring to support our local DPIL program. In the future, we hope to secure financial support from the City of Surprise and the City of El Mirage to help support this amazing early childhood literacy program for our local residents. Also on the horizon is potential support from specific industries and foundations such as the Arizona Public Service. |