Nonprofit annual report

A letter from the executive director

The Coalition was five years old when I stepped into this seat. I inherited a program with two decades of thin margins and a board that was tired of choosing between the tutoring hour and the roof. This is the first year I can report both without qualifying either.

We served 4,280 readers in the calendar year. Sixty-eight percent of the third-graders in our after-school tutoring cohort tested at or above grade level by June, up from 51 percent at intake. The number I care about most is a smaller one: 214 families finished the program and then came back the next year to volunteer.

None of that happened because of a single grant. It happened because of a hundred small hands, forty regular donors, and a staff of eleven who kept showing up in a year when no one would have blamed them for looking elsewhere. This report is the accounting of what they built.

Marisol Trevino, Executive Director

Our mission, and how we measure it

The Coalition exists so that no child in Jefferson County finishes third grade without the reading skill to move through fourth on their own. That is a narrow mission and we defend the narrowness on purpose. Two programs feed the mission: neighborhood tutoring three afternoons a week, and a family-literacy series that runs on Saturday mornings.

We measure the mission with three numbers. Percentage of readers at grade level. Percentage of enrolled families completing the twelve-week series. Number of books placed in the home. We do not measure hours delivered, which is a program input, and we do not measure grants applied for, which is an operations input. The three numbers are on the wall at the office in a font large enough to read from the parking lot.

What happened in the year

The grade-level number is a 17-point lift on a cohort of 612 students. It is not a perfect measure. It uses a standardized reading assessment that has known limits and it does not follow students into the next school year, which is a project we are financing for FY26. Even with those caveats, the direction is unmistakable and the size is meaningful. Sixty-eight percent of children who finished the year with us were reading in a way that will not disqualify them from fourth-grade math or fourth-grade science.

Where the money came from

The Coalition raised $4.28M in the year against a budget of $4.10M. Individual gifts remained the largest single source, growing 22 percent over the prior year, most of it in the $50 to $500 band. Two multi-year foundation renewals landed in Q4, giving the operations office the first two-year planning window since 2019.

Where the money went

Program spend held at 83 percent of total outlay, well above the 75 percent floor set by our board covenant. Direct tutoring is the largest single line and grew 14 percent as the tutoring cohort expanded from 480 to 612 students. Fundraising costs held flat as the recurring-donor program absorbed acquisition expense that used to sit in appeals.

The families who kept us honest

My son came home the first week saying the tutor did not correct him when he sounded out a word wrong. She let him say it three times. By the third time he heard the mistake himself. That is how you teach a kid to read.

The family programs enrolled 384 families in FY25 and 79 percent finished the twelve weeks. The completion rate is the metric that predicts the return-volunteer number, which is the metric that predicts fundraising ease three years out. We are watching the completion rate more carefully than we watch dollars.

Donors, in name

The Coalition thanks 3,120 individual donors and 41 institutional funders. Two families gave more than $250,000 in the year, both anonymously. Every donor of $2,500 and above is named in the printed insert that accompanies the mailed edition of this report. Every donor at every level is thanked by name in the office lobby, which is where the names should be.

The year ahead

FY26 has three specific commitments. First, we begin a longitudinal study that follows a randomly selected 200 students from our FY25 cohort into their fourth-grade year. Second, we open a second tutoring site in the Shawnee neighborhood, adding capacity for 240 additional students. Third, we lock the operating reserve at eight months of expense, which is the point at which our board is willing to stop treating cash as an ongoing conversation.

None of that is glamorous. It is the work in front of us. If you have read this far, you already know why we are doing it.

How the tutoring cohort actually works

The tutoring program pairs one adult volunteer with two children for the full school year. The adult is trained in the Coalition's phonics-first reading intervention, which follows a curriculum built in partnership with the University of Louisville's education school. Pairs meet three afternoons a week for ninety minutes at a school site, a library, or one of our two neighborhood centers. The program runs from the first day of school through the last, with a two-week break at winter holidays and a make-up week in June for children who missed more than four sessions.

The volunteer is asked to commit for the full year, and 84 percent of our volunteers do. Attrition happens in September and October, when the reality of the commitment lands. It is rare after November. We recruit deliberately in July and August, hold a two-day training the third weekend of August, and pair each new volunteer with a returning volunteer for the first month of the school year. That mentorship pattern is why our first-year retention rose from 61 to 84 percent over the last three years.

What we heard from parents in the year-end survey

Every family in the program receives a paper survey in the last week of May. We collect it in person at the end-of-year gathering. 391 of the 462 enrolled families returned the survey this year, a response rate of 85 percent. Three findings from the survey shaped the FY26 plan.

First, 92 percent of families reported that their child now chooses to read at home. Only 43 percent said the same at intake. That gap is the number the family programs staff care about most, because the choice to read at home is the strongest single predictor of retention into fourth grade.

Second, 71 percent of families said transportation to the neighborhood center was the hardest part of the program. This is a slightly higher number than we have measured in prior years, and it is the reason the Shawnee expansion was chosen over three other neighborhood options. Shawnee cuts the transportation burden in half for the 240 families we expect to enroll next year.

Third, 34 percent of families volunteered to describe a specific staff member by name in the open response. That is a very high number for an open-text survey question. We share those names on the office wall the week the surveys are collected. It is a small ritual and it matters more than the fundraising ratio.

Financial detail beyond the summary

The Coalition ended fiscal 2025 with $1.86M in unrestricted operating reserves, up from $1.42M at the start of the year. The reserve now covers 6.6 months of operating expense, closing on the eight-month floor the board set in FY23. Restricted funds carry forward a further $2.14M, most of which supports the multi-year foundation renewals that landed in Q4.

Audited financial statements will post to riverfrontliteracy.org the second week of September, immediately after the audit committee's review. The Form 990 posts the first business day of November. If a donor has read this report and wants to see the working papers, the executive director's phone number is on the last page of the printed edition.