Taking a non-profit from paper to digital

More than 15 years ago, I volunteered for a small non-profit educational foundation called The National Right to Read Foundation. At the time, the foundation was still paper-based and had trouble paying the postage and printing costs incurred to mail information packets to parents.

I remember visiting the home of the founder Bob Sweet, and seeing two long tables with neat stacks of pamphlets, brochures from publishers of phonics programs, and photocopies of research articles about how children learn to read.

I offered to take the foundation online by creating a website and posting their resources. I registered the foundation’s domain name, served as webmaster, and oversaw the transformation of their educational content from paper to electronic form. This saved them thousands of dollars in postage and printing costs, as well as extending their reach throughout the world.

Later as Executive Director, I reviewed reading programs and continued to update the website.

I developed two resources, Phonics Checklist and Phonics Primer, that were posted on The National Right to Read Foundation website for many years. The foundation is no longer active since Bob Sweet passed away several years ago, but I’ve posted these updated resources in How I taught my preschoolers to read, write, and spell.