Soho Center for Arts and Education, Inc.
Helping Children and Families for Over 50 Years
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
It is crucial for young children to have positive experiences with books so they can enter school ready to learn and succeed. It's also crucial for school-age children to learn to read and read well.
The Soho Center actively promotes children's literacy, school readiness, grade-level reading, and school success with our large-scale Book Giveaways (www.child2000.org/books) and our Children's Literacy Website (www.child2000.org/literacy).
Many of the children who receive Soho's books are low-income.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Book Giveaways for over 200,000 Children Every Year
Soho Center gives away millions of dollars of new, high quality children's books to support children's literacy, school readiness, and school success. Recipients include over 1,000+ Head Start classrooms, several children's hospitals, Boys & Girls Clubs, after-school programs, public libraries, home-visiting programs, summer feeding programs, early childhood programs, and other child-related organizations. For more information, please see - www.sohobooks.org
National Children's Literacy Website
The Soho Center created the National Children's Literacy Website(www.kidsliteracy.org) to provide parents, grandparents, child care providers, teachers, and community volunteers with useful, easy-to-understand, easy-to-implement advice to promote children's literacy, school readiness, and school success. The site is completely non-commercial, providing helpful information to the public to benefit large numbers of children. Because children need to read (and read well).
Virginia Health Information Project
The Virginia Health Information Project (VHIP) provides the public with a 24/7 online website to access reliable health, safety, and nutrition resources and information. The VHIP website is completely non-commercial and provides an extraordinary range of reputable national, state, and county-specific information and resources to benefit children, adults, and seniors.
Originally funded and supported by two Virginia Attorneys General, the site provides the public with access to 14,000 health hot-lines in English and Spanish, a Health Library, information about prescription drugs, doctors, hospitals, and more. If it's about health, it's here.
The site is a public service to help all age groups access the most reliable health, safety, and nutrition resources and information - and it's one more way that the Soho Center helps large numbers of families.
Where we work
External reviews
Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of books distributed
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Children and youth
Related Program
Book Giveaways for over 200,000 Children Every Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
The Soho Center donated over 300,000 new quality children's books to children's hospitals, child care-related organizations and other literacy/education -focused programs
Number of books distributed to low-income, sick, or disabled children
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Children and youth, At-risk youth, Economically disadvantaged people
Related Program
Book Giveaways for over 200,000 Children Every Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
New, high-quality children's books donated through the Soho Center's Book Giveaways to UVA Children's Hospital and UVA Pediatric sites and to multiple child-related organizations.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
The Soho Center wants to continue to help over 200,000 primarily low-income children each year to love books, learn to read, and read well.
Soho also wants to help hundreds of child-related organizations to have the needed literacy resources to better serve children and families.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Soho identifies, secures, inventories, and temporarily stores hundreds of thousands of new, high-quality children's books. Soho then gives these books away to hundreds of child-related programs, 92 libraries, 1,000 Head Start classrooms, 3 children's hospitals, home-visiting programs, the USO, hundreds of Boys & Girls Clubs and after-school programs, and others.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
The Soho Center and its Director has 46 years of relevant and successful experience helping large numbers of children and families.
Our free programs and services help over 200,000 primarily low-income children each year.
And our annual administrative expenses are only 1%.
We are well positioned to continue our work - and, with additional support, wisely expand our efforts.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
The Soho Center celebrates 46 years of helping many hundreds of thousands of children, families, and child-related organizations.
We remain as committed as ever to offering free, cost-effective, needed programs and services that benefit large numbers of children and families.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback, We ask the people who gave us feedback how well they think we responded
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
We don't have any major challenges to collecting feedback
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Soho Center for Arts and Education, Inc.
Board of directorsas of 01/18/2024
Jeanna Beker
Soho Center
George Beker
Jeanna Beker
Priscilla Jackson
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Not applicable -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
We do not display disability information for organizations with fewer than 15 staff.
Equity strategies
Last updated: 10/23/2023GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.