The Soho Center is
a Platinum-level GuideStar Participant
Committed to Full Nonprofit Transparency
A N O V E R V I E W O F
T H E S O H O C E N T E R
by
Jeanna
Beker, Director
I founded
and continue to direct the Soho Center, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization -
first for nearly 18 years in New York City and now for the past 30
years in Virginia. I hope you'll read what I have written
below to get a better sense of what we are, what
we've done, and what we believe in.
Through economically stable times and through several recessions, the
Soho Center has consistently found cost-effective and sensible ways to
help large numbers of children and families.
Over the years, we've
received much-appreciated funding and support from major foundations,
national and Virginia-based corporations, state agencies, three
Virginia Attorneys General, the federal government, and many generous
individuals. All of them recognized important needs to be
addressed and selected the Soho Center because of our capacity to
intelligently and responsibly bring effective solutions to the public
as well as to prominently credit our supporters for making what we do
possible.
Y
O U ' R E I N V I T E D T O T A K
E A T O U R
Thanks to our generous donors and
supporters, we have finished
a major addition to Soho Center's Regional Facility. For a look at our
renovated
and expanded facility (as well as all of our
wonderful
educational resources), please Click Here
And just what do we do? Let me give you a few examples.
Over the years, the Soho Center and I -
- Designed, implemented, staffed, and operated the
largest early childhood education/parent education program in Manhattan
.
- Established the United Nations Child Care Centre -
including facility design, policy development, curriculum development,
and staffing criteria
.
- Offered extensive training/educational sessions to
child care providers in numerous rural, suburban, and
urban counties
.
- Gave away $15 million of quality children's books to
programs serving low income children to promote children's
literacy and school success. To see the scope of Soho's Book Giveaways, please click here
We've also extensively used print, radio, video, television, and the
web to help the public. For example, the Soho Center -
- Created the National
Children's Literacy Website to
provide the public with
easy-to-understand, easy-to-implement
literacy tips and advice to help children love books and
learning. With no paid placement, the site is consistently in the
Top
Five on Google, Yahoo, and Bing out of 140 million sites for
"children's
literacy." To see Soho's National Children's Literacy Website,
please visit www.kidsliteracy.org
- Published and distributed Educational Newsletters to women taking care of
50,000 pre-school and school-age children while their parents
work.
.
- Created and aired a series of highly-produced
television and radio PSAs in
multiple states to publicize an underutilized,
federally-funded child nutrition program.
.
- Developed and co-produced the well-reviewed Business of Family Child Care
video/DVD used extensively across the country to help educate child
care providers about tax and business matters.
Click Here for more information or to purchase.
.
- Created the Virginia
Health Information Project at www.vahealth.info which
continues to provide the public with reliable, non-commercial
state and national health, safety, and nutrition information and
resources.
Depending on the nature of
each of our projects, we collaborate with numerous non-profits, state
agencies, and child-related groups and involve award-winning media
professionals, nationally-recognized educators, distinguished
children's book authors and illustrators, and community members and
volunteers.
As I acquaint you with the Soho Center, the point I'm trying to make is
that we're committed to helping over 200,000 children and families each
year in as cost-effective and sensible a way as possible - and we know
what we're doing.
Our funders have uniformly been impressed by the Soho Center's approach
and expertise. This includes the W.K. Kellogg Foundation which
broke with tradition and gave us 3 grants totaling over $1,000,000, the
USDA audit team which audited the Soho Center's well-documented use of
over $1,000,000 of federal funds and concluded that everything was in
order and that, in fact, the USDA owed us 60 cents, and that three
Virginia Attorneys General have funded and supported the Soho Center's
literacy projects and heath-related work.
We are pleased that our annual independent audits confirm that Soho's administrative expenses are under 1% each year.
We always use the funds we receive as promised, meet deadlines, provide
timely progress reports, get annual independent audits, and publicly
acknowledge (on our active website and in multiple news stories) how donors make Soho's work possible.
Soho Center's programs and services are free
to the public, and we help a very diverse group of
over 200,000 low- and moderate-income children and families in many,
many communities.
Soho has participated in the Neighborhood Assistance Program (NAP) for
over 20 years. Many of our donors are able to make good use of
the 65% NAP Virginia tax credits that Soho can give them. Soho
also participates in the Combined Virginia Campaign (CVC). Our
CVC code is 00-3007.
As we approach our 50th year, I'm proud of the work we do. I hope
you'll take a moment to browse the Soho Center's site. And I hope
you'll contact us to explore collaborations, discuss sponsorship
opportunities, and consider tax-deductible/basically zero-cost donations - so
that, together, we can continue to help over 200,000 children and families each year in
meaningful ways.
You can
call the Soho Center at 540-923-5012
or Click Here
to e-mail us
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