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 36 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 $30 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
generally 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.
As we approach our 55th 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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