North County Health Services (NCHS), which has 7 clinics participating in Reach Out and Read, recently held a bookfair at Barnes and Noble on May 6th to support their sites in Oceanside, Carlsbad, and Encinitas. One of the NCHS ROR Pediatricians, Dr. Edward Curley, performed magic to entertain the patrons, while the daughters of another NCHS Pediatrician, Dr. Donald MIller, assisted! Dr. Curley's wife led story time for the kids. The event featured a puppet show and Clifford the Big Red Dog as well. Kudos to all of the pediatricians and staff from NCHS who helped organize this event, especially Michelle Davis, the NCHS Community Liaison and ROR Champion. Over $700 was raised for the coastal NCHS ROR Sites. For their strong effort, NCHS receives our Golden Book Award for the month!

A bookfair at your local bookstore is a great way to raise money for Reach Out and Read and connect with the community. Contact the bookstore manager about hosting a bookfair for a day. Different stores and chains may handle it slightly differently --- but usually a percentage of the receipts for books purchased by patrons using a customized coupon will be donated to your ROR program. The percentage varies from 10-20%.

Get prepared for the bi-annual progress report due at the end of August. This report requires January - June data, so start gathering your information now! When the progress report is submitted, on time, you will receive 1/2 of 25% of your Annual Book Budget!

These reports are crucial for ROR National to calculate sustainability funding for all 2,900+ sites and for continued Department of Education Federal funding to ROR National Center to cover start up and sustainability funding for all sites ($10 million FY06). The 6 month report also acknowledges what your clinic has done well, helps your clinic identify what needs improvement, and provides your clinic with statistics for funders.

A 6-month progress report is due after clinic has implemented ROR for 6 months. Funding is given after one full year (2 progress reports submitted). Reports are available each January and July; notice only emailed to primary mailing contact on file with ROR National. A paper report is available, but not recommended. Online report is simple and best for National. They calculate it takes 15-20 minutes to complete.

Count how many books are in your clinic area (not your large storage area)
If you subtract that number from what you started with at the beginning of the month, you will know how many books were given out in the month
Keeping that number tallied each month will help with your on-line progress report in January and July
Not sure how many were in the cupboard to start with? That's ok; estimate a guess and get started for this next month my keeping track of the number of books you start with for April
The July 2006 6-month progress report will include January - June. If you have numbers for January - keep them in a safe place with your calculations from today.
Click below for a sample inventory sheet. This is a simpler version of what I offered some of you in 2005, plus I added a spot to record literacy referral information (discussed on the 1-19 teleconference call) that could be counted and placed in the waiting room. This number will help you answer one of the questions on the progress report about literacy referrals made. I hope you find it helpful.
If you haven't been keeping track this way, you can disregard this notice. Go ahead and continue with your system of tracking books. If your system has been cumbersome or the staff members are balking at tracking each book given, you might want to try this simple method of keeping track of # of books given out.