One Year In: Progress on CLiF's 2025-2028 Strategic Plan

By Laura Rice

Launched in July 2025, CLiF's three-year strategic plan identifies four priorities:

• Expanding investment in early childhood programming and resources to provide a strong foundation for literacy growth.

• Increasing family engagement to promote role modeling and commitment to literacy.

• Developing new collaborations that deliver access to literacy resources and experiences.

• Deepening our impact by offering CLiF programs over longer periods of time.

One year into the plan, we are encouraged by the progress made across all four priorities, and by the ways they increasingly reinforce one another. Here are a few highlights from our first year.

Strong Foundations

While CLiF has always served children from birth through age 12, we have significantly broadened our focus on reaching children during the critical years from infancy through age five.

Our new Early Childhood grant debuted as a pilot program, providing literacy resources and support to childcare providers, parent-child centers, and libraries. Following a successful activation with our initial cohort of partners, we are confident the program is fulfilling areas of need and look forward to building upon its success.

We also expanded two of our signature grant programs to provide greater access to literacy resources for the youngest children and their families. Our Rural Library grant now includes curated early literacy backpacks for circulation, each featuring themed books paired with toys and activities for families to enjoy together. Within our Year of the Book grant, we increased the number of partner schools with pre-K classrooms, ensuring that we reach more children during their earliest formal learning experiences. Both programs also now offer an increased inventory of board books for giveaways.

Family Engagement

Family literacy events have long been a cornerstone of CLiF programming, and we continue to work closely with our partners to make them even more impactful. During the 2025-2026 school year, we funded family literacy events at all 14 of our Year of the Book schools, an accomplishment we plan to repeat with our 2026-2027 cohort. These events bring parents and caregivers into their children's schools for a shared meal, an engaging presentation by a professional storyteller or author, and a book giveaway, creating meaningful opportunities for families to connect through literacy.

We also partnered with all 15 organizations in the Vermont Parent Child Center Network (VPCCN), adding new books and literacy resources to their Welcome Baby program and providing training for new parents on the many benefits of reading together from infancy. We are excited to continue this collaboration, while also seeking to launch a similar state-wide partnership with family resource centers in New Hampshire.

To further support parents and caregivers in modeling literacy at home, we created informational handouts with research-backed tips on how and why to share books and stories with children of all ages. We also continue to build out the collection of resources available on our website.

Working Together

To better address the range of challenges experienced by many of the children and families we serve, we expanded our partnerships with two outstanding mission-driven organizations: NH Hunger Solutions and Lund.

These year-long collaborations enabled us to connect families with multiple forms of support at the same time, whether pairing food access with free books or parenting resources with literacy programming. By working together, we achieved greater collective impact.

We plan to deepen these partnerships in the coming year while seeking additional opportunities to collaborate with organizations whose work complements our own, all with the shared goal of improving outcomes for children and families.

Community Focus

We are especially excited about the groundwork laid this year for a new initiative in selected towns: Community-Wide Literacy Projects (CWLP).

These multi-year partnerships bring together schools, libraries, early childhood providers, local businesses, and other community organizations to create immersive literacy exposure and experiences over a sustained period of time. We are optimistic this approach has the potential to create lasting improvements in literacy skills, family engagement, and enthusiasm for reading.

Onward to Year Two

As we begin the second year of our strategic plan, we are energized by the momentum we've built and invigorated by what lies ahead.

None of this work would be possible without the generous support of our donors, partners, volunteers, and advocates. Thank you for sharing our belief in the power of reading and writing to change a child's future. Together, we continue to open books, open minds, and open doors.