Executive Summary

For 50 years, Literacy Mid-South (LMS) has been working to increase access to literacy resources in the Memphis community. LMS’s work is driven by a vision of a community where everyone has abundant opportunities through the empowerment and freedom that literacy provides.

These services are essential to the continued success of Memphis, where more than one in four adults are considered at risk for difficulty understanding basic texts and 70% of 3rd graders are missing critical foundational reading skills.

Literacy Mid-South is deeply rooted in the Memphis community. The organization has been serving Memphis since 1974, and the vast majority of staff and leadership grew up in the community and attended Memphis schools. This enables LMS to build meaningful relationships and to identify the unique assets and obstacles to community literacy support.

Literacy Mid-South has meaningfully increased the availability of high-quality literacy support for individuals who traditionally lack access. Programming is targeted to critical junctures in literacy development and in areas unserved by the larger ecosystem of service providers. Working alongside our cross-sector partners, in 2022, LMS provided high-impact tutoring services for 2,250 elementary students, coordinated more than 1,000 hours of tutoring for adults with low literacy levels, distributed over 130,000 new culturally and historically responsive books, and ensured more than 5,000 K-5 students had access to meaningful summer learning opportunities.

Organizations may provide budget and employee data based on this proposal or the organization as a whole. For more information on this proposal or organization, please email us.