On Friday, we’ll be meeting with many of the 100+ funders active in the GLR Campaign and our Communities Network in Washington, DC. Until then we’ll be featuring some of the foundations and donors who are making a difference. Today’s blog post is by John Bartosek, chief communications officer of the Children’s Services Council of Palm Beach County in Florida.

Everyone loves a fairy tale with a happy ending. So when the Children’s Services Council of Palm Beach County launched its grade-level reading campaign, we adopted a fairy tale theme: “My Happily Ever After Begins with Reading.”

The theme is reflected on our new website, billboards, bookmarks, stickers, backpacks and more. This countywide public awareness campaign promotes the importance of grade-level reading by focusing on three pillars: school readiness, school attendance and summer learning. Our strategy is to leverage the universality of fairy tales, build strong partnerships with key groups to widen our reach, and layer the campaign through all media channels so it touches the broadest audience possible.

We’ve done this at book events last fall and this spring at every public and charter elementary school in the county, providing nearly 90,000  students the opportunity to select their own free book to keep. This school year, we distributed more than 200,000 books labeled with stickers for the child’s name and our logo. Other elements include:

• Seven TV and radio PSAs (so far) by nationally known sports stars who live in Palm Beach County
• A dozen campaign billboards
• Hundreds of thousands of themed bookmarks
• More than 100,000 branded bright yellow backpacks for school children
• More than 16,000 PBCReads yellow T-shirts distributed through nearly 100 summer camps
• A new website and web banners on partners’ sites
• Facebook and Twitter posts
• Brochures and letters sent to all school parents
• A rigorous pilot program with staff at 10 summer camps to institute a formal weekly summer reading curriculum.

We couldn’t do it without our partners, who include our local Literacy Coalition, School District, newspaper, the local United Way and county and municipal libraries.