Delivering Infinite Bookshelves for Kids

DIBS for Kids focuses on daily book distribution for Kindergarten- 3rd grade students who have limited access to in-home reading materials on a daily basis. DIBS currently serves 4,000 students in schools with free and reduced lunch rates over 70%. Access to age appropriate, exciting reading materials is paramount to how students learn to read, to the excitement they show for reading and for positive life outcomes, yet according to the Children’s Literacy Foundation 61% of children in lower-income households do not have a single age appropriate book at home. Moreover, thirteen million children are enrolled in school districts where the children’s materials circulation is less than 10 per student and classroom libraries are only available for 43% of school-aged children. Access to self-selected books is proven to increase literacy gains for lifelong benefits; students who do not read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to not graduate high school, and for students who are low-income, live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, and are not reading proficiently, 35% do not graduate high school on time. DIBS provides a solution to these problems; providing the resources and support, so that every student has access to daily reading opportunities that aid to improve their reading proficiency scores by the end of third grade.

DIBS for Kids  (Delivering Infinite Book Shelves for Kids)  does book distribution differently. Our organization removes barriers such as money, time, transportation, and limited internet access so all students can have access to a great book to read at home, each and every school night.  DIBS for Kids’ revolutionary solution helps schools provide every child with access to powerful in-home reading experiences, every school night. Founded in 2012 in one classroom with a spreadsheet and box of donated books, today our model supports more than 4,000 students to take home on average 80 or more unique, diverse and exciting books each school year.  

DIBS’ distribution system is classroom-based, meaning a student selects a DIBS book from their classroom to take home each school night. DIBS provides teachers with over 212, age and language appropriate books per classroom that have our unique DIBS QR-code on the back, six book bins, individual student folders and our web-based book lending software. The books are a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, ranging from emerging to proficient reading levels, with diverse and representative characters and topics so all students can find multiple books of interest. Teachers receive one of ten unique sets in English, Spanish, or a mix of both and every five weeks, teachers in the school rotate their sets creating an “infinite” supply of books.

Our innovation comes from combining physical books with our custom-built student-led software. Each morning, DIBS students enter their classroom and check-in their books from the night before on any device that has an internet connection and camera by holding up the QR-code on the back of the book to the camera. After scanning the QR-code, students can quickly see their personal dashboard, including how many books they have read and progress badges. Then students go to the six book bins to select their next exciting read and proceed to a second device, click on their personalized icon, and hold the QR-code up to the webcam to check-out their new book. Lastly, the book goes into their DIBS folder to safely get home for another night of reading. This process is repeated each morning, prior to instructional time,  while the classroom is getting ready for the day and generally takes an entire class only 10-15 minutes to complete. 

Our solution helps teachers establish a daily routine for students to select their books each morning as they enter the classroom. It also helps schools build a culture of reading and helps parents to create a routine of reading in the home as well, without the added stresses of getting to a library, finding extra money to buy books or navigating the world of finding great books for their kids.

While DIBS currently serves over 4,000 students in the Midwest / Great Plains region, DIBS can be implemented in any classroom. We focus on Kindergarten through third grade classrooms in Title I schools with historically underserved populations facing systemic inequities in access to the one resource that improves reading outcomes: books.

Since our founding in 2012, DIBS has sent home over 700,000 books, creating hours of out-of-school reading opportunities for students and meaningful instructional support for teachers.  This school year, DIBS students are on pace to take home over 200,000 books.

DIBS, if scaled, can serve an infinite number of Kindergarten through third grade classrooms because we have optimized distribution of books to classrooms, and distribution within classrooms. The impact of DIBS being in these classrooms is great and can compound over time. First of all, through access to fun, diverse and exciting books, students are learning to get excited about reading and become lifelong learners. Additionally, the impact is on learning to read in general. Although we know learning to read is a very scientific and complex process that teachers are experts in, they are in need of and know how important a solution that can help them go beyond the classroom for more practice and love of reading. Research has shown just how important nightly access to books is for children. An analysis of a national data set of nearly 100,000 U.S. school children found that access to printed materials, not poverty, is the critical variable affecting learning to read. From there, we know that the ability to read proficiently impacts graduation rates, health outcomes and more. In a national study about one third of students reading below grade level at third grade. Those 31% of children accounted for more than 63% of all children who did not graduate from highschool. DIBS for Kids, gets to students early and often, providing access and dosage, hoping to end the vicious cycle of never quite catching up in reading. By helping kids to not just read, but to learn to enjoy it, DIBS for Kids is creating more confident, curious students, who turn into productive, emphatic and competent adults.

Our team at DIBS is well-positioned to scale DIBS to other communities because we have iterated our software, distribution, and implementation process to require minimal time and cost to schools and teachers, with input and expertise from the people using it. Their input comes to us informally from monthly visits to class, emails, and unsolicited feedback. Their input also comes to us as part of our outside evaluation process, where persons independent of DIBS for Kids are interviewing teachers, school administrators, parents and students. We will continue asking for both types of input as we move into other communities as needs can change depending upon location. 

In terms of closeness to the communities we serve, DIBS for Kids is located in the same city as 18 of our current 23 school sites. One of our staff members had a daughter that was in the program and saw first hand the benefits of taking home a new book each school night. Additionally, we are engaged with the community through community volunteers who assist with getting materials ready for the program, are involved in various community partnerships and maintain a strong relationship with a local university to assist with projects and internship possibilities. 

Additionally, we are well positioned to move into other communities, because with our book distribution partnerships, each book set with book bins  arrives directly to schools, already organized for easy unboxing and classroom set-up.  DIBS simultaneously supplies the individual student folders with included family letters in English, Spanish, Arabic, or Karen.

Through our software solution, DIBS teachers can access five on-demand training videos, each less than ten minutes.  These videos train teachers on how to use our software, including logging in, check-in and check-out of books, and reporting tools.  DIBS also provides two student training videos, to teach students how to use our software and independently use our software.  DIBS also is integrated with Clever, a single sign-on and roster management system used by most urban school districts so teachers and districts can seamlessly upload and manage student rosters at the click of a button. Finally, DIBS can, and does, provide virtual support to any teacher or school to ensure program fidelity.  

By leveraging valued partnerships and technological solutions, DIBS is well-positioned to scale, especially because teachers themselves recognize the value of DIBS.  Over 95% of teachers re-enrollment year-over-year, 87%  find DIBS easy to implement and 89% feel DIBS increases student interest in reading.

DIBS for Kids is applying because we are poised to make a much larger impact over the next 10 years.  However, we need guidance and assistance from trusted mentors to effectively and successfully scale our program.

In applying, we would be thrilled to have access to learning opportunities, partnerships, and experts that could help us scale and grow our impact.  We are looking for opportunities to grow our current networks while simultaneously moving towards a more sustainable funding model that is a mixture of earned income through licensing fees and traditional philanthropic support.  Finally, to meet our ambitious scaling goals, potential connections to a broader national community of technical, financial, and strategic partners would be invaluable.

Our solution is innovative in its simplicity: by providing the technological tools to ensure a new book goes home every night, from a student’s classroom, DIBS significantly improves how to ensure a multitude of high-interest, age-appropriate, native-language books are independently read each school night.

DIBS does not deny book giveaways, school and public libraries, and even classroom libraries have existed for years and are extremely valuable.  Yet, reading proficiency scores remain stubbornly low, and fell even further during the pandemic for low-income and minority students.  However, when over 60% of children do not have a single age-appropriate book in their home, school library access is limited to once or twice a week, and only 43% of students have access to a classroom library where the teacher has to find and purchase their own books and are therefore reluctant to allow them to be taken home – DIBS steps in with a way to consistently circulate books, with a way to know students are taking them home and reading them, without the reluctance to allow books to be taken home.

Not only is DIBS innovative in the technology and distribution space, but it also has other far reaching benefits in the education space for how teachers and administrators are able to make choices about what is best for their schools, classrooms and students. Principals, but especially teachers, are often told which programs can come into their schools and classrooms. Our inventive aspect of working with our customers, the teachers and principals, is to offer an authentic choice of opting into or out of the program after they have heard how it will work in their setting. Attestations to this process show that over 90% of teachers opt-in when given the choice and 87% of teachers re-enroll in the program each year. 

Impact Goals for 12 months, end of the 2022-2023 school year:

• Grow from 4,000 students to 4,500 students in low-income, minority, immigrant, and refugee populations in the United States

• Circulate / distribute at least 80 books per student for nightly at-home independent and/or family reading opportunities

• Finalize build-out of current software system to provide deep data learning on student progress towards reading proficiency 

• Complete the first year of of our three year external program evaluation by summer 2022

• Complete second of third year of external program evaluation by summer 2023

DIBS for Kids will achieve these impact goals by: 

• Adding two new schools within Omaha Public Schools, as well as additional classrooms in other existing DIBS schools and new schools outside of the Omaha area

• Continue to implement the program in our current 215 classrooms

• Work closely with our chosen software development company and follow the statement of work to ensure that our current technology is updated and working at its highest level

• Continue to work with our chosen partner to complete the outside impact evaluation. 

Impact Goals for 60 months, end of the 2028-2029 school year:

• Triple the number of students in low-income, minority, immigrant, and refugee populations in United States / North America by partnering with school districts

• Successfully iterate a replication model for communities to implement DIBS

• Unlock the potential of the data in our database to guide teachers and school districts in increasing reading proficiency rates

• Complete the outside impact evaluation, review and revise plan according to data received to continue the evaluation process

DIBS for Kids will achieve these long-terms impact goals by: 

• Increasing funding breadth and depth by successfully working with other funding options, other than our current ones

• Add additional staff members to successfully support growing the program

• Finalize and implement the plan for replication that involves experts in the area of scaling and sustainability

• Working closely with technology and outside evaluation partners to continue to develop our technology in order to pull data that is meaningful to our organization, teachers, schools and districts

Our measurable goals include: 

• Number of books circulated each school year 

• Number of students served who attend Title I schools 

• Percentage of classroom teachers who renew program participation  

Since 2012, DIBS has circulated over 700,000 books to over 12,000 students. On average, students take home books three times per week, or 83 books for the school year. In the  2021-2022 school year, over 145,000 books have been taken home and students are on track to take home over 200,000 books. This is possible because with DIBS in 215 classrooms, of which 181 are in Nebraska and  Title I, we have created 215 classroom libraries, resulting in 42,000 individual books in circulation.  

DIBS has also contracted with an external evaluator to conduct a three-year program evaluation. The current school year (2021 - 2022) is the first  year of the evaluation. Preliminary results will be available in July 2022. Despite the staggering documented Covid learning losses among students of color with low income, we  anticipate the external program evaluation will show measurable gains in reading proficiency scores, as well  as in positive responses from teachers, parents, and students. Because DIBS is built upon evidence-based  literature, the increase in scores is anticipated due to previous research on accessibility of books for  independent out-of-school reading for improving reading proficiency scores as well as our known internal  data. 

Our Theory of Change was built from our vision statement, as a roadmap of how to achieve “a future where classrooms, schools and entire districts are supported to make daily, in-home reading accessible and exciting for all students.” 

DIBS for Kids’ theory of change starts with the inputs of book and our software availability, our staff, and teachers and schools usage. These inputs drive the activities, which include students checking in and out a book every school day, right from their classrooms, DIBS teacher support, parent engagement, and overall reading encouragement to students.

Our outputs are delineated to the short, intermediate, and long-term.  In the short term, we expect our program to result in students who are interested in reading and more motivated to read. Additionally, we expect that teachers will remain engaged with the program, leading to more students participating, and more families being supportive of student reading at home. These short term outputs will lead to an increase in the dosage of reading for students and increase the amount of time families spend reading together at home. 

Intermediate outputs have more of an impact on students and schools, where we see increases in student confidence in reading, students actual reading abilities and an increase in the value that schools see in DIBS. From here we will continue to see long-term outputs, including students attaining 3rd grade reading achievement levels, teachers consistently re-enrolling in the program, and schools recommending the program to other schools via teacher or school leadership recommendations. 

These outputs support the outcomes of future generations who love reading, break the cycle of poverty, have improved health outcomes, and an increase in civic engagement.

DIBS for Kids employs three technologies that combine the old with the new: (1)a custom-built web-based software that provides an easy way for students to check in and out books right from their classrooms; (2) QR code based technology that allows for the books to scanned, categorized and assigned, and finally; (3) the books themselves are a technology that is what could be considered more traditional and that provide our society with needed knowledge systems that advance our thinking.

Our custom, web-based software accomplishes three things. First, it allows teachers to easily send home books in an organized manner, allowing them to see which students have which books, how many each has taken home, and real-time reporting for teachers and administrators to see the reading habits of their students. Second, it is a fun way for students to take the power of reading into their own hands. They are the ones that get to pick their books and check them in and out each school day, plus they get to see their dashboards to watch their progress throughout the school year. Finally, it allows DIBS staff to monitor the program in each school, use data to drive internal decisions, and communicate more effectively with schools that are using the program. 

Next, the QR code technology we employ is on the back of each and every book that goes into a classroom and is what the students use, in conjunction with the web-based software, to check in and out the books. Each QR code is unique to the book and connects that given book to a given student. 

Finally, the physical books DIBS provides are what might be considered a more traditional technology. These books are provided in sets of 212 for each classroom, providing students access to a wealth of information, knowledge and fun. Through this technology, students can learn about new worlds, escape into a place of silliness and humor, gain more information about rocks, gems, animals, historical figures, themselves and others. We know that books are one of the most powerful technologies we have at our disposal and if the pandemic taught us anything, it is that traditional technologies, like books, in combination with newer technologies are needed to ensure student achievement.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is, and always will be, an ongoing process in our staff, governance, and work. DIBS’ two-person, all-woman staff reflects experiences of growing up poor in rural school districts (our Executive Director), and a bilingual former school psychologist (our Director of School Support). Our Board of Directors includes members with expansive personal and professional backgrounds, including a woman of color who is an assistant principal in an urban, low-income school district, a former Teach for America teacher at the Rosebud Reservation, non-profit executives in the education and human services sectors, and a medical college faculty member studying early childhood literacy programs as a means of recovering lost neurodevelopmental potential in at-risk populations (e.g., cognitive heart defects, cerebral palsy).

DIBS has embraced intentionality in identifying and onboarding future Board, staff, and interns; we are currently working with a local university to offer paid internships to first-generation students with interests in education, public administration, and/or social justice. We deliberately wish to work with first-generation college students to provide experiences and opportunities that have been traditionally difficult for first-generation students to obtain.  

Externally, DIBS’ DEI commitments include:

(1): Continued cultural and representative diversity in curating our book sets. We intentionally select book collections that reflect diversity of race and ethnicity, socio-economic status, languages (English, Spanish, and Karen), unique abilities, social and emotional learning, native nations, authentic representation, and of course, diverse authors as well. Children will be more likely to read if they see characters they can relate to. 

(2) Parent and student surveys are an intentional element of our program evaluation.  DIBS surveys parents and students about their experience with DIBS, areas of strength, and needed improvements. These initial surveys are being conducted in spring 2022, with results in summer 2022. The survey results will inform program delivery, as it is the parents and students who interact with DIBS day-to-day.

(3) Intentionality in identifying and onboarding Nebraska elementary schools with free and reduced lunch eligibility over 70% and/or students of color over 60%.  Because over 60% of low-income homes do not have a single age-appropriate book in their home, DIBS focuses on leveraging the best of what classroom, school, and public libraries and book giveaways offer – access to books – but without the barriers of time, transport, finances, limited quantities, and potentially limited diversity, interests, and types of literature to increase access, raise literacy rates, and ultimately health outcomes.

DIBS provides educators with the resources, technology and support needed to serve their students with DIBS’ valuable literacy program. DIBS is valued and needed by teachers because although they know that nightly reading is important for learning how to read, they do not have the time or the materials to make it happen. Focusing on Kindergarten through third grade elementary students that attend schools with a 70% or higher free and reduced lunch rate, DIBS helps every student take a great book home, every school night. DIBS is especially powerful because of our web-based software that helps teachers distribute those books in a fun, student-led way. 

The materials are provided by DIBS through a combination of in-person and virtual means.  The physical books are provided through a partnership with Scholastic, Inc and at times other local bookstores and smaller publishers. Our partnership with Scholastic allows for all of the books to be shipped to schools by teacher name and grade, with the QR codes already attached, so that the unboxing and setup process is simple. The bins are also shipped from Scholastic directly to schools. The student folders are shipped to the DIBS office and are prepared by a large circle of corporate volunteers and then disseminated either in-person or via shipping. 

Our web-based technology is accessible to teachers via any device with internet connectivity and a camera. Additionally, we provide on-going support for teachers, schools and students via email or in person if possible. Locally, we visit classrooms about once per month to check in with teachers and students, but for our remote sites, we accomplish this via email.

DIBS for Kids is a 501(c)(3) that has historically been funded through private foundations, corporate grants and individual donors. DIBS has long-term partnerships in all three areas, which allows DIBS to be financially stable and continue to grow. Further, this approach helped us refine and prove our model. Now that this first phase is nearly complete, we anticipate that our business model will adjust to allow us to pursue two new sources of funding: 1) Earned Revenue: We believe DIBS is poised to be licensed by school districts; and 2) National Funding: If the results of our current external evaluation show DIBS as “evidence-based”, which we anticipate as DIBS is built upon evidence-based research, we believe this will help unlock government and philanthropic support beyond Omaha foundations.

The Sherwood Foundation made the first significant investment in DIBS in 2013, at a modest $13,000 for one school.  Today, DIBS is privileged to remain a partner with the Sherwood Foundation while also growing our base of supporters in multiple public and private foundations and individual philanthropists. DIBS also licenses its software to well-resourced schools and districts, and those fees are reinvested in our program. In 2020, we were honored with the National Book Foundation’s Innovations in Reading Prize and were shortlisted for the Reimagine Education awards in 2021.

In addition, our programming model is sustainable.  Our program is structured so all-in, the cost is approximately $5,000 per classroom across five years. The largest expense in that five-year cycle is the first year to obtain the full set of books and book bins, as well as provide more active on-site support by DIBS staff for teachers and administrators. Thereafter, the cost is minimal and is concentrated in replenishing books, third-party program evaluation costs, and software maintenance and updates. As DIBS scales up and out, costs continue to decrease, but DIBS’ reach is wide, even with its current $500,000 annual budget. DIBS is able to accomplish this due to long-standing partnerships with Scholastic Publishing, booksellers, and leveraging university and corporate partners for developing and maintaining our technology and software systems.