MagLiteracy, a national program, increases literacy by supplying new and recycled magazines to readers who have limited access to reading materials. We partner with community and humanitarian organizations such as food pantries, shelters, and job training and youth mentoring programs to find and meet literacy needs. Consumers, publishers and retail newsstands donate new and recycled good quality magazines or donate funds so we are able to provide them at no cost.
Our Vision and Mission
Our vision is to leverage the special power of magazines to increase literacy to improve the lives of children and families who have limited access to reading materials.
Our mission is to increase literacy for children and families who have limited access to reading materials by engaging the magazine supply chain — from storyteller to publisher to consumer, from paper company to printer, from warehouse to newsstand, from mailroom to boardroom — to share the joy and power of reading via food pantries, shelters, youth mentoring, job training, teachers and other community service programs.
Share the literacy love ❤️
What We Do
MagLiteracy, a national organization, marshals resources that increase literacy by supplying new and recycled magazines to community organizations serving readers who have limited access to reading materials.
Consumers, publishers and retail newsstands provide new and recycled, good quality magazines, or donate funds, so we are able to offer the magazines at no cost to qualified organizations.
We partner with organizations such as food banks and pantries; shelters for people experiencing homelessness, domestic abuse or human trafficking; schools; job training, youth mentoring and foster children programs; veteran service groups; and rehabilitation programs for inmates to get the magazines into the hands of readers. Programs that distribute our magazines to readers can contact us directly with specific requests. We do not distribute directly to individuals.
Our volunteers sort and assemble reading materials to stock literacy newsstands, and into literacy boxes, which are then available locally for pickup or delivery, or they may be shipped as our available funds allow.
With locations in Ohio, Wisconsin and Mississippi, our operations — run almost entirely by volunteers — are able to reach any part of the United States and support global needs via humanitarian partnerships as resources allow.
We operate magazine literacy banks, similar to food banks, to handle large volumes of incoming and outgoing pallets and boxes of magazines, and we created a literacy market where community organizations that serve readers can come to our location to choose magazines to meet their needs.
Who We Serve
In the United States, nearly 10 million children, or 13.7% of the population under 18 years of age, live in poverty, according to 2023 U.S. Census Bureau statistics. Studies show that children from low-socioeconomic status families are less likely to have experiences and resources to develop fundamental literacy skills.
Children in poverty get to kindergarten significantly behind in terms of academic achievement, a gap that persists through school. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called The Nation’s Report Card, is mandated by Congress to assess the educational achievement of U.S. students, not accounting for poverty levels. Its 2024 report showed that 40% of fourth-grade students and 33% of eighth graders performed below basic reading proficiency levels.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports that as of 2019, one in five U.S. adults — about 43 million people — possess low literacy skills, defined as the ability to understand, evaluate, use and engage with written texts to participate in society, achieve one’s goals and develop one’s knowledge and potential.
The National Literacy Institute reports that low levels of literacy cost the U.S. up to $2.2 trillion per year. Enhancing accessible literacy makes it easier for all people to find employment, which benefits not only individuals but also the local economy and community as a whole.
Literacy ends poverty of the mind, heart and pocket. Reading is where it all begins.
Why Magazines?
With more than 7,000 titles in the United States alone, across over 60 categories, print magazines are the most powerful literacy engines on Earth.
Think about this — with titles for every reading age, enthusiasm, professional aspiration and language, magazines can match exact literacy goals — like teaching science and engineering; mentoring a teen who loves cars, sports or fashion; culinary job training; or comforting a family experiencing homelessness.
Studies show that holding print reading materials in your hands increases learning. Magazines are familiar and not intimidating. Articles are visual and engaging with writing that is easy to read.
Magazines educate and inspire, spur curiosity to encourage learning and promote literacy to establish a lifelong reading habit.
The magazines we read, collect and cherish define our own passions. This allows MagLiteracy to uniquely foster kindred connections based on common interests between the readers we serve and the readers who share their literacy love by supporting our mission. People who love magazines and love caring for others give us our special literacy superpower by investing their time, talent and treasure as volunteers, magazine recyclers and financial donors.
Our History
The seed for MagLiteracy.org was planted in 1994, while organizing community hunger relief efforts. Realizing that homes without food, a basic necessity, had very few reading materials – a major factor contributing to a cycle of illiteracy and poverty for children and families – we knew that magazines and comics were special and untapped for literacy. In fact, two-thirds of U.S. children in poverty live in homes with zero books. So, MagLiteracy.org set out to share the reading materials that we all love to feed children and families hungry to read.
The Magazine Publishers Family Literacy Project – a 501(c)(3) charity – was launched in time to celebrate the United Nation’s International Literacy Day in 2004 with a mission to deliver the joy of reading magazines and comics to at-risk children and families, while strengthening their literacy skills and self-esteem. Since then, we’ve supplied new and recycled magazines and comics to hundreds of thousands of at-risk children and families across the U.S. and around the globe. Our earliest successes were made possible by financial support from Austin Kiplinger and his family, generous annual grants from Foster Printing, and sponsorship from the Majeski Foundation, Pretium Partners, Prince Sports, and Stacie Jones, a Harlem Subway Sandwich Shop owner.
With favorite new magazines and comics sponsored by local businesses and consumers; surplus and gently read, recycled magazines and comics rescued from throughout the supply chain; and generous support from publishers, printers, paper companies, logistics and shipping companies, newsstand suppliers and consumers – MagLiteracy puts wonderful reading materials into the hands, homes and hearts of children and families who want to learn and love to read.
Reading is where it all begins. We’ve accomplished much, but there are so many more readers to reach.