We offer our members a way to take action and become directly involved in improving literacy in Arizona through our annual Literacy Grant Challenge. Between 2020-2025, when we became an all-volunteer, Board-operated organization, the Literary Society has exponentially grown our grantmaking, awarding $379,975 in grants to local non-profit literacy programs from net proceeds of memberships and donations. In Spring 2025, the Literary Society granted over $135,000 in grants to seven non-profit literacy programs. 

Giving to the Literacy Grant Challenge invests in Arizona's children and youth's academic and life success and emotional and intellectual development. Children who struggle with reading proficiency by third grade dramatically limit their education options, employment, and income potential, continuing the cycle of illiteracy.   Arizona's children are alarmingly behind, with only 39% of third graders reading at grade level and a state goal of 72%. Three out of every four fourth graders in Arizona cannot read proficiently. Only Nevada, Alaska, and Washington, D.C. have lower National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading score percentages. There is an urgent need for improvement.