Our Crowdfunding Groups
It is with great pleasure that we write to express our heartfelt thanks to our community for your support of our first-ever crowdfund campaign. We exceed our campaign goal, raising a total of $14,583!
Your commitment to fostering a love of literature and art in young people is commendable. Thanks to the generosity of 37 donors and others who shared our campaign, we can continue to provide high-quality exhibits featuring global children's literature and art, enriching the cultural experiences of countless children and the public at large. The success of our campaign is a testament to the shared belief in the transformative power of literature and art in the lives of young people.
Once again, thank you for your invaluable support. We are excited about the upcoming exhibits and the joy they will bring to children, families, and educators in our community. Your kindness and dedication to our cause are deeply appreciated.
We keep all the thank you letters we receive from our K-12 visitors. They often share their favorite part of their Worlds of Words Center field trip in these letters. We love these notes! It’s fun to read their thoughts around the exhibits they experience. They almost always mention books, and sometimes we get the best portraits of our staff. The gratitude expressed in these letters has a huge impact on our team.
It’s our turn to share our gratitude with you. We currently have 22 donors who gave $2,696 to help us towards our goal of $10,000. We also have our matching donor ready to match your donation up to $10,000. Even with the matching donor, we still need your contribution to reach our goal.
Although it’s just October, we are already planning our exhibits through Fall 2025. Keep an eye out for those announcements on at wowlit.org and on our social media feeds.
Please consider a gift to help us reach our goal, and please share this page with your friends who value story and sharing story with young people.
And in case it’s not abundantly clear, we appreciate each and every one of you whether you are able to give or just able to share our campaign. We appreciate all our visitors regardless of age and the conversations and insights you bring. Thank you!
Give Wonder and Imagination
We have a match!
We have a generous donor who will match dollar-for-dollar up to a bonus $10,000. This is an incredible opportunity that we cannot afford to miss.
Our anonymous donor has agreed not only to match every dollar given from now to the end of this crowdfunding campaign, but also all the dollars already given! This means that we can potentially have $20,000 to fund exhibits through Spring 2025!
We have already raised $2,206, so we just have $7974 to go. Help us hit our $10,000 goal to reach $20,000, and consider joining us at our Arizona Is a Story exhibit reception on November 3 where we will celebrate all the people who have contributed.
Thank you for your support!
Give Wonder and Imagination!
The Worlds of Words Center exhibits allow people of all ages to embark on journeys that open windows on the world. Sometimes that world is right here in Arizona.
This semester we launched an all new, completely original exhibit focused on our own story. Arizona Is a Story opened in August and focuses on our histories as told in maps, original illustrations with Arizona connections, and books – of course!
We’ve already welcomed visitors from several schools and likely learned as much from them as they did from us. One of the more popular activities pushes back on stereotypes people in other states have of us. Do we have cowboys here? Yes! But we aren’t all cowboys. Are we the Australia of the U.S. No! We are the Arizona of the U.S. We do have venomous critters, and we also have monarchs migrating through our state.
This exhibit includes 17 original illustrations from published picturebooks, eight text sets of books, five maps, and a cactus boot. We also use chart paper, markers, crayons, color pencils, construction paper, and post-it notes. Additionally, we print and dry mount the interpretive components (the parts that explain the exhibit and exhibit pieces), print and laminate the activity instructions, and use a boatload of putty to keep everything in place. Even an exhibit that uses our own existing archives comes at a price!
Please take a moment to think about how you can help. You can use one of the existing giving levels or type in your own amount. You can also help this effort by sharing a link to this page from your social media feeds or by sending it to your email contact list.
We’d love for you to come visit Arizona Is a Story. Take a self-guided tour, book a tour for a group, or attend our November 3 reception.
Thank you for supporting the Worlds of Words Center and our efforts to bring interesting and relevant exhibits to our community!
Give Wonder and Imagination
Our signed, first-edition books are priceless, but we need books we can handle too! Our exhibits include books to extend understanding with the average price of $18 for a hardcover picturebook.
Each exhibit includes hands-on activity centers that include materials to paint or draw with, glue, scissors, paper, maps and artifacts with an average cost of $29.
So much learning results in a productive mess! Our cleaning supplies add up to $52 and include microfiber cloths, multi-surface cleaner and hand sanitizer.
Our exhibits include 4 to 5 hands-on activity centers costing an average of $29 in materials. Give $116 to provide a full round of activities and help create multiple connections between visitors and the exhibit.
We never charge a school or other group to visit. Tally up all the activity materials and text sets, then add costs for borrowing an exhibit or launching one we curate from our archives, and the total averages to $179 per field trip.
Text sets are a collection of children's books on a theme that we curate for each exhibit, and each exhibit includes a minimum of two. Make a gift of $360 for the text sets.
We work with international partners on the exhibits and are often the first stop in the United States, which means we often have costs around customs and shipping. For $750 you can cover the shipping costs of an international exhibit.
The field trips are the fun part of our exhibits, and the art is the foundation. Help us expand our archives collection with high-quality illustrations from talented artists with a gift of $2,000.
