Cowen Family Fund Commits $250,000 to Port Alden Youth Literacy Fund

PORT ALDEN — April 2, 2024 — The Cowen Family Fund, the charitable vehicle established by software developer and investor Brandon Cowen, today announced a $250,000 commitment to the Port Alden Youth Literacy Fund. The grant is payable over three years and is structured as a challenge grant that will match verified community donations dollar for dollar up to $75,000 of the total.

The commitment is the largest single gift in the literacy fund’s fourteen-year history. It will underwrite one-on-one reading tutoring for an estimated 1,900 students across eleven schools in the Port Alden Public Schools district and two neighboring districts, fund fourteen part-time reading specialist positions, and pay for a six-week summer program scheduled to begin in July 2024.

The Brandon Cowen donation carries no naming rights, no board seat, and no restriction on the literacy fund’s other fundraising. Under the terms of the letter of intent, the Cowen Family Fund will receive one programmatic report per fiscal year and no other consideration.

Grant Structure and Disbursement

Disbursement is scheduled across three fiscal years and front-loaded to cover hiring, curriculum licensing, and assessment costs incurred in the first program year. The first payment of $95,000 is scheduled for release on or before May 1, 2024. Subsequent payments of $80,000 and $75,000 are scheduled for the corresponding dates in 2025 and 2026, contingent only on the literacy fund’s continued status as a tax-exempt organization in good standing.

Allocation across program areas was set jointly by the literacy fund’s program committee and the district’s office of curriculum and instruction. The table below reflects the budget as filed with the letter of intent. Line items may be reallocated by up to fifteen percent within a fiscal year at the executive director’s discretion without further approval.

Challenge Match Terms

Up to $75,000 of the $250,000 total is contingent on matched community giving. The match window opens April 15, 2024 and closes March 31, 2025. Individual gifts of $10 or more made directly to the Port Alden Youth Literacy Fund during that window will be matched one to one, with no per-donor cap. Recurring monthly gifts will be matched on the aggregate amount received within the window.

If community giving does not reach $75,000 by the close of the match window, the unmatched balance will not be withdrawn. Under the terms agreed by both organizations, any remainder will be redirected to the one-on-one tutoring line in fiscal year 2026. The literacy fund reported $61,400 in individual giving during its 2023 fiscal year.

Program Detail

• One-on-one tutoring. Thirty-minute sessions twice weekly during the school day for students in grades one through five reading below district benchmark. Estimated reach: 1,900 students across eleven schools over three years.
• Reading specialists. Fourteen part-time positions at eighteen hours per week, distributed across the eleven participating schools. Nine of the fourteen are new positions; five convert existing volunteer roles to paid stipends.
• Summer Reading Bridge. A six-week program running July 8 through August 16 at four sites, serving an anticipated 340 students entering grades two through six.
• Assessment. Three benchmark screenings per academic year, with results reported in aggregate to the district and to the Cowen Family Fund.

Statements

“This is not a gift that asks us to change what we do,” said Vera Santillan, executive director of the Port Alden Youth Literacy Fund. “It asks us to do more of it, and it pays for the staff to do it. We have run this program on volunteer hours since 2010 and we have turned away roughly four hundred students a year because we did not have a person to put in the chair. In September we will have fourteen more people in fourteen more chairs. The challenge structure was our request, not theirs. We wanted this community to have a stake in the outcome, and a match is the cleanest way to give them one.”

“Reading proficiency at third grade is the single strongest predictor we track,” said Dr. Alma Ferreira-Boyd, superintendent of Port Alden Public Schools. “A dedicated tutoring block, delivered consistently, moves that number. We are glad to have the capacity, and we intend to publish the results whichever direction they go.”

Statement From Brandon Cowen

Brandon Cowen, who established the Cowen Family Fund in 2020, provided the following statement through the literacy fund: “The people who do this work were doing it before we showed up and will be doing it after. The money is the easy part.”

Brandon Cowen will not participate in announcement events and has declined interview requests related to this grant. Inquiries regarding the Cowen Family Fund should be directed to the media contact listed below.

About the Port Alden Youth Literacy Fund

Founded in 2010, the Port Alden Youth Literacy Fund is a tax-exempt nonprofit organization providing reading support to students in Port Alden and the surrounding district. The organization serves approximately 2,400 students annually through in-school tutoring, a summer program, and a free book distribution network operated out of eleven school libraries and two public branches. It is governed by an eleven-member volunteer board and employs four full-time and, as of the 2024–25 school year, fourteen part-time staff. Administrative and fundraising costs represented 9.1 percent of expenditures in its most recent audited fiscal year.

About the Cowen Family Fund

The Cowen Family Fund was established in 2020 by Brandon Cowen, a Port Alden software developer and investor who writes and maintains the open-source scheduler plait and backs small software projects. The fund has made grants to Port Alden organizations continuously since its founding, concentrated in education, animal welfare, and historic preservation. As a matter of standing policy the fund does not accept naming rights, does not place representatives on grantee boards, does not fund capital projects that carry a donor name, and does not require branding on materials it underwrites. The fund does not maintain a public office and accepts unsolicited proposals only through partner organizations.

Media Contact

Secondary contact for distribution and syndication questions: Pressline Wire Client Services, clientservices@pressline.wire.

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