Family Literacy Grants

The Dollar General Literacy Foundation Family Literacy Grants program supports nonprofit organizations that provide literacy services to the whole family. The Dollar General Literacy Foundation was established in 1993 by Cal Turner and Cal Turner Jr. to honor Dollar General co-founder J.L. Turner, who was a farmer's son with only a third-grade education. The Foundation describes its broader mission as helping individuals of all ages pursue educational goals and achieve their dreams by investing in literacy programs. Its literacy work includes helping students learn to read, helping learners prepare for the high school equivalency test, and helping individuals learn English. The Foundation states that it has supported millions of students and seeks to create opportunities for personal, professional, and economic growth through literacy and education. Family Literacy Grants specifically focus on organizations that support the whole family through literacy programming. To qualify under the program description provided, an applicant must provide all three identified components: Adult Education Instruction, Children's Education, and Parent and Child Together Time, identified by the Foundation as PACT. The requirement that organizations provide all three components distinguishes this opportunity from literacy programs focused exclusively on adults or exclusively on children. The program therefore supports an integrated family literacy approach in which adult education, children's education, and opportunities for parents and children to learn or participate together are all present. The Foundation's broader grant program provides funding for literacy and education initiatives serving individuals of all ages. It identifies nonprofit organizations, schools, and libraries as organizations it funds, subject to geographic requirements. For the Family Literacy Grants opportunity specifically, the source encourages nonprofit organizations that support the whole family in literacy to apply when they provide all three required family literacy components. The Foundation's overall funding focus includes increasing access to literacy programs, enhancing the quality of instruction, and inspiring and advancing innovation. The supplied material does not specify an award floor, award ceiling, total amount available through the Family Literacy Grants program, number of awards, required matching contribution, or detailed allowable and prohibited expenditure rules. Geographic eligibility is tied to Dollar General's retail footprint. The Foundation states that it funds nonprofit organizations, schools, and libraries within a 15-mile radius of Dollar General stores in the states in which Dollar General operates. Accordingly, the supplied information does not establish unrestricted nationwide eligibility; applicants must satisfy the stated proximity requirement. The source does not provide an enumerated list of eligible states or individual eligible communities. The Family Literacy Grants text additionally identifies nonprofit organizations as the organizations encouraged to apply, but it does not provide further details concerning tax-exempt classifications, fiscal sponsorship, faith-based organizations, organizational size, operating history, or other organizational qualification requirements. The supplied source does not describe the application portal, application questions, required narratives, budgets, financial documents, attachments, letters of intent, concept papers, or other pre-application requirements. It also does not state evaluation criteria, scoring procedures, review stages, notification dates, award dates, or a grant performance period. No individual program contact, email address, or telephone number is provided in the supplied material. Consequently, organizations considering the opportunity would need to consult the Foundation's future Family Literacy Grant application materials when they become available for submission instructions and requirements not contained in the current information. The source states that the next cycle for Family Literacy grant applications will open in January 2027. As of August 28, 2026, this places the opportunity in an early-engagement or forecasted period rather than an active application period. An exact January opening day and a final application deadline have not been supplied, so those dates cannot be stated precisely from the available information. The Foundation also provides an explicit PDF link identifying the 2026 Family Literacy grant recipients, demonstrating that awards were made for the preceding cycle. The sequence of a 2026 recipient cohort followed by a stated January 2027 next cycle supports treating the program as recurring for tracking purposes, with January 2027 as the next announced application cycle.

Ensure the family literacy program provides all three required components: Adult Education Instruction, Children's Education, and Parent and Child Together Time (PACT), and confirm compliance with the Foundation's stated 15-mile Dollar General store proximity requirement.