Local businesses, service organizations, and community leaders heard the program's goals and became acquainted with the way the Accelerated Reader would be used in the library to extend the reading program into the summer months. 

     The Tift County Foundation for Educational Excellence, Inc., donated three computers to the library to run AR 13 hours a week. The TCFEE has already provided some $60,000 to the county to support its AR program. 

     Mike Brumby, director of TCFEE, said, "We believe in AR because it gets results, it produces readers." In the last two years, the foundation has directly approved 11 individual grant requests totaling $20,000 to support the AR program throughout the school district. And to fund the program the way they'd like to, they hope to provide an additional $400,000 by the year 2000. 

     Mike Brumby came up with the goal as a rallying point for the community. They are currently defining the standards to quantify their achievement, including: 
 

• Increase national reading test scores by 25% 
• Increase library circulation by 50% 
• Earn one million AR points 
• Engender a palpable and pervasive community pride in being the 

Reading Capital of the World