[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 57 (Monday, March 31, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2089-S2090]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO DUNCAN McDOUGALL

  Mr. WELCH. Madam President, I rise today to recognize Duncan 
McDougall, who stepped down as the executive director of the Children's 
Literacy Foundation after 25 years leading the nonprofit organization 
that he founded.
  Duncan started CLiF in his garage in Waterbury Center, VT, in 1998. 
His mission was to inspire a love of reading and writing among 
underserved, at-risk, rural children in Vermont and New Hampshire.

[[Page S2090]]

  A graduate of Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, Duncan combined 
his business experience as a management consultant with his vision to 
help under-resourced children to make CLiF self-sustaining within its 
first year of operations. CLiF is proud to be an entirely community-
supported organization, through the private donations of more than 600 
donors each year and receives no State or Federal funds.
  Before starting CLiF, Duncan spent 6 months visiting local 
communities, talking to people about his idea, and getting their 
feedback. One of the first board members was a woman who had served as 
a superintendent in a very small rural school district in northern New 
Hampshire. Her insights into how CLiF could broaden their impact and 
what the kids really needed were key. Initially, CLiF considered 
accepting donations of used children's books to distribute. The former 
superintendent rejected that idea because the children they were 
dealing with come from underserved families and always got hand-me-
downs. New books would be exciting for these children. She was right.
  From the beginning, the board members worked as a genuine team with a 
hands-on approach. In addition to board meetings, they sorted books, 
and helped deliver them to rural public libraries; they remained on 
site, giving presentations and reading from the donated books, as well 
as engaging the librarians to become part of the process. Through 
encouragement and guidance from CLiF, public libraries worked with 
their local schools, something that was new to many of those 
communities; everyone benefited. When CLiF showed up at a library or 
community center, the whole town knew about it.
  Duncan, after dealing with librarians in these small communities, 
realized how isolated they were. So he came up with the idea of CLiF 
hosting a rural librarian's conference that CLiF underwrote; the only 
cost to the librarians was transportation. Suddenly, these librarians 
had a community--a real community--to share ideas and support. And that 
is what CLiF is now: a community-building organization that uses books 
for kids as a common denominator.
  In the early days Duncan would load up his car with donated new books 
and drive to sites all over Vermont and New Hampshire with free books 
for children. Since those first days, CLiF has served over 375,000 
children in 430 communities and has distributed more than $10 million 
in new books. Today, CLiF's community partners offer more than 1,000 
literacy events per year in public elementary schools, libraries, 
preschools, afterschool programs, community centers, low-income housing 
sites, and correctional facilities, among others. CLiF is a living 
example of Duncan's belief that change should happen from the ground 
up. I congratulate Duncan McDougall on a job well done.

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