About Us

We began in 2009 as QuickStart Tennis of Central Virginia with a simple idea: give children in rural, underserved communities joyful experiences that promote a lifetime sport and healthy eating and build confidence, determination, dedication and sportsmanship. What started as two tennis‑based physical activity and nutrition education initiatives, Jump Start QuickStart and Go Bananas for QuickStart! evolved into a statewide early‑literacy movement. In 2014 we issued our "WHY do tennis players like to read?" Go Bananas ! card.

 

During COVID, we became one of Virginia’s highest‑volume book‑gifting organizations, supporting 30 school systems and more than 10,000 preschoolers and kindergartners through Racquets for Reading!!! and "discovered" Dolly Parton's Imagination Library (DPIL) -- 23 random programs with 13,700 kids enrolled in November 2020. We started new DPIL programs in our 28-county service area, got the state to fund half the cost of books and postage and then turned our focus statewide. We headed west then east. Today more than 92,000 kids receive books from 99 DPIL programs. DPIL will soon cover the entire state and have 400,000 kids who will be eligible to receive a high-quality, age-appropriate book each month. We built a tennis pathway in central Virginia. Now we're building a statewide reading pathway.

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Then in 2024, relocation to Williamsburg and our statewide focus on early literacy necessitated a name change to QuickStart Children of Virginia but we're still QCV for short.

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Read our latest Annual Report and 990 EZ.

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Meet our Board of Volunteers. 

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