Pencils of Promise

In 2008 a recent college graduate named Adam Braun founded Pencils of Promise — PoP, for short. The organization works alongside national governments and ministries of education to address barriers to high-quality education.

The charity now places a special emphasis on linking donors with one of the 514 public primary schools it has built that serve more than 100,000 students in Ghana, Guatemala, and Laos. By calling on several of its teams to contact donors, inform them about the programs and teachers that their contributions support, and remind them of the number of children they are helping, PoP persuades them to give more, says Tanya Ramos, its chief executive.

In recent years, the organization fostered an environment in which staffers at its New York headquarters and around the world work together for the good of poor children, she adds.

Traditionally, how has Pencils of Promise gone about raising money?

Ramos: We started as grassroots fundraisers. Adam Braun got things rolling by raising money on social media. We’ve always bragged about how we were funded by donations of less than $100. Because of that history, a great number of our donors are individuals.

Within the organization, we’ve incorporated a mantra that says everyone is a fundraiser, even though not everyone has the same responsibility for doing it. That focus on including everyone in the fundraising effort has helped us avoid being siloed.

And yet you’ve worked to become more collaborative in recent years?

Yes. Data and the ability to get to it easily have helped us do that. We wanted to invest in making sure that the data we maintain in the Salesforce platform is accurate and updated. We all share the same data—that’s basically how we work together.

We have four teams—External Affairs, Finance, Human Capital, and Impact—all taking part. A few years ago, we raised $10 million for the first time. We couldn’t have done that without collaboration across teams, or without the Salesforce technology.

Could you be as collaborative as you are now without new data tools?

I doubt it. Over all, technology is key.

Our customer relationship management (CRM) system gathers information on a donor’s history of giving and the impact they’re making. We can synthesize all that into a well-considered strategy. And part of that strategy involves using data to learn who should be getting more of our attention.

We also believe in transparency. We want donors to know where their money goes, how it is being used, and how it’s being effective. So we create reports and send them to donors.

We want to be able to show donors even more touch points—a child’s birth, the graduation of a particular student—so we can offer more occasions that might spur more gifts.

These personalized touch-points create deep connections and a real sense of family among our donors, so much so that we refer to our supporters as “PoP family.”  Our family of supporters is relentlessly committed to educating our PoP students around the globe.

We use our CRM. We leverage our website for donations. We mine our social media accounts. We’ve made a very conscious effort to access technology to improve how we work together. It’s been going on for a few years now and we can see the results. Our contacts with donors are high-touch and very frequent. There’s no way we could reach them as often as we do without the aid of technology.

How, exactly, have your teams worked together to raise more money?

We have our teams tell stories with data. We collect more and more of it all the time. It’s part of our ongoing search for meaningful ways to connect with our donor families. Once they’re connected, we take a team approach to working with them.

Sometimes, our donors travel to the countries where our work is making a difference. We might have them meet with Freeman Gobah, our country director in Ghana. While we don’t expect him to make the ask, he’ll serve as an ambassador of our work, showing people firsthand what we do. He’ll serve as a strong spokesman for us. Meanwhile, someone from one of our other teams will be on hand to try and close a deal with that donor, even as another might be sharing data with them that shows our effectiveness and the difference we make.

Tech has helped you raise money, but has it been worth the price?

Absolutely. It’s immensely helpful to have a tech company that can help you pull all your resources together and offer the training your staff needs to really make it work. And Salesforce is at just the right price point for nonprofits to use and tailor to their purposes.