One of our amazing high school interns, Ashley Wilens, writes about one of her recent experiences working as part of the PoP team this summer.

Last week, a team from Pencils of Promise attended the Think Social #Promise conference. Click to read Alex’s thoughts and observations on the conference and how brands can create good through social media.

(From Adam, currently in Nicaragua working on our next partnership)
PoP was founded in October of 2008, with the simple ambition of finding a way to build just a single school. That was it. I was about to turn 25 years old, so I put $25 into a new PoP bank account and we were off. The goal was to throw two small fundraisers with my closest friends in NYC, and turn that multitude of small donations into a school for a community of tremendous need. So one year later, where …

Muhammad Yunus, one of the most repsected leaders in anti-poverty efforts today, will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama at an award ceremony on Wednesday, August 12.
Dr. Yunus,  a Bangladeshi economist by training, is the recipiant of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Grameen Bank, for their efforts to “create economic and social development from below”. Grameen bank
It was exciting, although not entirely surprising, for us to hear that Muhammad Yunus, one of the most respected leaders in anti-poverty efforts today, will …

Recessions are no fun for nonprofits. Corporate givings tumble, people donate less, and foundations cut down grants. Some of the hardest-hit organisations in this economy have also been the most deserving of support.
But nonprofits, according to Michael Seltzer from PhilanTopic, are “survivors“. Nonprofits have traditionally faced much more capital constraints and their for-profit counterparts, and therefore can better adopt themselves to budget cuts. There is also the silverlining. A difficult environment brings forth creative approaches, such as new ways to fundraise, new incentive to improve capital efficiency, new opportunities to recruit senior leaders, …

Imagine being married before your 18th birthday.
That’s the fate half of Indian women face, but one 16-year old girl is part of a bigger group that’s trying to change their domestic destiny.
Krishna Chaudhry, a typical village girl in rural India, is one of the 1,000 girls who attend the Pardada Pardadi Educational Society, where girls spend half of their days studying, and the other half working hard to earn an income for the family, so they are allowed to stay in school. Although she lives in Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s poorest states, …

The White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation has an ambitious goal: to transform how we approach, and ultimately solve, our nation’s most pressing domestic problems in education, health care, poverty, joblessness, the environment, and more.  Their secret weapon – the nonprofit sector.
According to a White House Press Release, President Obama, in his FY2010 budget, will ask Congress for $50 million for the Social Innovation Fund to identify the most promising, results-oriented non-profit programs and expand their reach throughout the country.
“The idea is simple: to find the most effective programs …

For decades, American nonprofits have primarily focused their fundraising efforts on the domestic turf. After all, as an economic superpower with a culture that encourages giving, the US probably had the best pool of donors to tap into.
However, the number of people capable of making a substantial gift is growing in many part s of the world, said Deborah Miller, an assistant vice president at Wake Forest University.
According to the World Wealth Report 2009, by 2013 the number of millionaires in Asia and the total value of their wealth will …

The Six Degrees concept is nothing new. The popular trivia game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, challenges players to link any actor to Kevin Bacon through no more than six connections. It’s a small world indeed – and made even smaller by the rise of social networks.
Everyone is interlinked in this “human web” today – that’s the idea SixDegrees.org was founded upon. SixDegrees, a nonprofit founded by Kevin Bacon, is “social networking with a social conscience”. The website allows any Internet users to support a registered charity by donating or creating …

CSR. Just a few years ago, only representatives from major firms threw this phrase around as a PR jargon. Today it has become part of many people’s daily vocabulary. Now days, it is almost expected for a major firm to have a CRS branch, committed to a few core causes and holding regular events and initiatives. As it turns out, combining good business smarts with socially conscious  practices can be a very beneficial move for the company in the long run.
Employees want to work for socially responsible firms. A study that surveyed …