Programs and results
What we aim to solve
A recent example of how we overcame a challenge to ultimately achieve success involves the annual MNPS Career Exploration Fair, which PENCIL helps facilitate for 5,000 high school freshmen. We recruit many of the 150 businesses and organizations present, who represent more than a dozen professional fields. However, with Nashville’s traffic troubles, PENCIL has become the go-to organization when MNPS is strapped for transportation to get students to the Career Fair and other industry related field trips or job shadows. School buses are in short supply and cost prohibitive. We leveraged partners like Gray Line Tennessee and Anchor Transportation to help solve the problem, recruiting 42 donated coach buses and drivers who ultimately transported 5,000 freshmen to and from the Career Fair. Our consulting demonstrates how PENCIL recruits, trains and retains partners that align with local school needs, how to build powerful partnerships provides opportunities to observe partnerships.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
PENCIL Partners
PENCIL Partners and PENCIL Academy Partners are businesses and organizations committed to student success through organized, coordinated activities that match the unique attributes of each Partner with the specific needs of each school or academy. Career Academies strengthen student skills in workforce focus areas like arts, engineering, hospitality, information technology, and health. PENCIL matches industry partners to the appropriate school, where partners provide students with relevant career opportunities and valuable real-world connections. Partners provide mentoring, tutoring, curriculum advisement, experiential learning and employment to the 15,829 high-school students in these Career and Technical Education programs.
DG PENCIL Box
The DG PENCIL Box is a critical resource to teachers in MNPS. For almost 14 years we have provided free classroom essentials to teachers who come to our storefront to “shop” for these supplies. Realizing that we were only serving +/-20% of all MNPS teachers through this shopping method, we added a part-time delivery driver this academic year to deliver core classroom supplies (notebooks, pencils, folders, copy paper, etc.) to schools where we had low teacher engagement and a low-income student population. With the implementation of this delivery plan we have significantly grown the number of teachers who have benefitted from these free supplies and limited the amount of personal funds they have had to spend to assure their students have the tools they need daily to engage academically. We estimate serving more than 30% of MNPS teachers this academic year with the implementation of this delivery model.
Family Resource Centers
Family Resource Centers (FRCs) act as a hub for community resources, helping vulnerable students and their families navigate outside agencies that can assist with social, emotional, and physical needs. FRCs stock emergency food/clothing and develop services tailored to their school population, such as GED and English-language classes.
The PENCIL team worked closely with MNPS leaders as we smoothly transitioned operation of our four Family Resource Centers (FRCs) to Family and Children Services in June of 2022. Prior to completing the transfer, PENCIL's FRCs focused on helping vulnerable students and their families access basic resources with the help of PENCIL Partners. PENCIL FRCs distributed $355,787 in goods during the 2021-22 school year, serving 4,847 students and 2,777 families. PENCIL continues to link community resources and critical partnership support to those FRC sites, even though we’re not directly managing them with our staff.
Accelerating Scholars
Accelerating Scholars is a research-backed, high-dosage tutoring model where volunteers provide support in three, 30-minute tutoring sessions every week for at least 10 weeks during the semester. PENCIL recruits and trains community members to volunteer as tutors and work one-to-one with students who need extra help in reading or math. Accelerating Scholars focuses on students in most need of support as determined by school personnel based on individual assessments in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade literacy and 8th and 9th grade math.
Where we work
Awards
Affiliations & memberships
Center for Nonprofit Management Excellence Network 1993
Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce 1985
Volunteer Administrator's Network 2003
Metro Nashville Public Schools/Chamber of Commerce Alignment Process 2004
United Way Member Agency 2001
Alignment Nashville 2006
National Network Member of the Kids in Need Foundation 2015
External reviews

Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Evaluation documents
Download evaluation reportsNumber of clients placed in internships
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Adolescents
Related Program
PENCIL Partners
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
In FY22, PENCIL Partners provided 2,128 10th grade industry tours and 2.090 11th grade job shadows to Metro Nashville Public Schools students as career exploration experiences.
Total number of volunteer hours contributed to the organization
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Adults
Related Program
PENCIL Partners
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
In 2021-22, PENCIL recruited, matched, and maintained 820 PENCIL Partnerships and recorded 23,118 volunteer service hours, resulting in a total community investment of $4.69 million.
Number of products distributed
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Children and youth, Adults
Related Program
DG PENCIL Box
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
We measure success of our DG PENCIL Box through total value of product distributions annually, number of schools and teachers served annually, and percentage of teachers served who shop in-person.
Hours of literacy instruction delivered
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Children and youth
Related Program
Accelerating Scholars
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Accelerating Scholars supported 2,095 MNPS students with one-on-one, 30-minute sessions, three times per week. PENCIL recruited and trained 537 volunteers who provided tutoring in reading or math.
Total dollar value of produce distributed
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Children and youth, Adults, Families
Related Program
Family Resource Centers
Type of Metric
Input - describing resources we use
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
PENCIL's four FRCs distributed $355,787 in goods during the 2021-22 school year, serving 4,847 students and 2,777 families.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Our work is guided by the needs of MNPS, is student centric, and is achieved through partnerships and tangible engagements. As the PENCIL team, we will be collaborative and transparent, act with integrity, and demonstrate kindness and gratitude.
PENCIL Partners and Academy PENCIL Partnerships aim to accomplish the following goals:
1) Improve graduation rates by making school interesting and engaging to students.
2) Build relationships between students and positive adult role models through mentorship and regular class interactions with industry professionals.
3) Support positive outcomes after high school graduation, including further education and entry into high-wage, high-demand careers.
To reach these goals, PENCIL recruits partners – companies, small businesses, universities – and matches them with individual schools whose needs align with the partner’s expertise. There are 39 career pathways available for students to choose from, and each high school offers a unique menu of options. PENCIL’s role is to make a thoughtful match, onboard and train the partner, co-create an action plan for the year, support the school’s teachers and principals in managing communication, and work to sustain a positive relationship between partner and school over time. PENCIL Partnership Managers meet regularly with partners and school leaders to assess progress on the action plan compared to goals. We are skilled problem-solvers. Much of our recruitment is word-of-mouth, and we’re proud to say that our founding partners, including HCA and Ingram, remain PENCIL Partners today.
Ultimately, our work aims to fulfill the Academies’ goal of exposing and connecting students to high-demand career fields after college. Our long-term vision is that students are trained and ready to attain jobs that pay family-sustaining wages and help break the cycle of multi-generational poverty.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Data is key to effective decision making and PENCIL will track activities and student opportunities for purpose of program analysis and achievement of outcomes.
PENCIL uses several tools to assess the functioning and impact of program delivery:
a) PENCILMeIn (PMI) is an online platform that enables Partners, volunteers, school staff, and PENCIL staff to log and track volunteer hours and activities. This helps PENCIL communicate the value of each Partner's community investment per school annually. In FY19, Partners logged 54,509 volunteer hours, so we're targeting a 5% increase in FY20 in documented service hours to demonstrate growth in our Partners’ engagement with students.
b) The PENCIL team tracks and evaluates success based on the percentage of students who experience industry field trips and job shadows. In FY19 70% of 10th graders experienced field trips and 66% of 11th graders experienced job shadows. Our goal for FY20 and beyond is to exceed those targets so that eventually it’s common for 100% of students to have those impactful learning experiences. Likewise we evaluate both the number of Partners who participate in the annual Career Fair with freshmen and the number of career fields they represent, with the goal of having an increasingly broad array of options for students to explore as they make their Academies pathway decision.
c) Through annual surveys we assess Partners' understanding of the impact of their engagement on students as well as their comfort with the work.
d) We also closely follow test scores tracked by MNPS to assure that students continue to make progress on standard academic benchmarks like graduation rate, average ACT scores, and percentage of students taking and passing industry certification exams.
e) We measure success of our LP PENCIL Box through total value of product distributions annually; number of schools and teachers served annually; percentage of teachers served who shop in-person at the LP PENCIL Box; and number of volunteers who serve in the Box. We also know that access to school supplies is integral to student success.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
PENCIL addresses the inequitable access to resources (community volunteers, funding for special projects) among Nashville schools through a collective impact model that harnesses the time, treasure, and talent of our rapidly expanding business community in support of individual schools through our PENCIL Partnerships, which allows us to meet and exceed our goals.
PENCIL is unique in that we are the only organization in Nashville specifically dedicated to link resources from the business community to our public schools. We are seen as a national leader in the field of business engagement in high schools with our work to support the Academies of Nashville and are regularly hired as a consultant to communities implementing the Academies model, which relies heavily on business partners providing experiential learning opportunities to students.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Accomplishments:
-In 2018-19, PENCIL recruited, matched, and maintained at least 711 PENCIL Partnerships with individual public schools, resulting in community investment of 54,509 volunteer hours and donated resources to MNPS valued at $5 million, including $1.44M in high-quality classroom supplies distributed to public school teachers through the LP PENCIL Box, PENCIL’s free teacher supply store, through which we solicit and distribute donations of school supplies to teachers and students.
-PENCIL has connected 346 unique partnerships who support the Academies of Nashville, a college and career prep program that gives students access to early college credit, certifications, and advanced classes.
- Through PENCIL Academy Partners at least 2,914 students experienced job shadows and at least 3,203 students experienced internships, or 70% of all Academy juniors.
- Partners provided mentoring, tutoring, curriculum advisement, experiential learning and employment to 15,538 high-school students in Career and Technical Education programs.
-The 16,000 students participating in the 39 Academies of Nashville grades 9-12 were served by 344 Partnerships with Nashville businesses for a total of $1.7 community investment. An increased 3,950 10th graders experienced industry field trips, and 3,557 11th graders experienced job shadowing.
-With the addition of a part-time delivery van driver last year, we have already surpassed our product distribution from the previous academic year by $60,000; by the end of March 2020, we will have distributed supplies worth $1.6 million to teachers in all 168 MNPS schools.
A list of goals includes:
Launch Together4Teachers (We will come together as a community to deliver up to 6,500 teacher supply bags ensuring that all teachers feel celebrated and appreciated as they build out their classrooms for the year and know about our LP PENCIL Box)
Expand our PENCIL warehouse to increase capacity to receive and distribute resources, as well as to open a volunteer center.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
PENCIL Foundation
Board of directorsas of 02/23/2023
Mr. Wesley Paine
Pinnacle FInancial Partners
Term: 2022 - 2023
Jeff Gregg
SOLLEC
Sue Spickard
PENCIL Founder
John Doerge
Deloitte
Thomas Burns
Belmont University
Brandyn Payne
HCTec
Kasar Abdulla
Valor Academy
Craig Bledsoe
Lipscomb University
Sheila Calloway
Davidson Co Juvenile Court
Lila Hall
Yazoo Brewing Company
Cooper Jones
Crichton Group
Christie Laird
University of Tennessee College of Law
Hasina Mohyuddin
Vanderbilt University, Peabody College
Juan Williams
Tennessee Dept. of Human Resources
Elizabeth Papel
Consultant
Raul Miranda
Ameriprise Financial
Allen DeCuyper
Parks Realty
Whitney Kalb
FCA Venture Partners
John McCoy
Pinnacle Financial Partners
Norman Merrifield
808Education
Wesley Payne
Pinnacle Financial Partners
Zulfat Suara
Meharry Medical College
Kaitlyn Jones
R.C. Mathews Contractor
Robyn Williams
Nissan North America
Todd Svec
Ingram Content Group
Rebecca Fair
Dollar General
Herman Hicks
First Tennessee Bank
Colleen Hoy
Education Networks of America
Mark Morrison
LP Building Solutions
Kendrick Robinson
Bridgestone Americas
Frank Schriner
Regions Bank
Brittany Adams
Dollar General
Adrienne Battle
Metro Nashville Public Schools
Chris Henson
Metro Nashville Public Schools
Chuck Abbott
Gray Line Tennessee
Stephanie Bonner
Bank of America
Stewart Brown
Vanderbilt Graduate School of Management
Erin Collar
VUMC, Junior League of Nashville
Rachel Anne Elrod
MNPS School Board Member
Ashley Johnson
EY
Nicole Keefe
Burr & Forman, LLP
Franklin Popek
Vanderbilt Graduate School of Management
Ken Crapse
Fifth Third Bank
Josh DePriest
Rogers Group
Shani Dowell
Possip
Haley Eakin
ESa
Todd Figler
AllianceBernstein
Robert Fisher
Results for America
Joan Fleming
Citizens Bank
Jacky Gomez
Asurion
LeShane Greenhill
Eminence Holdings, LLC
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