From Classroom to Community: How PAVE is Shaping Future Philanthropists

Amit Banergee is the CEO of Philanthropy Kids where he has served in the role since the organization was founded in 2011. He oversees the systems and people that further Philanthropy Kids’ strategic goals to build a generation of givers through its education programs. He works with education, nonprofit, and civic leaders to establish the necessary partnerships that sustain and grow Philanthropy Kids’ impact in the region and further the mission of celebrating and inspiring philanthropy in youth.

Amit was most recently at the Commit Partnership where he served on the Analytics team and helped construct data-driven arguments to advance equitable public education in Texas. Previously, he founded EleosX, a strategy consulting firm that has worked with individuals, nonprofits, and corporations to creatively broaden their community impact. Amit has also held a variety of roles throughout his career at Lockheed Martin, AT&T, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Tango Charities, and more.

Amit’s community involvement includes volunteering with several large- and small-scale organizations. He serves on the Board of Directors of Hunger Busters, November Project, Watering Hole Collective, and the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas Emerging Leaders Society. He his service extends to nonprofits, including Communities Foundation of Texas, Union Coffee, Healthy Futures of Texas, Tango Charities, and Social Venture Partners of Dallas.

Amit attended Southern Methodist University where he studied Electrical Engineering. When possible, Amit enjoys spending time with friends and family exploring new restaurants, going to the movies, and walking through un-walkable parts of Dallas.

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
This is Hugh Ballou. I’m welcoming you to this episode of The Nonprofit Exchange. And this one is special. This is a dear friend from years ago. We’ve worked together a little bit. I’ve just met him in person. I’ve known him for several years. But he’s got a really important message, and it’s a timeless message. And we’re inspiring a new generation of philanthropists. So, Amit Banerjee, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Please tell people a little bit about who you are, and your background and why philanthropy is so important, especially for our today’s youth.

Amit Banergee:
Yeah, thank you for having me, Hugh. I’m really excited to be here on the Nonprofit Exchange. Um, my background, um, is, uh, currently I serve as the CEO and president of philanthropy kids, which is a Dallas based organization that works with young people to, uh, teach them about philanthropy, about volunteerism, about social entrepreneurship, um, and really celebrate and inspire those ideas and values of philanthropy in youth. Um, You know, before that I was, you’d mentioned, we’d worked together. I was, you know, an intern at the Center Vision Leadership Foundation. I was, you know, I worked at a education policy thing called the commit. partnership here in Dallas. And then, you know, when I went to school, my background was in electrical engineering. So it seems like I have all these other, you know, experiences that don’t really seem super connected to what I’m doing now. But through all of those experiences, one of like the key through lines was kind of working with people working with communities to just make them better engaged with uh, charitable activity, philanthropic behavior, and social entrepreneurship. Um, so yeah, that’s kind of like the background. That’s like a little bit of how I got here. Um, when I was in elementary school, um, I was a part of a program called PAVE, which we’ll actually get into a little bit more, I guess, in a little bit. Um, but that course taught me as a young person, uh, what philanthropy is, why it’s important, how I, as a young person, could make a difference in my community.

Hugh Ballou:
So let’s do it a couple of definitions of terms. Thank you for all of that. Define philanthropy and define young person. Who is your audience?

Amit Banergee:
Yeah, so philanthropy to us and to our organization is the love of mankind. So anything that you do to demonstrate that love of humanity, love of mankind, makes you a philanthropist. That includes holding doors open for people, picking up trash, as well as maybe the more traditional definition or usage, which is around giving money away. You usually hear the word philanthropy and philanthropist when you’re talking about millionaires and billionaires writing really large checks to nonprofit organizations and charities. We agree that that is philanthropy for sure, but we wanna extend that to, we wanna extend that to, anyone that wants to give back to their community. So that’s what we mean by philanthropy. And by young person, we’re talking about anyone really under the age of 30. We predominantly work, our organization works with middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college age students, but there’s no hard cutoff to, you know, being a young person who cares about others. And we wanna make sure that Whether you’re 10, whether you’re 20, whether you’re 30, you have the right resources to connect the things that you care about with the things that you’re good at and make something really wonderful happen.

Hugh Ballou:
Love it. So you said it, but say it again. You started PAVE when you were how old?

Amit Banergee:
So I was a student of PAVE when I was in fourth grade. And so PAVE has been around as a program since 1994. I had created Philanthropy Kids in 2011. when I was about 13 or 14 years old. And a few years later, Philanthropy Kids acquired and merged with PAVE. So we’d been running PAVE as a Philanthropy Kids division and a Philanthropy Kids program for about 10 or 11 years now.

Hugh Ballou:
Wow. So let’s get into PAVE. So it’s under the umbrella of Philanthropy Kids. Yeah. So let’s talk about PAVE. It stands for something. What’s the purpose and why do we do it? Why should we care?

Amit Banergee:
Yeah. So, um, philanthropy kids, we offer two main programs. One program is our PAVE program and one is our impact factory program. So PAVE stands for philanthropy and volunteerism in education. And the way that it works is we go into schools and partner with them to essentially take over existing classrooms. And instead of the students learning that subject, so for example, if we enter a math classroom, those kids are not gonna be learning math the same way that they were expecting to. Instead, they’re learning about philanthropy, about leadership, about communication, and about social entrepreneurship. In a context of math a little bit, but we try to kind of create kind of an abrupt change in the instruction environment. And so for about eight weeks, these students go through this program, learning about, you know, really trying to understand who they are, what their community needs, and how they can have a place in solving that need. And the impact factory I’ll just briefly mention is for people that graduate from that PAVE program, if they’re really motivated to put what they learned into action and create a project or some kind of nonprofit organization or for-profit company, the impact factory is an incubator or an accelerator that actually provides them all of these operational tools to make it happen.

Hugh Ballou:
Wow. That’s a lot of really good stuff. So you work in public schools or private schools or what kind of schools?

Amit Banergee:
Yeah, I mean, we are happy to work with any school that wants to engage the PAVE curriculum with their students. We focus on public schools, but when we are reached out to by charter schools or by private schools, we don’t turn them away because of their status of a campus. We just recognize that the different kind of implementation methods

Hugh Ballou:
And so what grade levels do you currently plug in with in schools?

Amit Banergee:
Yeah, so I mentioned before, PAVE predominantly works with the middle schoolers and high schooler age population. So that sixth grade to 12th grade range is when we’re in the schools working with the students.

Hugh Ballou:
Big difference in a sixth grader and an eighth grader.

Amit Banergee:
Yeah, well, we try to, you know, provide the comparison of, you know, math is math, and you can teach math to a sixth grader, and you can teach math to a 12th grader. And it’s based on a lot of the same fundamentals. It’s just it gets more and more sophisticated, the more that you the older you are, the more the more advanced math you’re in. So we just have a sixth grade level philanthropy course, and then we have a 12th grade level philanthropy course. And in between we have instructions or instructional material that just makes it a little bit more difficult and a little bit more interesting as they move through it.

Hugh Ballou:
I’ve known you for a number of years, and I didn’t know any of this. It’s been developing, I’m sure, since we first met. So you’ve used the word impact in what we’re talking. So talk about the impact of this program. You’ve been doing it for a while. What’s the impact on people’s lives, the young people, the communities they’re serving as social entrepreneurs, and their parents and families?

Amit Banergee:
I we are teaching kids about philanthropy. And we’re teaching them about leadership. And we’re teaching them about, you know, public communication. And these are things that, you know, any any parent and any teacher and any school administrator is going to say, yes, it’s important for our students to know this, because it makes them better students, it makes them better people afterward. And You know, but that’s hard to quantify. That’s hard to kind of say, like, oh, it worked better with these students than with these students. And so we created a metric called demonstrated philanthropic behavior that, you know, it’s like this multi-step qualitative indicator that we can like turn into a quantitative measurement and say, okay, like this campus had a 15% increase in demonstrated philanthropic behavior because their students are more engaged in clubs at school, their students are showing like a better behaved in class, there are more campus leaders, you’re seeing more students raise their hands in class than they were before. And so again, we’re taking this really broad community civic sense of philanthropy, rather than the more narrow, give dollars away definition. And so we have demonstrated philanthropic behavior is like one of the things that we’re seeing improve at every single campus we’re with. The campus climate definitively gets better. But the second thing that I really want to highlight about how the PAVE program kind of like changes lives is, you know, for years they were like okay this is great, but how does it affect test scores? How does it affect graduation rates? And we didn’t know for a long time we were, you know, hey, it’s a, we know that students self esteem is improved, but we don’t know how it relates to academic performance until we started measuring it. And when a student is passing their annual standardized test. they see about an 8 to 12% point bump. So they’re basically going from one letter grade to the next letter grade when they’re already passing the standardized test. If they’re failing the standardized test, they see a 30 to 50% point bump in test scores. And what’s crazy about that is, you know, we’re not teaching math, science, social studies, or reading, but when kids learn about philanthropy, learn about their role in a greater society, find this like purpose beyond themselves, they’re doing better in math, science, social studies, and reading. And to a point where they’re going from being a C student to an A student, or going from never moving on and advancing to from seventh grade to eighth grade, to going to eighth grade, and going to ninth grade, and going to 10th grade, and eventually graduating high school. And so There are other data points that I’m happy to share. But I mean, I think that’s the one that really makes me excited because it allows for a lot of people to buy into the program because they’re seeing, oh, not only are these students better people, and, you know, our campus is a more wholesome environment because of this program, but we’re being recognized for our scholarly output. Our students are doing better. Our students are achieving more in ways that tie to the health of that school and that school district.

Hugh Ballou:
Those are astounding results. How many years you’ve been doing this?

Amit Banergee:
We’ve been doing it. So like I said, PAVE has been under Philanthropy Kids as a program of Philanthropy Kids for about 10 years. But it’s been around for 30.

Hugh Ballou:
Wow. Wow. So we do have a minute for another stat if you want to give it and talk about how that influences you and is rewarding to you as you see this happen. So what’s another measurement of success and then talk about your journey and how it gratifies you and fulfills you.

Amit Banergee:
Yeah, I mean like on the topic of like academic performance and campus climate. I think one of the ones that’s kind of that that’s a bit of an overlap to both of those attendance rates. When students go to this program and they graduate from the PAVE program, they see a 45% increase in school attendance. So, and basically, the truancy rates drop. Obviously, a kid’s gonna miss school when they’re sick, or their parents can’t take him to school that day. But for the time that they’re voluntarily choosing not to go to school, for whatever reason, after PAVE, they’re realizing, hey, there’s a reason for me to go to school. There’s a, I can be I can be part of my campus, I can make my classroom better by showing up and being active. And to how it affects me, I mean like that’s the kind of stuff that when you, when our programs are able to help kids realize what they want to be as a career, because we bring in a lot of guest speakers, we bring in a lot of like industry professionals to showcase, hey these are examples of what you can be in your future, and maybe you have a role model now, maybe you don’t, but here’s someone that can be a role model to you. And kind of being that like conduit of, you know, providing that exposure to a lot of students is just a really good feeling. And knowing that we have these you know, longer term effects that make them better students that make them care more about a certain subject than they did before. I mean, we’re setting them up for success in a way that maybe they weren’t being set up for before. And I’m not saying this to knock any school or school district. I think every school is here in the state of Texas is trying their best. And they just need a little bit more help. And if we can provide that support and provide, kind of take the burden off developing the soft skills for students from the teachers so they can focus on math and reading, we’re happy to do it. We train our team to be experts at this and really administer the curriculum well. So it makes me feel good is all I gotta say about it.

Hugh Ballou:
Well, you could say that statement about philanthropy in general. If we pivot from what’s in it for me to what’s in it for other people, it’s a very gratifying place to be, isn’t it?

Amit Banergee:
Yeah. I think if you’re thinking about transactions, you’re always thinking about, oh, I have to get something. And many times, I have to win. I have to get more than what I put in. What’s the ROI? Um, but that creates a level of stress that creates some kind of like, you know, anxiety about, okay, I have to play the game the right way to make sure I receive the value of it all. But when you’re the nice thing about philanthropy is you’re kind of absolving yourself of that grief by, um, just really thinking about the other person thinking about how can I help them? And, you know, you’ll walk away, uh, at the worst case, just feeling really good about it, feeling really fulfilled. And at the best case, you never know, like things, you know, a lot of cool, fortuitous things can come out of that good deed.

Hugh Ballou:
And that is an age group that’s so important, because we’re helping mold their future. And you’re giving them opportunities they don’t get anywhere else. So I hope this is inspiring to people who are listening to or watching this interview. So I’m going to share your website. It’s philanthropykids.org. Now, When I started this journey, just before I met you, I had to learn how to spell philanthropy. So I always spell it for people, P-H-I-L-A-N-T-H-R-O-P-Y, kids, philanthropykids.org. Now, Amit, when they go there, what will people find?

Amit Banergee:
Yes, I mean, just like on the first page of it, it’s going to be kind of an overview of some of our programs. It’s going to talk about PAVE. It’s going to talk about Impact Factory. Um, at the top, we have that menu where, um, you can kind of learn more about our team or board. You can learn about our programs under the what we do tab. Um, and that’s really where you get the more. Look under the hood of like our curriculum or program overview or implementation strategy for each of our programs. Um, and there’s just a, you know, we’re kind of at the end of the year where a lot of things slow down, but throughout the rest of the year, um, that Get Involved tab is a great place to find out what events are coming up or what, you know, volunteer opportunities are available both within Philanthropy Kids or with one of our community partners. And then as always, like, you know, our work is reliant on the philanthropy and the generosity of the community. So if people, you know, are hungry to click on the donate button, we’re always happy to take a contribution to continuing our mission. But our page is just a good hub where people can learn more about what we’re doing. And if they want to get in touch with us and bring PAVE to their campus, reach out to us through the website. That’s a great way to get the conversation started.

Hugh Ballou:
And is there a Communicate button? There’s an email at the bottom. Info of Philanthropy Kids. Yes, I see that now.

Amit Banergee:
Yeah, and I think under maybe an About page or something, we might have a, I think under the Who We Are, we might have a Contact Us.

Hugh Ballou:
Contact Us, there it is. It’s a dropdown. Yes, and staff all about who you are. So I’m inspired by this, and I thought I knew all about it. Well, never assume you know all about anything is a lesson I learn every week from our guests. You’re going to be probably 425 in our interviews. And so I’ve done this a few times. I’ve rehearsed for today. So Amit, what do you want to leave people with? Is it a thought or a challenge for an adult or a youth or both?

Amit Banergee:
Yeah, I think I’ll say two things. One, and this is kind of the mantra that we lead with in all of our programs throughout our curriculum. You don’t have to be rich or old to be a philanthropist. You just have to care. However you want to interpret that will make you a better philanthropist tomorrow and for the rest of your life. The second thing I want to say is that a lot of young people have enthusiasm and the audacity to be innovative. And the thing that they need almost more than anything else is just a mentor to tell them you can do it. And I’ll be there alongside you to kind of help you find the best path. But I think a lot of the kind of problems that we’re facing as a society need to be addressed with innovative solutions. And I think a lot of that innovation is going to come from a new generation of people that just have a different perspective on it, partly because of their age, partly because of the fact that they were in high school when the pandemic happened several years ago. Just the things that they’ve experienced are different than the things I’ve experienced and the things you’ve experienced too. If we can find our role as mentors to these young people, we can kind of hitch on and ride the coattails of innovation to a better and more promising tomorrow.

Hugh Ballou:
Outstanding. Outstanding. Amit Banerjee, thank you for giving us insights into this important work and letting us know. And thank you for being my guest today on the Nonprofit Exchange.

Amit Banergee:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.