New York · Nonprofit
PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED
PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED (New York) receives grants from 116 organizations whose IRS filings report $12,840,169 to it, the largest being THE COLLIS FOUNDATION ($3,250,000). 54 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $6.6M
- Funders on record
- 116
- Grants received
- $13M
- Net assets
- $3.3M
What Pencils of Promise Incorporated does
Mission
We believe every child deserves access to quality education. We create schools, programs, and global communities around the common goal of education for all. We accomplish these activities by dedicating significant amounts of time, labor, and effort to raising money in the u.s. Through youth and professional engagement programs and special events. Through the youth and professional engagement programs and special events. The funds raised allow us to increase our domestic and international reach and impact. At the conclusion of 2025, we have broken ground on over 600 schools around the world. Our schools are open to students in each country and the stages of planning and construction are underway in several new communities across ghana, guatemala, and laos.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
The first of our core programs is school construction. We partner with local communities and governments to strengthen education infrastructure where it is most needed. In the short term, our goal is to replace inadequate facilities with safe, reliable school buildings. Over the long term, we aim to improve student attendance, progression, and test scores. The primary beneficiaries of this program are students learning in poor-quality structures and teachers working in those same conditions. By the end of 2025, we had broken ground on 621 schools across our partner regions.
$2,121,506 spent$1,132 earned by the program66% of program spendingOur second core program is teacher support. We invest in teacher development through in-service and workshop training sessions. Twice each month, our staff visit government teachers in partner communities to provide guidance in lesson planning, methodology training, and building stronger connections with students. Teachers also attend workshops for group training and peer network building. Our approach emphasizes interactive teaching methods that increase student engagement, because engaged students perform at higher levels. In the short term, our teacher support programs focus on helping teachers create and use effective lesson plans, encouraging interactive methodologies to strengthen rapport with students, supporting peer networks through workshops, and providing classrooms with teaching and learning materials. Over the long term, our goal is to raise primary student literacy scores across all of our regions. The main beneficiaries of our teacher support program are the teachers and students in our schools and communities. By the end of 2025, we had supported over 4,000 teachers and delivered over 24,000 teacher coaching sessions across across laos, guatemala, and ghana.
$654,533 spent20% of program spendingOur third core program is the wash program, which focuses on water, sanitation, and hygiene. Wash is an internationally recognized initiative adopted by unicef in 2005 to address hygiene needs in the developing world. We began implementing wash practices in laos in 2010 and have since expanded to guatemala and ghana. Through this program, we build sanitation facilities for students and teacherssuch as handwashing stations and bathroomsalongside new classroom construction. Our staff also visit classrooms twice per month during the school year to teach lessons on water, sanitation, and hygiene. The primary goals of the wash program are to ensure access to safe toilets, potable water, and reliable handwashing stations in schools lacking this infrastructure, while also increasing proper hygienic and sanitary behavior among primary students. By the end of 2025, we had supported over 1,200 schools and 70,000 students with wash programming.
$419,319 spent13% of program spending
The 3 programs described on its FY2025 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $3,195,358.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2024 to 2025, from $1.2M to $3.4M (+177%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2021 5% · 2022 5%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
100% of PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (97% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 7 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Chief executive
Leslie Engle
Chief executive officer / secretary
Board chair
Adam Braun
Chair
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
The chief executive listed changed between the FY2020 and FY2021, and between the FY2024 and FY2025 filings.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base narrowed from 39 funders to 23 funders, grant income rose $1.8M → $1.8M.
20 of 116 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 45% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 116 funders by total. Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 25% of grant income, and it takes 5 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 5 funders to its left
47% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 30% · 2018 37% · 2019 34% · 2020 34% · 2021 23% · 2022 27% · 2023 29% — broadly stable.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
14% of PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 47% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED draws 94% of its grant income from funders outside New York, across 26 states in all.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $5.8M arriving through sponsors registered in 14 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED runs a healthier operating margin than three-quarters of the 798 international nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 798 international nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2025
Organizations like PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In New York
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
82% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
84%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 28 states
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED?
- PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED (New York) receives grants from 116 organizations whose IRS filings report $12,840,169 to it, the largest being THE COLLIS FOUNDATION ($3,250,000). 54 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED have?
- IRS filings report 116 organizations giving $12,840,169 in grants to PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED, 54 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED?
- THE COLLIS FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $3,250,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like PENCILS OF PROMISE INCORPORATED find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in New York. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 116 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing