Five Questions With: Jonny Skye

Jonny Skye is executive director of Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education. / COURTESY KAITLIN DELLA GROTTA
Jonny Skye is executive director of Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education. / COURTESY KAITLIN DELLA GROTTA

For the past 20 years, Jonny Skye has worked with children and families in a variety of capacities. She has experience as a teacher, administrator, program director, researcher and educational equity policy maker, the bulk of which was completed in Providence. Now the executive director of Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education, Skye has come to like working in the nonprofit sector, calling it a “fascinating experience.” Recently the organization published a report calculating its impact after its first 15 years in business.

PBN: What was the catalyst of RISE’s 15 Year Report?
SKYE:
At the time I came on, I found folks associated with RISE all had slightly different ideas of what worked, what mattered and how thigs happened. There were boxes and boxes of rich case files, but no way to sum up 15 years or reflect on it with evidence. My goal was to build a tool to evaluate our effectiveness, something that was very important to our past and future investors. Today, an organization can’t just have a feel-good mission and tell anecdotes about impact – you need evidence to demonstrate your model works and demonstrate outcomes in order to build the confidence of individual donors and foundations.

PBN: What has been the organization’s largest achievement in that time period?
SKYE:
The cumulative story was the most compelling. RISE has worked with over 600 young people, partnered with over 50 schools, collaborated with over 500 volunteer mentors, paid over $3.4 million in tuition to enable students to choose independent schools and ultimately achieved a high school graduation rate of 89 percent – well exceeding the state average. Since the time of the report, the original founders have returned to the board, we have recruited eight new members, hired a development director and increased our income by $150,000. The report represented public accountability, bred confidence and increased commitment to our very important mission.

PBN: What do you think is the organization’s biggest asset as a mentoring program?
SKYE:
Our mentoring program is unique in that most of our matches last well beyond the one-year commitment we require. Currently, 85 percent of our matches have lasted longer than a year and 35 percent have been going strong for five years or more. I think this is testament to the unique nature and commitment of the volunteer mentors who come to us and the support we provide. We recently secured a $150,000 grant from MANY, a national network of organizations supporting families in high-risk situations, to match 100 children with 100 mentors over the next two years.

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PBN: What has the organization learned over its first 15 years in business? Are there any major changes that will be implemented in the wake of this report?
SKYE:
I think the report was mostly validation and proof of our impact. It did drive deeper questions among the board and staff that are challenging us to improve our data collection, quality and reporting. We learned that the longer children were involved, the more likely they were to graduate high school. We also learned that the more supports outside of a tuition scholarship they received the better the outcome. Ultimately, we learned that maintaining a high level of accountability to our community improves investment. Most meaningfully, we learned how a small nonprofit can positively alter the trajectory of people’s lives.

PBN: What is next for RISE? Are there any future partnerships, new scholarships in the works?
SKYE:
Next we will continue to improve program quality and reach as well as investment. One goal is to grow our scholarship program and to that end we have set up a sister entity called Prep 2 RISE which is a scholarship organization that will allow corporate donors to give up to $100,000 a worthwhile tax credit. We are eager to spread the word about this opportunity which really benefits the donor base, and are excited to get business community rallying around this opportunity. We are always looking for new committed board members to help us drive our future, and of course anyone interested in mentoring should reach out to us!

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