Our mission
We partner with organizations to support learners from low-income and under-represented communities to achieve their educational and career goals, which improves their economic mobility and well-being.
“I’m excited about the impact we’ll create with our partners to transform young people’s lives.”
— Carrie Portis, President
PIPs for School Scholars of The RIVER FUND New York
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs students volunteer with “Clean the Stream”
Our history
In 2017, a group of social innovators, behavior scientists and tech developers developed and launched the PIPs Rewards app. Since then, over 40,000 people have completed over two million actions, and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships, gift cards and other rewards. Initial use of the app was at the University of Colorado Boulder and University of Colorado Colorado Springs, where thousands of students developed conservation habits filling their water bottles or taking the bus, and received incentives of scholarships to offset their tuition. When Covid shut down these on-campus programs, PIPs pivoted to partner with nonprofit organizations in New York City who implemented the platform to support low income students turn engagement in actions that deliver personal and community benefit into grants for school.
We formed as a new non-profit social venture in 2024 to leverage the PIPs Rewards platform, with a focus on deeper partnership with organizations where PIPs Rewards can provide incentives for learners to come, stay, finish and launch. Our intent is to help learners achieve their goals, and organizations to improve their outcomes.
Our values
At PIPs Rewards, we strive to act in ways that are:
Accessible
We want our platform to be easy-to-use and understandable for our partner organizations and learners who use the app. We strive to improve access to our platform, including addressing language and disability barriers. We believe that our platform improves accessibility by being always available and, through the incentives, encouraging.
Collaborative
We work with others to learn and grow. Our belief is we’re all figuring this out, and we all have wisdom to contribute. We learn by doing and being nimble, and we will create intentional opportunities for reflection and knowledge sharing in our partner learning communities.
Delightful
We want to provide fun and joy to the learners who use our app and to our partners. Life is busy and it can at times feel overwhelming. We want your experience with us to be positive, and not feel like added work.
Equitable
We believe all learners deserve to navigate institutions with confidence and agency. By incentivizing those who are less engaged to take advantage of services and resources, we can help them feel more connected to their community. We seek to partner with organizations that have less capacity, and bring in resources to support their work. We want our work to provide data to our partners on how they can reduce programmatic and systemic barriers, and to support our partners in influencing their peers in improving equity.
Impactful
We will hold ourselves to meaningful metrics that relate to improved outcomes for the learners who use our app and our partner organizations. We will share our learnings and work with others so there can be impact beyond our direct activities.
Our design focus
We’re committed to designing an organization that brings opportunity to learners with ambition.
Desirable
We provide a service that people in our partner organizations and people using our app enjoy, value and find easy.
Systemic
We help our partner organizations identify key activities and touch points, which helps them become more “customer-centric” and the data generated from what actions people are taking, or not, helps identify where an organization’s programs can be improved.
Scalable
When we help organizations improve outcomes, these learnings can be replicated many times over, as there are many similar organizations working on similar challenges relating to engaging students and clients. Our technology provides capacity to grow and serve a large number of people, while still customizing implementation and content.
Sustainable
We want our partner organizations to have improved outcomes and people to improve their life trajectories. When this happens, this value sustains our work and helps us grow and have more impact. Our funds come directly from organizations who can pay service fees and from donors who want to support this impact on peoples’ lives.
Our team
Ahmed Naguib, Ed.D.
Design and Research
Bio
Ahmed is a dynamic leader and researcher in education and systems transformation to improve equity and student success. He is passionate about sustainable systems and empowering communities.
Carmen Perkins
Partnerships
Bio
Carmen develops and manages relationships with our partner organizations. She is an advocate for equity, a change maker, and an entrepreneur at heart. Her background is in working with education systems and is a founder of Project Edquity, a collective to challenge and dismantle systemic barriers and biases within the workplace.
Carrie Portis
President
Bio
Carrie is a recognized social innovator. Her career has focused on helping people successfully develop their careers and for educational systems to improve their access and results, often using simple technology to make this impact happen. She enjoys building community, leading diverse, talented teams, and learning more about user experience design
Holden Hume
Creative
Bio
Holden is a creative director for design, copy, and content related to brand and marketing. His career spans the lifestyle markets of youth culture, action sports, and video games, most recently transitioning to technology. He has built and led creative teams for companies and agencies, including four startups and category defining global brands.
Karen Gee
Technology
Bio
Karen started off as a public high school teacher, then had to find another career path when she was laid off due to a California tax law. While pursuing her MBA, she interned at IBM and found herself working in the IT world for over 30 years. Being on the PIPs team blends her experiences in teaching, technical writing and software development.
Michaela Hayes
Development
Bio
Michaela is a strategic fundraising consultant who is passionate about raising funds and support for good causes. Complementing her expertise in all aspects of fund development, she has experience in market research, marketing, communications, strategic planning, organizational development and capacity building, and evaluation.
We are fortunate to have a wealth of advisors, including young people, higher-education and workforce development leaders, social innovators and experts in behavioral science, marketing and technology.
PIPs Rewards Founding Board
Lilly Fu (Treasurer, with Izzy), Carrie Portis (President) and Karen Gee (Secretary)