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“We have a one hundred percent rate of graduation from high school.”
— Denise Hanson
Denise Hanson, founder of Root 2 Rise, shares how a Madison Spanish teacher turned struggling high school juniors and seniors into paid tutor mentors for elementary classrooms, and how she built a nonprofit around it.
Denise taught Spanish for 24 years at West High School before becoming a behavior coach. There she saw about fifty kids with no joy in their school day and wrote a $3,500 grant to put seven of them in elementary classrooms. Today the program has served 480 young people, with a $750 stipend, a rigorous contract, and a 100 percent graduation rate for those who complete the semester.
James asks the nonprofit questions small-business owners always wonder about: how she built a board, who the four and a half employees are, why funding is the real limit, and how a comedy club fundraiser brought in close to fifty thousand dollars. She also explains how she uses AI to find funders and why she still believes in slow, steady growth.
If you run a nonprofit, support one, or just love a good story about giving people a chance to lead, this one is for you.
In this episode
- 0:00:00 Teens as leaders in elementary classrooms
- 0:02:18 What Root 2 Rise is and how it began
- 0:08:42 How schools choose and invite students
- 0:14:33 Funding the $750 student stipend
- 0:20:10 How Root 2 Rise measures success
- 0:21:47 Root 2 Thrive and the path to teaching
- 0:26:03 Founding the program as a teacher
- 0:34:12 Becoming a nonprofit in 2020
- 0:35:26 Building a nonprofit board
- 0:40:48 Why growth stays slow and steady
- 0:43:08 Why juniors and seniors, not middle school
- 0:53:39 Nonprofit fundraising and using AI for funders
- 0:56:31 Comedy on State fundraiser results
- 1:00:48 The story behind the Root 2 Rise name
About Denise Hanson
Denise Hanson is Root 2 Rise.
