Team Dayā is a foundation that raises money to build schools in underdeveloped communities in other countries. In an interview with Beet.TV, Team Dayā’s founder and veteran ad tech executive Jay Sears gave a bit of history behind the company and explained how folks in the advertising and technology industries can help.
Team Dayā started in November 2018 and has since raised over $100,000 from the advertising and tech industry. They completed construction of their first school in Dhayapur, Nepal, in February which is currently providing services to 165 students.
They have two additional schools slated for 2020, one in Malawi in East Africa which will be constructed this spring and then break ground for a school in Guatemala in the fall.
“We’re thinking a lot about 2021 and beyond in terms of both raising money but also starting to build some infrastructure for Team Dayā,” Sears says.
This includes finding out what kinds of industry events they could be plugging into, looking for fundraising mechanisms that are repeatable, and exploring how to recruit people to go on some school-building trips.
All contributions to Team Dayā go directly to their non-profit partner buildOn, and are 100 percent tax deductible.
“We raise money in a number of different ways, and we continue to get more creative in terms of how to do that,” Sears says. Some of the largest contributors have been WideOrbit and The TradeDesk.
Team Dayā has a number of corporate sponsors including The Trade Desk and Wide Orbit, and the majority of support has come from executives across the advertising and technology industry. They have received over 300 individual donations so far.
Sears outlined three main ways to get involved with Team Dayā. First, those who would like to actively help can join a school building trip.
“It means that you get involved in the fundraising but you actually travel with Team Dayā to a place like Nepal or Malawi or Guatemala and you’re in the community side by side working with them on the initial groundbreaking of these schools, living with host families,” Sears says.
The second way is to make an individual or corporate donation, which people can do through their website. Lastly, people or companies can use a platform that they might have to help them tell the stories of building these schools.
