In the ANDE ecosystem, organizations face a common challenge: valuable data is often scattered across spreadsheets and disconnected systems, falling short of informing key decisions.

Vera Solutions was founded by impact measurement practitioners and self-described data geeks who asked a simple question: What if our data actually worked for us?

For more than 15 years, Vera has partnered with mission-driven organizations (NGOs, foundations, impact investors, and organizational capacity providers) to design, build, and sustain data systems that turn information into usable intelligence. Beyond platforms and integrations, Vera positions itself as a long-term partner that combines technical depth with sector fluency, from field teams to headquarters.

Where It Started: Meeting Organizations in the Field

Vera grew out of a health education nonprofit in South Africa, where Co-founder and CEO Zak Kaufman led research, monitoring, and evaluation. Program staff were committed to using data well, but vital information that could have informed program changes was trapped in paper files and increasingly burdensome spreadsheets.

The team rebuilt the system, creating one of the first Salesforce-based monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems designed to track outputs and outcomes at scale, covering more than 2 million beneficiaries. The effect was immediate: for the first time, staff across the organization, from local offices to headquarters to the board, could see, at a glance, how programs were performing.

Early partners helped define what Vera would become. Organizations such as World Bicycle Relief and PSI needed to track field-level distribution and impact data in multiple countries. Pact and the Aga Khan Foundation brought Vera in to strengthen grant management and M&E across complex, multi-country portfolios. Illumexico needed better measurement for off-grid energy access in rural communities. The Skoll Foundation sought greater coherence across grantee reporting. TechnoServe required enterprise-grade program data management for economic development work across the globe.

The lesson across all of them was consistent: they didn’t just need a tool—they needed a partner who understood both the technology and the mission.

Building Amp Impact: A Platform Born From Common Sector Needs

As Vera built systems for funders and implementers alike, a pattern emerged. Despite differences with terminology—grants, projects, programs, portfolios—organizations shared a common need: a way to manage their work and results in one place, with data structured for learning and accountability.

That insight became Amp Impact, Vera’s Salesforce-native platform for portfolio, program, and grant management. Purpose-built for the social sector and now in its ninth year, Amp Impact supports more than 17,000 users across 150+ countries, managing over $12.5 billion in programs, projects, and grants annually.

Amp Impact clients span the breadth of the development and social impact sector:

• EIT Food, one of Europe’s largest food innovation networks, uses Amp Impact to manage a complex pan-European portfolio while keeping consistent impact metrics throughout diverse grantees and geographies.
• Itaú Social, one of Latin America’s largest social foundations, modernized its grant and impact management with Vera’s support. As one Social Programs Analyst noted: “Vera was a partner with great capacity for listening, analyzing demands, and proposing development solutions. They delivered fast service and clarity in communication.”

• Earthworm Foundation uses Amp Impact to link supply chain sustainability programs to measurable environmental and social outcomes. Information Coordinator Ayelet Ritchie reflected: “Investing in digital transformation was a big, but necessary decision for Earthworm. Fortunately for us, working with Vera has meant we’re in very good hands… co-creating solutions that will ultimately help us drive more impact.”
• Yayasan Hasanah, an Islamic social finance institution managing grant portfolios across Malaysia, cited Vera’s ability to tailor solutions to context. Senior Manager Azlin Hashima Mt Husin shared: “We are pleased with the solutions provided by Vera… Their clear communication and technical expertise, from initial planning to ongoing support, was exceptional.”

A Full-Service Model: Strategy, Systems, and Success

Vera’s work has evolved beyond platform implementation. Organizations need different kinds of support at different stages of their data journey, and Vera’s three-part model is designed to meet them where they are—regardless of which tools or technologies they use.

Advisory services help organizations clarify what to measure, how to structure data across a portfolio, and how to align systems with reporting and learning needs. Increasingly, this includes identifying where AI can address real operational or programmatic constraints—and building the governance and internal capacity to use AI responsibly.

Implementation services deliver technology and data solutions, including Salesforce and Amp Impact deployments, reporting and analytics, field team data collection systems, integrations, and supporting data infrastructure. Engagements are scoped around client needs, timelines, and budgets.

Enablement services focus on adoption—the work that happens after a system goes live. Training, change management, and ongoing support are built into engagements from the start, because even a well-designed system underperforms when users aren’t set up to succeed. For organizations that need long-term support, Vera’s managed services provide proactive monitoring, troubleshooting, and optimization of Salesforce and Amp Impact environments.

Together, this model aims to strengthen strategic and operational capacity for long-term evidence-based decision-making, accountability, and continuous improvement.

The AI Frontier: Responsible Innovation for Mission-Driven Work

Vera is now helping organizations navigate an emerging dimension of data strategy: artificial intelligence.

Guided by nine principles of responsible AI, Vera’s approach is designed to keep AI adoption ethical, equitable, and grounded in organizational reality—through readiness assessments, strategy development, and hands-on implementation.

One early example is Vera’s work with Justice Rapid Response (JRR), an international mechanism that deploys human rights experts to investigations and accountability processes worldwide. Vera built an AI-assisted solution to improve the speed and accuracy of JRR’s expert matching and deployment workflows—strengthening the organization’s ability to respond when it matters most.

When Anthropic launched Claude for Nonprofits, Vera was selected as one of four inaugural global implementation partners to support organizations with AI strategy, use case development, and deployment. The selection signals a shared premise: that advanced technology should be accessible to the organizations doing essential public-good work.

The Next Chapter: Shared Impact Infrastructure

Vera’s newest initiative reflects a forward-looking bet on the sector’s ability to learn together.

Designed to challenge the siloed status quo of impact reporting, CommonGround aims to create shared infrastructure, standards, and community for organizations advancing social and environmental outcomes—a space where funders and implementers can share, compare, and collaborate on impact data.

Vera’s growth has tracked closely with the sector’s evolving relationship with data. CommonGround represents the next step in that trajectory: a move from helping individual organizations use data more effectively to building the shared infrastructure that enables collective learning.

Alongside a dozen other funders and implementers, ANDE has joined Vera as a CommonGround Advisory Partner. If your organization would like to become an Advisory Partner and receive free early access to CommonGround when its beta version becomes available this year, sign up here.

Partner With Vera on Your Data Challenges

The problems Vera addresses are the same ones ANDE members confront at every level:

• Accelerators and capacity-building providers need to demonstrate their own impact—not only support others in doing so. That requires strong M&E systems, consistent data collection, and reporting that serves funders and boards without overwhelming staff.
• Impact investors and DFIs need portfolio-level data that is comparable across investments, audit-ready, and linked to mandate outcomes.
• Foundations need grant management systems that connect funding to results—enabling learning, accountability, and an evidence base that advances the field.
• Research and advisory organizations need data infrastructure that supports rigorous analysis, publication-ready outputs, and cross-portfolio learning.

Vera’s trajectory over 15+ years mirrors a broader shift across the development sector: the move from data collection as compliance to data as essential organizational infrastructure. What began with paper forms and spreadsheets in a South African health program has grown into systems that help foundations, investors, and implementers make better decisions across large global portfolios and, cautiously, extend those systems with AI.

For ANDE members working on similar challenges, Vera’s experience across 450+ organizations and 1,600+ projects represents practical knowledge about what works, what doesn’t, and what the sector still needs to build.

Get in touch with the Vera Solutions team here.