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The Background
Helping Children Find Their Voice
By first grade, children make a critical leap: from learning to read to reading to learn. Those who fall behind at this milestone are four times more likely to drop out of high school, and their confidence and future opportunities are at risk.
Ignite Reading exists to change that trajectory. Through its one-to-one virtual tutoring model, students spend just 15 minutes a day with a trained tutor—and leave not only reading better, but believing in themselves.
Matthew Ruxton, Manager of HubSpot CRM, sees that change every day: “We’ve seen kids come in silent—afraid to speak, afraid to try—and leave our program having full conversations,” he said. “Some draw pictures for their tutors, call them their best friends. Reading unlocks confidence, and you can see the change in their faces.”
The mission was working. But to reach more children, Ignite Reading needed more than tutors. It needed proof—trusted, timely data that districts could rely on, families could understand, and internal teams could act on without delay.
The Challenge
When Slow Data Delays Intervention
For Ignite Reading’s district partners, promises weren’t enough—they needed clear evidence of progress across demographics. For under-resourced schools serving multilingual learners, IEP students, or Title I populations, timely proof of literacy growth was often the deciding factor in securing funding.
*“We had the data,” Matthew explained, “but it wasn’t usable when we needed it. And that meant districts didn’t get the full story—especially the ones serving multilingual learners, IEP students, or Title I schools. Without it, we couldn’t give them the proof they needed to move forward.”
The gap wasn’t just external. Internally, Ignite’s marketing and content teams couldn’t access the data on their own. They had to rely on Matthew to clean spreadsheets, stitch together records, and manually prepare reports. What should have been fast and self-serve became slow and reactive—turning Matthew into a bottleneck.
The stakes were highest in summer. Districts had only a few weeks to assess needs, secure funding, and prepare for the school year. “Every day the data sat in spreadsheets was a day kids missed their chance at timely intervention,” Matthew said.
The Solution
From Gatekeeper to Enabler
Matthew realized the problem wasn’t that Ignite Reading lacked data—it was that the data was locked away. His goal was to shift from bottleneck to enabler, giving every team access to the insights they needed. That transformation began with HubSpot’s Data Hub and Data Studio.
Matthew led the effort to bring together datasets that had previously lived in silos—district enrollment, aggregated school progress metrics, tutor notes, and even government reports. What once required stitching together spreadsheets and manual report pulls became a unified, usable view inside HubSpot CRM. “What once took weeks of manual cleanup became a single, clean dataset in HubSpot CRM,” he explained.
Data Studio: Insights Everyone Can Use
But unification wasn’t enough—Ignite Reading’s marketing and content teams had to actually use the data. With Data Studio’s spreadsheet-style interface inside HubSpot, non-technical teammates could now filter by district type, segment by demographics like multilingual learners or IEP students, and launch campaigns without waiting on Matthew.
“With Data Hub, we can democratize our data,” Matthew said. “And with Data Studio, my team can actually use it—without waiting on me or needing a technical background. They can pull the right insights in real time and move campaigns forward with confidence.”
The results came quickly. Campaigns that once took weeks to prepare were ready in hours. Outreach shifted from broad blasts to precise conversations—like showing a superintendent how a peer district had seen six months of literacy gains with just 15 minutes a day. Just as importantly, schools and families began receiving timely, accurate reports they could trust.
The Transformation
From Weeks of Waiting to Same-Day Action
The contrast between before and after is clear. Previously, preparing data took two to three weeks, campaigns were limited to just a few per month, and Matthew served as the bottleneck for every request. Now, insights are available within hours, the team runs three targeted campaigns a week, and non-technical colleagues are empowered to act independently.
“We went from being a bottleneck to being an enabler,” Matthew said. “Now our teams can move quickly, target more effectively, and ultimately help more kids learn to read.”
The shift extended beyond efficiency. District leaders now receive timely reports they can act on. Parents see their child’s growth with clarity. And Ignite Reading can reach new schools faster, ensuring children in underserved communities get intervention exactly when it counts.
Ignite Reading isn’t only scaling data—it’s scaling possibility. For thousands of students, that means moving from silence to confidence, and from falling behind to discovering the joy of reading on time.
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