Dor

Roman’s mention of the money-splitting idea in his blog post from last week makes for a great segue to this week’s hot topic. It is true that we had initially agreed to make one large sum donation of 10,000—but that was without seeing the details and features of the actual organizations we’d be funding. About a third of us (including myself) saw some positives in splitting the money and decided we’d at least be open to doing so. The idea was that although a larger sum could go farther with one organization, in this case some of us felt as though splitting it into, for example 1)half for actually funding a full organization, but for 6 months instead of a full year and 2)hiring a staff member in a another organization would bring about greater impact.

This brings about a few issues that we had to debate over. First, does it really make us look bad, as if we chickened out of a making the tough, yet clear-cut decision and relented to splitting the money? In my opinion, no—if we look at the details and believe that it makes greater impact to split the money then that’s the opposite of being lazy, because we were all just about ready to vote for one of the organizations anyways. Does it set an iffy precedent, seeing as we are the first group to do this? Once again, we need to worry less about our image, because we are trying to help the kids here, not our image. The notion failed, which I don’t mind at all seeing as the organization we did choose (hurray, fireworks) is an amazing program that I fully support.

However, I must express my disappointment in the fact that we did not fully think through the splitting notion—we could have done much more to ensure that our money does 100% of what it can. We could have called the places and seen what they could do with the money for example, which we ruled out. Overall, though, the amount of enthusiasm the class has shown throughout the whole process has been fantastic, and I’m proud to have been a part of it.

Corey

After months of hard work in sending out applications, conducting interviews and going on site visits we finally came to the time-constrained decision that Mentoring to Manhood deserved our full grant. Their work with children in need of father figures clearly stood above and beyond to many of us. While most of the class had Mentoring to Manhood as their first or second selection, it still was not as easy a decision as we’d expect. The issue of if we should possibly split the money between them, Ancestral Knowledge and the Latin American Youth Center came up, but in the end the class decided that our money could be best used if all of it went towards just one of these groups. I personally thought that the money divided two – or even three- ways could have potentially done a lot to help each organization, but this did not go over as well with the rest of the class. Many people thought that it would make us look flakey and unreliable in the future, but to me non-profit groups that are probably used to requests that go unanswered would welcome a gift of any amount. After deciding on the winning organization, we started the process of writing up the letters to notify the other applicants that they had not been chosen. I may just be speaking for myself, but the fact that this needed to be done was something that I had not considered. While I was thinking about how happy M2M would be to get our money, I did not think how disappointed people like Bill from Ancestral would be to hear that they had not gotten it. But this is the way it goes sometimes when dealing with philanthropy, and it is important to go about a sensitive issue in a courteous way. In preparing for the final week of the class, I think we’re all looking forward to putting together the final presentation and getting to officially present M2M their grant money and having Bruce & Karen Levenson and the rest of the PL staff on hand to hear us present what we have learned from our semester working in philanthropy.

Speaking for myself, its been a rewarding experience and I know with the genuine care and dedication this class has we will finish strong!

Kevin

This week we finally made our decision on which group that we will give our $10,000 grant. And the winner is (drum roll please) Mentoring to Manhood! Mentoring to Manhood was a personal favorite of mine since reading their application, so I am really happy with the results. Mentoring to Manhood is an after school program whose goal is to help young men develop academic skills, character, positive communication skills, and to provide them with the resources and tools to maximize their potential. Throughout all of deliberation, Mentoring to Manhood was the strongest on all fronts. Its mission statement was very similar to our own and they met all of our selection criteria. Most people in the class would argue against one organization because of certain flaws or problems within the organization that caused concern. There weren’t any such problems with Mentoring to Manhood. I believe that just about everyone in the class had Mentoring to Manhood in their top three favorite organizations. As we eliminated and deliberated on the various organizations, Mentoring to Manhood always prevailed. From the application to the phone interview to the site-visit to the reference, Mentoring to Manhood had the strongest credentials out of all of the groups. The organization has very admirable goals and they hope to effect a positive change in the community. With our $10,000 grant, Mentoring to Manhood will fund a full time staff member and help fund a tutoring program. Currently, Mentoring to Manhood works primarily on the weekends because most of the workers are volunteers. By hiring a full time member, their goal is to have programs during the weekdays too. Overall, I am very happy with the decision the class has made and I found the work that I did in this class to be very rewarding.

Roman

This week our class had one of the most heated discussions thus far this year. Now we're in the nitty gritty, and we're really trying to figure how to come to terms as a class and figure out where we really want our money to go.

We came into class on Thursday with 5 organizations, which we quickly reduced to four. As a class we felt the eliminated organization did not put much emphasis on education, which is a focus of our mission statement.

As far as the other nonprofits go, we had some clear favorites, and a few organizations where only a handful of us believe should receive the grant money. However that does not mean we are done by a long shot. We still haven’t figured out how we will finally decide, and if we do decide to do a full unanimous decision, next week could really turn ugly. I just don’t want any of us to get too locked into our one set organization and ignore all other options. We can all agree that each organization that we thus far narrowed it down to has a lot of positives and we should all be pleased with however the money is divvied up.

Speaking of diving it up, Corey had an interesting idea in that we split the money and do multiple grants. This was an idea we had talked about earlier in the semester, and we ultimately decided to do one single grant. Originally I liked the single grant idea, but if we somehow can’t decide how to choose, multiple grants might not be such a bad idea, I think its something we should consider next week on Thursday if we haven’t chosen a recipient on Tuesday.

Arielle

This week in class we had a lot of heated discussion. On Tuesday, we were able to discuss as a large group what we felt from each site visit as well as what the references to our organization said about them. I felt that it was very helpful to discuss all of this because no one went on every single site visit and it was good to hear the feedback from our fellow classmates. On Thursday, we were asked to pick a single organization to donate our $10,000 to as individuals (we have previously decided that we don’t want to split up the money). This led to some very heated discussion about which organization we felt deserved the money the most, as well as a lot of “bad-mouthing” from people about which organizations we should not fund. Up to this point we have narrowed it down from an original ten organizations to four.

I think it was really helpful for everyone to see where the other people in the class would like to donate the money and why. Some people had gut feelings or used past experiences to choose the organization they wanted to fund. Others used their passions in certain social justice areas to pick the organization that best matched with their ideals and goals. Others used very logical methods to come to their final conclusion. It was fascinating to hear why people chose what they did, even more than it was to hear what they had actually chosen.

I’ve learned a lot from this week, but I feel that the most important thing that I took away was how important this entire process is. There is no single piece (the application, phone interview and site visits) that is more important than the others. Every single piece helped the class to form their opinions about who we should fund. For example, my original number one choice after the applications didn’t change after the phone interview. In fact, I liked them even more. However, hearing what everyone said that went on the site visit, I realized that this is not an organization I would like to fund. Without having that piece, I don’t know that I would have come to the same conclusion. I’m very excited to see what we end up choosing in the end!

Brendan

This week in lieu of class we attended a site visit for at least one of the five finalists for our grant. I was only able to attend the Campfire USA site visit but I did get the chance to speak with my roommates about their site visits to Mentoring to Manhood, Prince George's Tennis and the Latin American Youth Center. From what I saw at Campfire and from what I heard about the other organizations it seems like we are going to have a very interesting week next week with some heated debate.

After the first stage of the application process Campfire USA was one of my top organizations. Now after conducting the interview and going on the site visit Campfire has solidified itself as the top applicant in my opinion. On the site visit I saw a lot of things that I liked. The kids all seemed to be really engaged in the activities while having fun at the same time.

It was especially interesting to see how each activity had so much more going on than appeared on the surface. One of the activities that was going on during our site visit was an ice cream making session. The kids were all really interested in this because of the promise of ice cream at the end of the activity. However there was a lot more to the activity than just making ice cream. The activity leader was teaching the kids about what went into ice cream and giving them an idea about where those ingredients come from. The activity also gave kids a little insight into chemistry without them even realizing. When they saw the salt out with the rest of the ingredients they thought that it went into the ice cream. However they later learned that the salt went in with the ice to make the ice water colder and prevent it from freezing at the normal temperatures.

These kinds of activities are what really set Campfire apart in my mind. In my experiences working with kids it can be really difficult to sit them down and get them to sit down and focus on academics. Campfire provides such an innovative way to integrate fun activities with an educational component.

If this week has done anything I think it has created a set of students who are going to die hard for the organization they support. I live with 3 other PL students (Jason, Eran and Dor) and we have all ready gotten in to small arguments about which organization is most deserving of the grant. I realized that none of the organizations are more deserving than the other organizations. All of the organizations do amazing work and have huge impacts on the young people that come to their organization. As a class we need to figure out what organization fits us best and where do we think that we can get the biggest “bang for our buck.” Looking back on it deciding to make only one large grant rather than 3 small ones might not have been the best idea. There is not a lot certainty when it comes to philanthropy, but one this is certain, next week is definitely going to be interesting.

Claire

Ah, what an interesting week! It’s getting closer and closer to decision-making time, and from what I hear there’s only one consensus: it’s going to be difficult to select the recipient of our funds. With this in mind, I asked Professor Grimm on the site visit to the Latin American Youth Center if we would be discussing how we were going to decide, as a class, on the final organization before we started discussing reactions to site visits and references. I’m concerned that somehow that we’ll all be strongly set on which organization we personally think deserves the $10,000, and if we haven’t previously established how we’re going to finally decide as a group, we’ll all try to suggest systems that favor one organization (our preferred) over another. And what’s more, it just occurred to me today that we may have trouble narrowing down past three non-profits! Scary thought. Exciting, too, I suppose.

I’ve only been on one site visit thus far, but from what I understand, most people’s experiences with leaders from these organizations have one thing in common: a clear demonstration of commitment to their work. It’s reassuring to see how invested these leaders are in their causes. One would hope, of course, that the person using such blood, sweat and time to better their organization would be dedicated to its worthy mission, but I still found my site visit this week refreshing and heart-warming. I was reminded on the trip that most of the adults that we’re meeting much like Andre Benepe, go above and beyond their official job descriptions each day. And generally, it’s because they care so deeply about what they do. It’s not for money or prestige.

These are role models. These are people who are encouraging us to get involved with their organizations, to be active parts of what they do for a living. Most of these organizations have opened their doors to us, whether for a day or for a year of involvement. But what about even longer periods, like making work in non-profit our careers? This class has opened a window into the lives of these strong, dynamic people who we respect and may some day want to emulate. I didn’t anticipate such an outcome from this class, but it’s certainly a benefit.

So. Do I have strong opinions about where I think our funds should go? Yes. But despite anticipating some difficult decisions in the near future, I am calmed by the growing knowledge that the organizations that we’re considering do wonderful, valuable work, and no matter what we will be investing in leaders who will carry out tasks and programs in which we all see the good.