This week we really focused on how we make informed decisions about how we will give away our money. The readings, practice interviews and the guest speakers helped us focus on our priorities and how we determine potential organizations.
The practice interviews compelled me to reevaluate what I thought the class as a whole was looking for in an organization and specifically what we wanted to learn from them. How could we ask questions that allow us to establish a connection with the interviewee and obtain sufficient information about their work to ensure we are able to find a proper fit? I believe it was apparent that as a class we wanted the interview to transpire more like a conversation than an interrogation. Watching the three groups interview “Jane Addams” really helped to expose some of the flaws in different techniques, as well as, some great questions that can potentially reveal a lot about the organizations.
The guest speakers provided us with a lot of input on the process of determining the right organization to receive the grant. One important point that was made, emphasized the fact that we don’t know everything, and we can potentially learn a lot from the different organizations we consider as long as we keep an open mind. Another point broached the idea that giving a grant is establishing a partnership, which consequently means that we are not greater or more important than those applying for the grant. There are a lot of worthy organizations doing good work, we are simply trying to find one that coincides with our goals and will partner successfully with us. One approach to finding the right partnership that was discussed asserted that determining the right organization required a combination of gut instincts and hard data. I think this is an important point to remember when doing the interviews and site visits, that there are crucial aspects beyond the facts we are given that need to be taken into consideration.
I am excited about moving forward to interacting with the different organizations. To discover how exactly we will determine the best fit for us, as well as how we will manage to overcome differences in opinion.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Reeta
After learning about famous philanthropists and various approaches to philanthropy for many weeks, we have now begun to look at philanthropy from the grant maker’s prospective. Our readings, class discussions, as well as our panel on Thursday all focused on the role that grant maker’s play in philanthropic endeavors.
Many of the points made in our readings were asserted by the panel members, one being the importance of humility. Lee Draper states in his article “The Seven Principles of Firmly Centered Grantmakers” that “Without the creativity, knowledge and programming of nonprofits, grantmakers would not be able to pursue their missions”. Panelist John Foster-Bey reiterated the point of humility when he said that “Having all the money didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to do anything with it.” While drafting our RFP’s last week, our goal was to try and create an application that would best help us discern the organizations that met all of OUR qualifications. This process of approval can easily lead to the mentality of “Why do you deserve OUR gift over someone else?” Our readings and panel discussion this week stressed the importance of looking beyond the application and realizing the influential rather than pivotal role we play as grantmakers.
This week we also learned more about the importance of site visits. Giving Well, Doing Good made the point when stating “This visit is critical, for sometimes even the most effective agents of change can only explain what they are up to by saying ‘Come and See.’” Panelist Karen Levenson also sided on the less scientific approach to philanthropy when she stated the some of the best places could have deficient RFP’s.
As we move forward, we will try to incorporate all that we can about the importance of both RFP’s and site visits, in order that we don’t prematurely deny a good opportunity some additional funding.
Many of the points made in our readings were asserted by the panel members, one being the importance of humility. Lee Draper states in his article “The Seven Principles of Firmly Centered Grantmakers” that “Without the creativity, knowledge and programming of nonprofits, grantmakers would not be able to pursue their missions”. Panelist John Foster-Bey reiterated the point of humility when he said that “Having all the money didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to do anything with it.” While drafting our RFP’s last week, our goal was to try and create an application that would best help us discern the organizations that met all of OUR qualifications. This process of approval can easily lead to the mentality of “Why do you deserve OUR gift over someone else?” Our readings and panel discussion this week stressed the importance of looking beyond the application and realizing the influential rather than pivotal role we play as grantmakers.
This week we also learned more about the importance of site visits. Giving Well, Doing Good made the point when stating “This visit is critical, for sometimes even the most effective agents of change can only explain what they are up to by saying ‘Come and See.’” Panelist Karen Levenson also sided on the less scientific approach to philanthropy when she stated the some of the best places could have deficient RFP’s.
As we move forward, we will try to incorporate all that we can about the importance of both RFP’s and site visits, in order that we don’t prematurely deny a good opportunity some additional funding.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Request for Proposals
After much debate and hard work, our finalized RFP can be found here.
Applications are due by April 2nd, and questions can be sent to cpphils@gmail.com.
Applications are due by April 2nd, and questions can be sent to cpphils@gmail.com.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Jennifer
This week was one of the most exciting weeks that we have had so far! As a class, we were able to come together and formulate our RFP. I cannot believe that after all of the hard work we have done so far that things are really starting to move along as we come closer each day to giving away the $10,000!
As we are such a large class, every single student has their own opinion, which makes it kind of difficult to fully agree on things. This week especially, there was more disagreement than usual. I think that the RFP and making sure that whatever we send out to the public is something that is extremely important to everyone in the class. As we completed the RFP this week, much discussion and debate went into creating it.
When we first began writing our mission statement and values, the class was split into two groups. Even then I had a feeling that writing the RFP was going to be a difficult task if we could hardly agree on our mission statement and values, a very small piece of the RFP. Observing my classmates fight for what they thought should be included in the RFP and as we constructed the final draft as a class, it was truly amazing to see how passionate everyone is about this class and even more so about making a difference in someone’s life. Each word of the RFP was ripped apart and carefully analyzed to make sure that it was perfect. I was nervous about how the RFP was going to turn out since we wrote it in groups. I was not sure whether or not it would flow properly, if things would fall through the cracks or if it would be cohesive. However, looking back now, I think that the end result could not have come out more perfect than it did. I think that writing this document further proved how dedicated we are as a class and what giving away $10,000 means to us.
This week’s classes really made me think about the organizations that we may potentially fund. As hard as it was to complete the RFP, it will be even harder to make the ultimate decision of who this money will go to. I don’t know how we will ever make this decision in such a short period of time! Although a ton of work and much discussion will go into it, I think that this may be one of the most worthwhile things I will ever do in my life. I look forward to coming back after vacation and getting started on reading all of the applications that we will receive. Even though it may be more work for us, hopefully there will be many, many applications! I can’t wait to get my hands on them!
As we are such a large class, every single student has their own opinion, which makes it kind of difficult to fully agree on things. This week especially, there was more disagreement than usual. I think that the RFP and making sure that whatever we send out to the public is something that is extremely important to everyone in the class. As we completed the RFP this week, much discussion and debate went into creating it.
When we first began writing our mission statement and values, the class was split into two groups. Even then I had a feeling that writing the RFP was going to be a difficult task if we could hardly agree on our mission statement and values, a very small piece of the RFP. Observing my classmates fight for what they thought should be included in the RFP and as we constructed the final draft as a class, it was truly amazing to see how passionate everyone is about this class and even more so about making a difference in someone’s life. Each word of the RFP was ripped apart and carefully analyzed to make sure that it was perfect. I was nervous about how the RFP was going to turn out since we wrote it in groups. I was not sure whether or not it would flow properly, if things would fall through the cracks or if it would be cohesive. However, looking back now, I think that the end result could not have come out more perfect than it did. I think that writing this document further proved how dedicated we are as a class and what giving away $10,000 means to us.
This week’s classes really made me think about the organizations that we may potentially fund. As hard as it was to complete the RFP, it will be even harder to make the ultimate decision of who this money will go to. I don’t know how we will ever make this decision in such a short period of time! Although a ton of work and much discussion will go into it, I think that this may be one of the most worthwhile things I will ever do in my life. I look forward to coming back after vacation and getting started on reading all of the applications that we will receive. Even though it may be more work for us, hopefully there will be many, many applications! I can’t wait to get my hands on them!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Eran
This week was a great week for us! We accomplished a lot and it seems that we are finally ready to send out the RFP! It has been exciting splitting into groups and seeing what everyone did on their own, and then trying to regroup as a class and come to a consensus on most of the topics.
Unfortunately, that rarely happened. However, I think that is the beauty of our class. All the disagreements have created an amazingly interactive class that exceeded what I expected from this course. I am learning so much about everyone in the class. Certain people have tendencies that became extremely evident during the discussions we held this week.
There were several topics we discussed and debated over in class that I really found interesting. First, I was really amazed at how passionate people were regarding the simple formatting of the proposal. Some things that I thought were so trivial seemed to be such a big deal to others. I don’t think this is a problem, but rather a good thing, because it brought up certain things that were being overlooked. I also thought it was interesting how it was such a struggle to consolidate the two groups into one. I loved the enthusiasm people brought to the discussions and how defensive each group was when their team’s mission statement was under attack.
This past week was extremely productive and I can’t wait to get back and start reading the applications. I can already predict it will be difficult to decide as a class which application to seriously consider, but I am also excited for that process.
Keep it up!
Unfortunately, that rarely happened. However, I think that is the beauty of our class. All the disagreements have created an amazingly interactive class that exceeded what I expected from this course. I am learning so much about everyone in the class. Certain people have tendencies that became extremely evident during the discussions we held this week.
There were several topics we discussed and debated over in class that I really found interesting. First, I was really amazed at how passionate people were regarding the simple formatting of the proposal. Some things that I thought were so trivial seemed to be such a big deal to others. I don’t think this is a problem, but rather a good thing, because it brought up certain things that were being overlooked. I also thought it was interesting how it was such a struggle to consolidate the two groups into one. I loved the enthusiasm people brought to the discussions and how defensive each group was when their team’s mission statement was under attack.
This past week was extremely productive and I can’t wait to get back and start reading the applications. I can already predict it will be difficult to decide as a class which application to seriously consider, but I am also excited for that process.
Keep it up!
Friday, March 5, 2010
Arley
To me this week was all about questions. Some that come to mind are, when are we going to have the application ready by? How are we going to know it gets to the people/organizations we want it too? What size organization, budget wise, should we give too? How can we tell if they have made a lasting impact? How do we evaluate good leadership? Should we split up the money? Should we require that the organization we choose match our donation? Should we go on site visits and conduct interviews with all of our grant applicants? It was partially overwhelming, but at the same time important because it shows us what a complicated process this is.
To tackle all of these questions we continued working in our two groups to work on the hard task of developing a united philanthropic mission statement and description of our values. On Tuesday we finalized our respective groups mission statement, value statement, and funding focus, and we discussed them both as a whole group. Even though our groups had decided on very similar areas to give our money too there was still a large amount of disagreement on exactly how to word the mission statement. This discussion really exemplified how people can get really passionate about something that they put work into even if someone else only wants to change it by a small amount.
Our group had a list of potential areas of childhood development in which we would like the organization to work with, and the other group thought that it was confusing to have that list as part of the mission statement because organizations might think that they needed to incorporate all of them in their programs and end up not applying for our grant for that reason. A problem that our group had with the other groups mission statement and value statement was that it had “too much fluff”. That an organization looking at that values statement would not understand what the values meant because they were so vague and hard to qualitatively measure. At the end of class on Tuesday we choose four members of each group to have a “battle royale” on the two controversial mission statements on Thursday.
On Thursday we divided further into groups to discuss pieces of the RFP that we are going to put together as a “Frankenstein” mold for our final draft. The first group, the negotiators, worked on our final group mission statement. A second group focused on the specifics of the grant(s) we want to give and who will be eligible, etc. A third group looked at our selection criteria, and our application narrative, and a final group created a flyer to advertise our grant opportunity to potential organizations. I worked with the group creating the flyer, and we found it hard to make without knowing what the other groups were doing. The whole process seemed a little disjointed, but I guess it was necessary considering we couldn’t get all of those tasks done as one group, and this is only our first draft of the whole RFP.
Even though this weekend did provide a lot of new questions I think that it is beginning to become much clearer the direction in which we are headed and what exactly we are trying to accomplish. With our finalized mission statement and drafted RFP we will feel more and more confident about getting our application out there and hearing back from potential organizations. I look forward to this week and sending out a strong RFP we are proud of to the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region.
To tackle all of these questions we continued working in our two groups to work on the hard task of developing a united philanthropic mission statement and description of our values. On Tuesday we finalized our respective groups mission statement, value statement, and funding focus, and we discussed them both as a whole group. Even though our groups had decided on very similar areas to give our money too there was still a large amount of disagreement on exactly how to word the mission statement. This discussion really exemplified how people can get really passionate about something that they put work into even if someone else only wants to change it by a small amount.
Our group had a list of potential areas of childhood development in which we would like the organization to work with, and the other group thought that it was confusing to have that list as part of the mission statement because organizations might think that they needed to incorporate all of them in their programs and end up not applying for our grant for that reason. A problem that our group had with the other groups mission statement and value statement was that it had “too much fluff”. That an organization looking at that values statement would not understand what the values meant because they were so vague and hard to qualitatively measure. At the end of class on Tuesday we choose four members of each group to have a “battle royale” on the two controversial mission statements on Thursday.
On Thursday we divided further into groups to discuss pieces of the RFP that we are going to put together as a “Frankenstein” mold for our final draft. The first group, the negotiators, worked on our final group mission statement. A second group focused on the specifics of the grant(s) we want to give and who will be eligible, etc. A third group looked at our selection criteria, and our application narrative, and a final group created a flyer to advertise our grant opportunity to potential organizations. I worked with the group creating the flyer, and we found it hard to make without knowing what the other groups were doing. The whole process seemed a little disjointed, but I guess it was necessary considering we couldn’t get all of those tasks done as one group, and this is only our first draft of the whole RFP.
Even though this weekend did provide a lot of new questions I think that it is beginning to become much clearer the direction in which we are headed and what exactly we are trying to accomplish. With our finalized mission statement and drafted RFP we will feel more and more confident about getting our application out there and hearing back from potential organizations. I look forward to this week and sending out a strong RFP we are proud of to the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region.
Brett
This week our class has really taken off from reading about philanthropists into actively engaging in the philanthropic process with our Fund. On Tuesday, March 2nd, we started immediately with the huge tasks of developing a mission statement and value statements in two separate groups. While our readings for the week helped us look at successful grants and strategies, it looked as if the moment to succeed was far, far away. While within our separate groups, both agreed on the topic of youth as our target area. But what ended up splitting us into a heated debate was nothing but the format of the mission statement. Looking back, the day was argumentative, but could have been much worse had the two groups decided on different target areas. Our discussion about the format and wording of mission and value statements really illuminated how many different ways our Fund could illustrate our goals, but also how essential that initial step is in this process. At the end of class, we decided on a negotiation to take place on Thursday to finalize a single mission statement and one list of value statements.
Class resumed on Thursday, March 4th, with the beginning of our negotiation about mission and value statements, but also began the development stage of our RFP! On Tuesday, we had been given a few different RFP examples from the Community Fund, Youth PoWR, and some others. From the RFP’s, I found a lot of good ideas on how to accurately assess a nonprofit through a brief and concise RFP. Our class is looking requesting short proposals considering our time constraints and our sometimes short attention spans. During the negotiations, however, our class made concrete decisions to target nonprofit organizations that help the youth in Prince George’s County with budgets under $250,000, and hope to find many such organizations to apply for our Fund! Since our class only has until the end of the semester to draft a request, receive proposals, evaluate proposals, interview candidates, do site visits with candidates, and finally choose and draw up a contract for funds, I have a feeling the next few weeks are going to be a blur. But I cannot wait!
Class resumed on Thursday, March 4th, with the beginning of our negotiation about mission and value statements, but also began the development stage of our RFP! On Tuesday, we had been given a few different RFP examples from the Community Fund, Youth PoWR, and some others. From the RFP’s, I found a lot of good ideas on how to accurately assess a nonprofit through a brief and concise RFP. Our class is looking requesting short proposals considering our time constraints and our sometimes short attention spans. During the negotiations, however, our class made concrete decisions to target nonprofit organizations that help the youth in Prince George’s County with budgets under $250,000, and hope to find many such organizations to apply for our Fund! Since our class only has until the end of the semester to draft a request, receive proposals, evaluate proposals, interview candidates, do site visits with candidates, and finally choose and draw up a contract for funds, I have a feeling the next few weeks are going to be a blur. But I cannot wait!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Megan
Over the past week, our class has been dealing with the challenging task of determining a mission statement for our fund and determining the way in which we want to spend the $10,000. On Tuesday we were given some sample mission statements of other funds, ranging from large, billion dollar organizations to ones that were giving much smaller thousand dollar donations. This provided us with a good framework to base our own statements off of. We were then divided into two teams in order to make the process easier and each developed a team mission statement.
After coming up with our statements, we then met as a whole class to discuss what each team had developed. Despite having completely separate discussions from one another, the two mission statements were actually similar. The main similarity was that both teams wanted to focus the funds we have on a youth organization. One of my team’s reasons for this was that we felt giving to a youth organization would have the most lasting impact. One of the main differences between the two mission statements was that one team wanted to limit the focus of their funds by only giving to an organization in Prince George’s County. The other team was open to giving to an organization in either Prince George’s County or Montgomery County, but they wanted to limit the funds focus by only giving to an organization with a budget of less than $100,000. At the end of class we discussed how to resolve these differences, possibly by compromising and including both limitations in our final statements.
Next week we will be discussing whether or not to combine our mission statements and donate the $10,000 as a whole, or to keep the statements separate and each give $5,000 to separate organizations. I personally feel that we should give try to resolve the statements, since they are not all that different from one another and giving $10,000 will have a much greater impact than $5,000. This seemed to be the general consensus of the class as well, so hopefully we’ll be able to develop a statement that will encompass both groups’ main goals.
The readings we did this week discussed what things should be considered when giving money as well as the various forms of grants that can be given. From the readings I was able to see how very important the work we did this past week truly is, as the values we have established in our statements will need to be referred to throughout this entire process. We will most likely get many applications seeking grants for many worthy causes, and without having the guideline of these mission statements, it would be next to impossible to decide who to give to. This makes establishing a concise mission statement all the more important, and I look forward to seeing what our teams come up with in the upcoming weeks.
After coming up with our statements, we then met as a whole class to discuss what each team had developed. Despite having completely separate discussions from one another, the two mission statements were actually similar. The main similarity was that both teams wanted to focus the funds we have on a youth organization. One of my team’s reasons for this was that we felt giving to a youth organization would have the most lasting impact. One of the main differences between the two mission statements was that one team wanted to limit the focus of their funds by only giving to an organization in Prince George’s County. The other team was open to giving to an organization in either Prince George’s County or Montgomery County, but they wanted to limit the funds focus by only giving to an organization with a budget of less than $100,000. At the end of class we discussed how to resolve these differences, possibly by compromising and including both limitations in our final statements.
Next week we will be discussing whether or not to combine our mission statements and donate the $10,000 as a whole, or to keep the statements separate and each give $5,000 to separate organizations. I personally feel that we should give try to resolve the statements, since they are not all that different from one another and giving $10,000 will have a much greater impact than $5,000. This seemed to be the general consensus of the class as well, so hopefully we’ll be able to develop a statement that will encompass both groups’ main goals.
The readings we did this week discussed what things should be considered when giving money as well as the various forms of grants that can be given. From the readings I was able to see how very important the work we did this past week truly is, as the values we have established in our statements will need to be referred to throughout this entire process. We will most likely get many applications seeking grants for many worthy causes, and without having the guideline of these mission statements, it would be next to impossible to decide who to give to. This makes establishing a concise mission statement all the more important, and I look forward to seeing what our teams come up with in the upcoming weeks.
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