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!
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This blog is generated by students in the College Park Scholars Public Leadership Program who are taking a course in philanthropy. Join us as we develop our vision of the social good and then learn how best to deploy resources to achieve an impact. During the semester, we will go through the challenging and exciting process of giving away actual money to achieve beneficial change in our local community. Thanks for reading!
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