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!
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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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