Allow Good: Engaging High School Students in Philanthropy

By: Rachel
Rachel is on the leadership team for Northwestern University's chapter of Allow Good. 

Allow Good teacher engages students at the first class at YOU.

"Not only do millennials lack the kind of empathy that allows them to feel concerned for others, but they also have trouble even intellectually understanding others' points of view," reported Time magazine writer Joel Stein in 2013. In his article, Stein accused millennials of having the lowest generational dedication to civic engagement but the highest rates of narcissism as the so-called "Me, Me, Me Generation." However, I feel this increasingly popular narrow mindset mislabels individuals as self-absorbed when in actuality many are empathetic and engaged and those who are uninvolved in their community simply are not presented with adequate accessible volunteer opportunities. The issue of disengaged youth greatly motivated myself and a group of my Northwestern peers to work with Allowance for Good in producing a high school program teaching students about philanthropy through a civic engagement and social justice lens. We felt high schoolers deserved a chance to be treated as competent young-adults, educated about their local non-profits, and then given the resources and skills to responsibly give $1000 back to their community.

The idea for this curriculum stemmed from a spring course my project partner, Imani Wilson, and I took at Northwestern called the Philanthropy Lab. We spent the course learning about the history of philanthropy, how to evaluate non-profits, and meeting with potential grantees to receive a portion of our class grant of $100,000, which was sponsored through the Once Upon a Time Foundation (OUTF). We worked on the class's Child and Youth Development Team and in the end granted $20,000 to Girls in the Game (GiG), a local Chicago organization that encourages girls to use sports to improve self-esteem and reinforce healthy lifestyles. Once the class ended, OUTF encouraged students in our class to apply for their Changemakers Grant of $5,000 to sponsor any project that would educate students about philanthropy.

Rachel, at the Allow Good teacher training

Shortly after, we were put in contact with Allowance for Good and discussed our vision of an adaptation of our philanthropy lab class taught to high schoolers by Northwestern students. Soon after filling out paperwork, we received the $5,000 grant and quickly found two more NU students, Fannie and Matt, to join the project as credit for our Civic Engagement Certificate non-profit internship class. Fall quarter, we worked tirelessly to create a pilot program with 14 lesson plans lasting 45 minutes each including a detailed teacher's manual. Last week, we spent 6 hours training teachers in philanthropy education and classroom facilitation strategies. Now, I am happy to announce that our first day of classes will launch last week at Niles North High School and Evanston Township High School's after-school program called Y.O.U.

Reflecting on the past few months, I believe the best part of working on the project has been seeing the assets of my team come together. Fannie joined the team with expertise in philanthropy curriculum development. As a passionate social justice advocate on campus, Matt brought a wealth of knowledge on teaching students about current inequality issues. And, Imani's ability to pay close attention to detail and insistence on meeting deadlines helped our group stay on pace. With their contributions, the curriculum and camaraderie among group members has surpassed anything I originally imagined.

Looking to the future, I can't wait to see the impact of the curriculum on high school students. Once presented with the opportunity to learn and give back, I am confident that these students will rise to the occasion and erase any association with the so-called "Me, Me, Me Generation."

Giving for Greater Impact

By: Bella
Bella is a participant in the Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy: Changemakers class. 

A giving circle in technical terms is a form of participatory philanthropy where groups of individuals donate their own money or time to a pooled fund, decide where to give the funds away to charity or community projects and, in doing so, seek to increase their awareness of and engagement in the issues covered by the charity or community project. But a giving circle to me is a groups where you donate time, talent and money to a passion of you and your group. Giving circles can also have a greater impact on an organization, where as an individuals donation can only go so far. 

A giving circle has many benefits, the major on is a greater impact. Another benefit is having engagement with the community, friends, family and neighbors. In a giving circle engagement is key, because it is is participation. My group of AFG participants worked together and engaged together to raise money and talk about the most eye opening issues to ourselves and our passionate issues. This way we could make a difference in not only our lives but in others. 

Some of the challenges that I faced was deciding the organization that needs that most help, because one issue is not better that the other, it is where u are passionate about helping make a difference in that issue to support the solution not the problem. Another issue I faced was making my voice herd, because in a giving circle it is hard to all say an equal amount of ideas, but I found that listen is just as important as speaking and even then listen to some on can inspire even greater thoughts than u imagined. 

I am most proud of reaching our goal of 100 dollars which was matched by AFG. We raised 106 dollars and ended up to by 212 dollars, by the end. I am also proud, because I now realize how much more of a impact you/we can have on some one. With this money we decided to complete a project and donate the rest to working towards completing a project. 

Philanthropy in Depth

By: Moira
Moira is a participant in our Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy: Changemakers class. 

In Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy: Changemakers, we have the ability to delve deeper into philanthropy. At our last meeting, we went into more detail about the grant-making process, an extremely important part of the health of nonprofit organizations. The grant-making process starts with a healthy grantor-grantee relationship which must be mutually beneficial. Secondly, we learned about the mechanics of the grant-making process. Specifically, we learned about Request for Proposals which are documents created by grantors that describe the possible funding opportunities. After this, grantees are able to submit their proposals about what they intend to do with the funds and then the grantor will decide which grantee to allocate their funds to. One interesting fact that we learned about the grantmaking process is that there is no singular correct way to go about it: each different grantor/grantee will do it differently. 

A second topic of our class was exploring and learning more about nonprofit governance and accountability. A nonprofit is accountable to the public since their goals have to do with improving quality of life for some sector of the public. Within individual non-profits, there are many people that help the organization stay on the right track. For example, the Board of Directors is a group of people that oversee the actions of the non-profit in order to ensure that they are staying true to their mission and values. Without these people, there would be no third person perspective that has the organization's best interests in mind which would have a detrimental effect on the organization. 

In class, we did an activity in which, as a group, we had to decide where to allocate funds to as if we were grantors. Some of the most important factors we looked for in organizations were transparency, accountability, financial health, and efficiency. It is important to consider these criteria because they will ensure that a grantor is giving to a non-profit organization that will be responsible with the treasure given to them. The idea of criteria for organizations to give to ties into being an educated philanthropist in order to effectively give your time, talent, and treasure.