Reflecting on the Season of Giving

By: Karin Scott
Karin is the Program Manager for Allowance for Good.

When December rolls around each year, I remember a program called Share Joys, which
would raise money for a week in December through various activities at my high school
and then use that money to purchase winter clothing for children in the school system
who needed it. On those early Saturday mornings at Sears, I became an expert shopper –
able to choose a coat, shoes, hat, gloves, pants, sweaters, underwear, and socks for up to
five children in less than three hours while making sure I only spent the allocated amount
on each child. After the chaotic shopping and wrapping of gifts, each shopper dropped off
the clothing at the child’s house. As I ventured into parts of my small town that I didn’t
know existed, I was overwhelmed by the stark inequalities a simple Midwestern town of
30,000 people can have. Though those harsh realities were quickly melted away by the
bright face of the boy who answered the door, with cereal still stuck to his chin from the
mornings’ breakfast. As he clutched the clothes and gave me a gap-toothed smile it was
all I could do to resist hugging the small stranger across the doorway.

Reflecting on giving during this season I am reminded of the boys and girls across our
own country who are more excited to see a new winter coat than the newest action
figure or princess doll. Or the ones who go without dinner most nights yet are supposed
to somehow keep warm during these cold months ahead. And I am all over again,
overwhelmed.

Flipping through the TV channels and reading my email inbox, all I hear and see are ads
telling me to buy this, save on that, get half price on that thing you’ll use once and then
forget you have. I am again overwhelmed by the amount of things one can purchase, and
what are considered essentials to everyday life.

And like each year before it, I make a promise to myself that I will not ask for gifts, that
I will ask for monetary donations to worthy nonprofit organizations instead, and will
donate whatever gifts I receive. However, after I take a few breaths and get away from
the season’s spending mayhem, I understand that to deprive one’s self of certain joys
does little in the long-term action of giving, and makes one unthankful for what they have
been blessed with in life.

Rather, this season of giving is a chance to refocus from the overwhelming world of
needs and wants. It is a chance to recommit to giving, and maybe to challenge ourselves
to give more in this coming year. To commit to donating more money, to volunteering
in a new place, to offering our skills to a non-profit organization who can use them. It is
a chance to recognize what we have been given in life and to use it for good, not just for
one day, or one season, but for the future.

Go ahead and rejoice over that new tablet, and perhaps use it to look up new volunteer
opportunities in your neighborhood, and those new boots will certainly help you walk to
that after school tutoring program down the street. Do not be overwhelmed by the material
things and the ever-complicated social problems, but use your passion and your gifts to
recommit to giving this season.

Celebrating Our Growing Cohort of Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy

By: Clarkie

Clarkie has volunteered with Allowance for Good for over two years and serves as an advisor to our educational programming.

It has been an honor to co-lead the Autumn 2013 session of Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy. Throughout the past ten weeks, we have explored all things philanthropy -- from the philanthropic landscape to international development and non-profit accountability. We discussed individual giving, corporate philanthropy, and the different types of foundations. Our students listened -- and asked thoughtful questions -- to speakers from the field: Stephanie Denzer, from our partner Spark Ventures; Sharmila Rao Thakker of The Siragusa Foundation; Sejal Shah-Myers of The Springboard Foundation; Jenny Daugherty of AbbVie; and Maya Cohen of GlobeMed. On October 30, we attended a talk by Princeton professor of Bioethics, Peter Singer; as leaders, we were especially impressed by the critical way our ELP students responded to his opinions on effective altruism.

Moving forward, our students are going to work together on their own philanthropic project to increase awareness of Allowance for Good, share their newly developed knowledge with their peers, and raise funds to send to our partner Spark Ventures in Twapia, Zambia. The ELPers will use the skills they have learned and the ideas sparked from our weeks together in the classroom to develop ideas and execute what we have faith will be an informative and successful project. I cannot wait to follow their progress, and we look forward to sharing their project with our AfG family. 

Our group is filled with engaged learners and future philanthropic leaders. They understand what it means to be a global citizen and are true AfG Catalysts. We hope they will continue exploring and asking questions as emerging leaders and are excited to announce that they will have the opportunity to keep learning with Allowance for Good in our Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy second level course. In ELP Level 2, we will delve deeper into non-profit organizational structure, grant making, the relationships between grantee and grantor, and assessing the good governance of non-profits. ELP level 2 will be offered in the Spring.

Members of our second cohort of Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy with their certificates in Global Philanthropic Leadership.

Assessing Worldwide Human Rights

By: Jackson

Jackson is participating in Allowance for Good's autumn 2013 Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy program.

This week at EPL session eight, we learned about the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. These eight goals were set in the year 2000, to be completed by 2015. These goals include: eradicating extreme hunger and poverty, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and women’s rights, reducing child morality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating a global partnership for development. A great deal of progress has been made towards achieving these goals, but there is still much work to be done in order to accomplish them by 2015. Whether or not they are entirely accomplished by 2015, these goals have set us on the right path towards bettering the quality of life for all, all around the globe.

This week Maya Cohen, the executive director of Globemed, visited us in class. Globemed is an organization that partners groups of university students with local organizations in less developed countries looking to better their own communities. These partnerships last through multiple generations of students, and focus on creating a tight bond between the students and the organization. The students typically raise funds for the organization, but also contribute physical service in an annual trip to visit the partner organization. Ms. Cohen explained this to us, as well as how Globemed’s focus is not only on the health of a community, but the quality of the community as a whole. Different organizations working within the same community can often achieve a greater affect than one organization alone.

It has been said that true philanthropy is done through the donation of one’s time, talent and treasure. This made me skeptical of Globemed’s credibility as a truly philanthropic organization, considering it is difficult to donate anything but treasure from thousands of miles away. What sets Globemed apart from other organizations though is the unique one on one partnering of students and organizations that lasts well past any one student’s time at their university. Unlike other charitable organizations, Globemed follows the money they raise and help the local organizations find the most efficient way to spend it. This truly makes it a philanthropic organization.

At the end of class, we partook in an activity titled “What is a Human Right?” In this activity, we brainstormed ideas of what are basic rights all humans are entitled to. Responses varied from basic necessities such as food, water and shelter, to more idealistic answers such as a right to representation, a right to fair compensation for services and a right to freedom from persecution. It struck me how many of these human rights we take for granted in the U.S., and how even if the U.N.’s millennium goals are accomplished there is still a long way to go to moral and social equality. Many people worldwide do not have access to what we consider basic necessities, and it is our job to advocate for equal rights for all.

This was one more excellent week at EPL, where we all learned a lot and engaged in meaningful discussion. There is no doubt in my mind that next week will be even more productive than this week was.

Jackson presents to his fellow ELP students.

Evaluating Effective Altruism with Peter Singer

By: Leah

Leah is participating in Allowance for Good's autumn 2013 Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy program.

Hi! I’m Leah, I’m 17, a senior at ETHS, and I’ll be writing this week’s blog post.

On Wednesday night we heard Peter Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton, speak at Northwestern on the topic of effective altruism.  Peter belongs to a utilitarian school of thought and generally approaches issues through a secular lens.

At its core, Peter’s argument was that we should find ways to make each dollar we donate go as far as possible. This seemed based on a hierarchy similar to Maslow’s pyramid, guaranteeing all people their basic rights and necessities before addressing the non-basic needs of others. One of the examples Peter used to effectively show this point revolved around the problem of blindness. Cataracts are an incredibly common and treatable cause of blindness, especially in the developing world. A cataract surgery, giving someone the gift of sight, costs within a range of $20-50. Giving a seeing-eye dog to a not preventably blind person in the first world costs around $40,000.  Peter argues that the obvious choice is to cure many more people of preventable blindness rather than assist one person who will remain blind for the rest of their life.

Peter stressed the fact that he believes all human lives have the same value, which is something a think a lot of us coming from privileged backgrounds overlook too often. I think we need reminders, like Peter’s lecture, that we are people in exactly the way that people from Cambodia, Laos, Botswana, Uganda, Columbia, and Nicaragua are people and that we cannot assign their lives any less value than we assign our own. This is a topic we discuss a lot in ELP and I think it merits our attention.

Some of the Northwestern students in the crowd asked questions that were frankly kind of stupid. Through my learning about the world (in ELP and elsewhere) and by simply listening to Peter’s talk, I felt confident enough to answer. Hopefully more students in my generation will learn what I have the privilege of learning now in ELP and the power of listening so that we can avoid silly questions and truly get ot the core of helping our world.

Leah, left, shares her group's venture philanthropy idea during one of the Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy sessions.

Delving Into Venture Philanthropy

By: Orleana

Orleana is participating in Allowance for Good's autumn 2013 Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy program.

Last Thursday at ELP, we discussed venture philanthropy. Venture philanthropy is defined as the utilization of techniques from venture capital finance and business of management, combining them to achieve philanthropic outcomes through business world means.  Essentially, venture philanthropy is the financial support of new, non-profit organizations/potentially risky social ventures with promise or a significant goal in mind that requires aid to be recognized. Venture philanthropy allows these young organizations to mature and ground themselves, hopefully achieving self-sustainability after a set amount of years. 

Venture philanthropy is focused around providing financial support for and promoting small, new or underfunded organizations. Venture philanthropy enables emerging nonprofits to flourish through the giving of grants over a period of time. Both old and new organizations apply to receive grants, which, after an inspection by the organization supplying the grants, are given yearly for a certain number of years.

This week we had a great guest speaker, Sejal, come to class to discuss her work with The Springboard Foundation, a volunteer run group that supplies grants to beginning nonprofit organizations, with a focus on after school programs.  While affiliated with a variety of organizations, (having worked in the nonprofit field for the last fourteen years) Sejal is currently the Managing Director of the Springboard Foundation, and during Thursday’s class explained the goals of the Foundation and described its interactions with other nonprofits.

What I thought was one of the more interesting points in our discussion about The Springboard Foundation was its careful maintenance of the organizations they supply grants to. They check in with the organizations to see that the money they give is being spent productively, and making a successful change in the program. The Springboard Foundation definitely puts a lot of time and effort into getting emerging nonprofits running steadily, and I think that making sure the grants that they give are being used to get the maximum results is really important.

Near the end of class, we carried out a group activity where the class split into groups to create our ‘own’ venture philanthropy based foundations. We discussed prospective foundation names, goals, statements, and fiscal requirements, and each group presented our finished results at the end of class. While our projects were pretty small scale, they really made me appreciate all of the planning and hard work that goes into venture philanthropy, (though that could be said about any philanthropy), and the people and volunteers who come together to make it run so that other nonprofits can flourish.

Orleana, bottom right, listens to an ELP guest speaker during the Thursday night class.