Allowance for Good
Living in the Present Tense
Living in the Present Tense

Family Foundations: Learning into Practice

By: Jackson
Jackson is a participant in Allowance for Good's Winter 2015 Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy: Explorers class.

As someone who is relatively familiar with philanthropy and who thinks that they know almost everything, I am delightfully surprised by how much the ELP Explorers class has taught me over the last few weeks. However, this week’s course in particular connected with me on a different level. Our class had the opportunity to speak with high-ranking members of various foundations and gain insight as to how philanthropy works outside of our office space.

The majority of our time was spent learning about family foundations. A family foundation is one whose funds are derived from the members of a family. We learned about how family foundations operate, how they determine their grantees, and what they do to ensure success. We also learned that simply donating money as a family is not the same as forming a family foundation. While donating money may be a charitable and generous thing that families do around a dinner table, family foundations make certain that those same donations provide long term aid for worthy organizations.

If given the opportunity to create my own family foundation, I would support three things: providing children with the proper resources for formal education, working to maintain the environment, and researching cures for disabilities and mental illness. In regards to education, I strongly believe that all children deserve an opportunity to learn and grow. Even though more children throughout the world are receiving a formal education, the numbers are still not where they could be. I believe that through proper emphasis and funding, every child in the world could someday say that they have been to school.

Next, I feel that maintaining the environment and creating a more eco-friendly society is crucial. With global warming intensifying by the day, it is time for us to change how we live. Specifically, I would fund efforts to increase the use of clean, reusable energy and decrease the burning of fossil fuels.

Illness and disability research is a cause that is very close to my heart. Various members of my family have suffered through Alzheimer’s, cancer, and other diseases. Though I do my best every day to support them, sometimes that is not enough. That is why, if I were to form a family foundation, I would strive to support these research organizations.

The ELP Explorers class has taught me so much about philanthropy and leadership. With the skills that I learn in this course, I hope to someday use them to make the world a healthier, cleaner, and generally better place.

Jackson discusses the definition of philanthropy with his classmate Arielle.

Lessons from Foundation Leaders

By: Will
Will is a participant in Allowance for Good's Winter 2015 Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy: Explorers class.

This week at ELP, we were lucky enough to talk to a few leaders in the philanthropy world today. Two members of the McCormick Foundation and one from the Jack Miller Family Foundation joined us to discuss their work. We learned the origins of each group, and what they strive to fix through their philanthropy. Programs run by the groups varied immensely, and the speakers were passionate while discussing the diverse initiatives focused on Judaism  medical research, civics, education, democracy, aid for veterans, and more.

As students, it was interesting to hear from two separate foundations each trying to give meaningful grants. The McCormick Foundation is substantially larger than the Jack Miller Family Foundation, but both groups utilized similar grant-making policies. Personally, it was unexpected to hear just how driven each group was by their founders. For the McCormick foundation, they are still driven by the values from about 150 years ago. Jack Miller, who is still alive today, also plays a large role in crafting his foundation’s initiatives. 

Later in the class, we were invited to ask a few questions of our panel. I asked the first question, which was definitely a tough one to answer. I inquired as to how their foundations measure the success of their grants after giving them. The answers varied, but provided nice insight into how decisions are made in foundations. Suzanne Knoll from the Jack Miller Family Foundation noted that their group attempts to give grantees the tools to measure success on their own. They also try and use any quantitative data available to find the impact of the programs. The representatives from the McCormick Foundation also commented on the difficulty of analyzing success in philanthropy, and what their efforts have been. 

There were a few more questions posed before the end of class. For example, one student asked which of the programs each panel member was most proud of. The unique answers displayed their passion for helping others, and some background for what drives them. Unfortunately we ran out of time a tad early, but the chance to hear from these friendly and intelligent guest speakers was amazing. A friend and I also got to ride down in the elevator with one of the speakers, so it was nice to speak a little bit longer with him. I loved getting to know the philosophy behind each foundation’s work, and I’m looking forward to next week’s class.

Will writes, "I am a Catalyst for Good because everyone deserves the right to be their own catalyst."

Spreading Awareness for Education, Animal Rights

By: Rashmi
Rashmi is a participant in Allowance for Good's Winter 2015 Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy: Explorers class. 

I recently watched a video of 17 year old Malala Yousafzai at the UN Youth Assembly. Her steady voice delivered words of wisdom and advice, trying to inspire the youth in front of her. I found her speech interesting and inspiring in several different ways. She made a point to not offend anyone, and spoke about how obstacles should not stop people from doing what is right. I thought it was brave of her to stand in front of so many people and talk about such a controversial topic. All of the statements she made were positive, or ended on a positive note. She had something nice to say about everyone and everything. She spoke of the positive impact people could have on the world by using kindness instead of violence, and how no one should be denied their right to education. She was very passionate about it, and talked about how opposition from others did not stop her from going to school. 

The amount of time she talked about spending advocating the right to education and the dangers she had faced opened my eyes to how many problems there are in the world and how much work it will take to fix them. I am very passionate about animals, and spend time volunteering at shelters over the weekend. Some people believe that animals are not important, and that they don’t matter. However, I think that they are just as important as people, and believe that it is important to protest animal cruelty. 

One way I can raise awareness about this issue is by talking to friends and my community and letting them know that there are problems that need to be solved and more than one person is needed to do it. I can also raise money to help larger organizations who are already combatting this problem. This is related to our Global Awareness project because we are trying to open people’s eyes to the things that happen around us that could be improved if everyone donated their time and efforts to the cause. I can use the project to help others understand what needs to be fixed.

Rashmi, front left, with some of her ELP classmates.

Hungry for Human Rights

By: Kate
Kate is a participant in Allowance for Good's Winter 2015 Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy: Explorers class. 

In this week’s ELP class we talked about many different human rights and what we have to do to protect those rights. We talked about our roles in helping protect these human rights and how we can help create a better nation. We also talked about our nation’s agenda for the future and how so many things that we planned to be done by 2015 aren’t done and seem to be going nowhere. We made agenda’s for the UN on more logical and attainable goals for the future and how they can make those succeed, while also trying to see how we can attain the goals already set.

One human right that I specifically am very passionate about is hunger in America today. I have been involved with this cause deeply because my mother works for the non-profit organization Feeding America so I get a lot of facts spit out at me about hunger in the US. From this information from my mother and personally seeing what is going on, it saddens me but also makes me inspired to do more to help this cause.

This cause is very important to me and inspires me because we spend so much time thinking about other places and people when our own people are suffering. We give money to others when they are in need yet we don’t see what is going within our own borders. I feel that everyone should have the basic knowledge of what is going on in our country and that people we can see on a daily basis are suffering.

I have done many bake sales and food drives to help support this cause but I would like to do more hands-on work in the future. I feel like donating money is such an easy way to help and that it can go such a long way, but even then you don’t truly see where your money is going and who it is going to help. I plan to work in more food pantries, packing meals, so I can truly see who these people are and where my help is going to.

Kate writes, "I am a Catalyst for Good because everybody deserves to have their basic human rights."

Taking Action to Change US Food Aid: February goodTALK

By: Katherine and Emily
Katherine and Emily are both Program Fellows at Allowance for Good and students at Northwestern University. Read their bios here.

On February 12th, we braved the cold to attend a goodTALK with Josh Meyer, a Lecturer at National Security Studies at Medill’s Washington program, where he teaches graduate level journalism classes on covering conflicts, terrorism and national security. At this event, Meyer discussed the investigation into the US food aid effort that he led with a group of graduate students in the Medill School of Journalism. In a report titled, Hunger Pains: A Problem-plagued US Food Aid Program Faces an Uncertain Future, his team explored the inefficiencies and pitfalls of the program.We joined Northwestern students, staff and other interested members of the public around a table to hear Meyer speak in an intimate setting. Meyer kept everyone engaged throughout the 90 minute presentation with a powerpoint full of potent and dismaying statistics about the US Food Aid program, a long Q&A portion, and even a clip from the Daily Show. After hearing his talk, we at AfG have been moved to act in order to improve this ineffective system.

Josh Meyer chooses to focus his research not on sensationalized current events, but global systemic issues that have repercussions now and for future generations. One large-scale issue that Meyer believes will only become worse with the future challenges presented by climate change is food insecurity. By narrowing in on US food aid, Meyer’s team investigated a subject that the US public can directly impact and hold their government accountable for. As the leading global power, the US has the resources to help people throughout the world who are in need, and in the past century it has been central to US foreign policy, and the American identity, to do so. This ideology has persisted into the 21st century; military action, aid and various disaster relief efforts have all been presented as sacrifices made by the US to protect human rights abroad. But what happens when these aid efforts are wasteful and unproductive?

U.S. food aid has been quoted by experts to be the most inefficient humanitarian aid program in the world. Interviews with U.S. officials and recipients of aid on three continents revealed that USAID, the agency in charge of the food aid effort, actively seeks to serve American economic interests over the interests of those in need. Congressional mandates force USAID to use American commodities sent on American ships through an extensive logistic transportation bureaucracy. As a result, food often arrives months too late, and spoiled from the overseas journey. Former USAID administrator Andrew Natsios claims that, “people have died waiting for food to arrive,” because of this long and slow process. 

Regardless of these problems, USAID remains the largest aid effort in the world. But the U.S. can do better. Despite criticism from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and frustrated USAID workers fighting for reform, policy changes have not been made, due to vested interests in Congress. So what can we, as attentive and committed global citizens, do to help? One way could be encouraging our representatives in Congress to support reform efforts. The United Nations World Food Programme has already begun using food vouchers in place of food ration boxes in places like Jordan for the Syrian refugees there. These vouchers give the refugees the ability to choose where they shop, what they buy, and how much– restoring their sense of dignity and normalcy. If the U.S. adopted this approach to aid, the money would be going directly into the pockets of the recipients, rather than being wasted on transportation or food they don’t necessarily want. We can spur our local and state leaders to fight for this change– a change that will ensure effective aid for all of those in need.


If you would like to take action, sign the petitions at the links below, or share Josh Meyer’s piece with your friends! Advocacy and action begins with awareness.


Petitions:
Meyer’s Piece:


Support organizations that fight for food aid reform:
http://www.care.org/work/advocacy/food-aid