What I love most about our "Philanthropy and Social Change" is the cross section of students from across Georgetown’s campus. From sophomores to seniors, nursing majors to business majors and more, the students came to the class with different interests and expectations. Some wanted the grant writing experience, others wanted to learn more about how to bring about social change—in measurable ways, and all were intrigued by the fact that they had real dollars to award. This class has been one of the best teaching experiences of my career. To be able to give students the opportunity to explore their own values, test their assumptions, practice decision making—all in the context of the real world. It doesn’t get better than that for me.
Kathy Kretman - Georgetown University
Blog
Not too many years ago, we were part of the first cohort of UC Berkeley undergraduates piloting an experiential curriculum designed to teach and train students on how to become effective philanthropists, principally by “doing”.
This unique field-based approach, championed by the “Learning by Giving” program (LxG), taught us about the in’s and out’s of strategic grantmaking from a first principles perspective and culminated with a grant the class awarded to a local, well deserving nonprofit (mind you, this came after numerous hours of in-class framing, social evaluation, operational diligence, modeling, memorandum composing, deliberation, etc.).