When Reality Sets In

By: Lucy Bray

This week was a crucial one for our class, as we completed the process of visiting organizations at their sites.  We learned more about the mission and purpose each organization seeks to fulfill, and we experienced the atmosphere their work creates. We also began to more concretely envision how our grants could make a difference in the Waco community.

It was a meaningful week, but a difficult one; our team has started to realize what a monumental task we have before us. Though we have yet to break down all the logistics, there doesn’t yet seem to be a way to make our grant stretch far enough to accomplish all the good we’d like to do, and to meet all the needs of the incredible organizations we’ve had the privilege of visiting.

The earlier part of the semester has prepared us for this moment; we knew that there would be tough calls to make. There was no way, however, that our discussions could have prepared us for how personal our grant-making journey would become. We’ve started to see Waco through the eyes of our organizations. We see its potential, its movement, its struggles and triumphs. An alignment has developed, and our optimistic visions are now more unified with their projects.

Our reality has set in: that more money, time, resources, people would still not meet all of the demands of a growing community and a necessitous world. There will always be someone else we could help and more good we could do. Taken in a negative light, this deficit would be quite discouraging; it would run philanthropists in a race against need that never ends. If taken in a positive, better light, the continuous room for improvement means that there will always be ways in which people can form new connections through mutual effort to make things better.

The incredible impact this class is supposed to have is not intended to be limited to one semester alone, or to one team and one grant. As fledgling philanthropists, the inspiration we receive from this course should be carried forward into our lives and careers. We can continue to be change-makers and grant-givers, but only if we continue to be dissatisfied with the problems we encounter.

Knowing that our work does not stop at the end of this class, we will make our grants at the end of this semester with peace of heart and mind. Even if we cannot do all the good we’d like, we can be confident that the good we’ll do is deliberate, strategic, and thoughtful. We will each plan to accomplish more with our lives, and we will hold each other accountable for our commitments. We will watch as our grants make tangible change in their recipient organizations and in the Waco community, and it will be the first evidence that we can carry with us that our altruism makes a difference.

Our reality will be then be changed; the amount that we can give in time, talent, or treasure may not address all of the world’s problems, but it will seem sufficient.

“Bringin’ Sexy Back”

By Andrew Mackenzie, BA 2018

We call ourselves the “Justice League.” The name suits our attitude towards the focus of our philanthropy (and our characteristic melodrama). As a group of aspiring lawyers/moral philosophers, we consider access to justice to be of the most serious importance. To require that an individual be given their due, regardless of circumstance, is to affirm their humanity; to exercise a right is an expression of dignity. To ensure justice for those who have had their dignity obscured in their own eyes through poverty, abuse, discrimination, or disregard is even more important. It is a reminder that dignity is immutable, that to be a human being is to be imageo Dei.

I was surprised, therefore, to learn that we are the first group to concentrate on justice initiatives since the Philanthropy Lab came to Baylor. After spending some time in the philanthropic universe, we discovered that foundations and individual philanthropists often look to invest their resources in projects. Not just any projects, mind you, but fashionable projects. Sexy projects. This is all fine and good; I do not intend to use this space to critique the innovator or the marketer. However, we must remember that in order for new ideas to be tried, we can not neglect the basics. It would be irresponsible to build a skylight without first tending to the leaky roof.

My Church is currently in the process of doing repairs, or, as my pastor likes to say, “doin’ maintenance.” One aspect of tending to the basics is covering overhead. Keeping the lights on isn’t sexy, but neither is working in the dark. We have to take care of our utilities before we can utilize our creativity. Again, though, paying the bills is not the subject of this post.

Many of the organizations that we encounter focus on helping people recover from injustice. We have spoken with many passionate people who help victims of injustices ranging from institutional violences such as economic and social discrimination to criminal violences such as domestic abuse. These organizations measure their success by the number of people whose lives they are able to help get back on track, and they can rightly take pride in their numbers.

However, an even greater success would be measured by the injustices that never occur. It would be measured by tenants who are never manipulated by their landlords, because parties to the contract have a firm grasp on their legal rights and responsibilities. It would be measured by the immigrant who is never harassed or taken advantage of, because he has access to legal representation and guidance on the naturalization process. It would be measured by the job applicant who is never denied an interview because he couldn’t figure out how to expunge his criminal record or renew his driver’s license ID.

But this kind of success isn’t measured, it can’t be. It is unseen, constituted not by victims, but by the everyday citizen quietly living out the dignity of their own humanity. Such success is not fashionable, it is not even seen. But, in the profound words of Walter Mitty, beautiful things don’t ask for attention.

“The Arc of the Moral Universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” -MLKJ

The Excitement of Site Visits

By: Savannah Newman, BBA 2017

[Editor’s note: Due to a logistical error, this is posting a few days after it was written]

Tomorrow we begin our site visits to the top organizations that our group envisions giving our grants to. During these site visits, our group plans to get vital answers to lingering questions we have about the organizations and the projects they are asking for us to help fund. I am excited about both getting to see these organizations in their home environment, as well as getting to have longer conversations about what they see this money going towards. Each one of the organizations that my group will be visiting has a unique personality, and I am eager to see how each individual organization interacts with us on their home turf.

Just last night, I was asked by a family friend about my class schedule this semester and which of my classes were my favorite. Without hesitation, I said this Philanthropy and the Public Good. There are many reasons that I have loved this class and what we have been doing this semester, but I think the number one reason has been the autonomy over where we want the grant money to go. I feel empowered as a college student to be able to go into meetings with these lifetime non-profit practitioners and have “real life” conversations about where we are possibly going to give real money. This process is real life not a simulation. Alongside the feeling of empowerment, is a sense of duty. I know that these are organizations that are doing good work in the world and my time, energy, and focus this semester has the potential to help these organizations further their missions and to reach their goal.

So, I go into this upcoming week with excitement but also the knowledge that the decisions from this point on are just going to get harder and less black and white. The easy decisions are long gone and the “right” choice is not as clear. This week will be a lot of fun, learning more about each organization and the amazing things that they are all doing in the Waco community, and at the end of it there will be really hard decisions to make moving forward. I am learning though, that this is what choices in the non-profit sector look like. There are so many great organizations that are all doing great things but there is only so much money to go around. I would even say this is decision making for any organization both public and private as well, but this is the part that I have loved about this class. I have loved that the students are the ones getting to figure out what is the right choice through their own discernment.

I look forward to this upcoming week and the things we will be learning and the decisions we will be making knowing we are one step closer to getting to put money in the hands of these organizations.

The Strategic Journey

Harper McGee, BBA 2018

At the beginning of the semester, each student wrote a paper around the issues that he or she felt passionate about and wanted to focus on this semester. The focus of my paper was that many children were not receiving full opportunities to succeed and lead a fulfilling life. Although my overarching theme was opportunities for children, it involved the topics of education, poverty, and intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Based on these papers, Professor Hogue divided the class into different teams comprised of students with common interests. My team quickly realized that we all wanted to focus on helping children. However, some members of my team also emphasized the importance of arts and culture. Although before this course, I had never fully understood the importance of arts and culture, through research, I soon realized just how important arts and culture in a child’s life could be. A lack of arts education could lead to lower performance in school, and poor education could lead to an increase risk of poverty, but poverty could lead to a lack of arts education. This vicious cycle is important and is a reality in Waco. Once everyone on my team discovered this importance, we decided that our focus would be on arts and culture.

Next, my team met many incredible organizations that were changing the arts and culture scene in Waco. Yet because there were so many incredible organizations and because we only had a limited amount of money to grant, this created a problem. Each organization was doing good in the community in very unique ways, and it seemed impossible to narrow it down.

Since all of the organizations seemed worthy of a grant, my team decided to narrow in on the organizations whose goals we felt best aligned with our original goal of not only developing arts and culture in Waco, but also helping children in poverty. We went forward with the organizations that were actively working to help expand arts education to children in poverty in Waco.

Now that my team narrowed our focus based on the organization’s goals, we are trying to learn more about the specific projects that each organization is proposing. We are doing this by following the logic model described in The Essence of Strategic Giving by Peter Frumkin. Through the logic model my team is able to think through the outputs, or logistics, and the long-term outcomes of the project we are granting. Even though the organizations seem to align with my team’s goals, we need to make sure that each of the project’s potential outcomes also align.

Although we still have many unanswered questions about the specific projects being proposed, I am confident that we will learn all that we need to learn in the next couple of weeks in order to be strategic in our giving. I am very excited to see where this process takes us.

Character Matters

By: Clara Binder, BS 2017

Doing philanthropy well requires much of us. If this course were simply reading about philanthropy or researching wicked problems, perhaps a person could escape without giving much. In the realm of the theoretical, the choice is ours whether we invest ourselves in these ideas and think carefully about them. Researching and paper-writing do not necessarily require significant investment of self.

Now, though, we have moved out of the realm of the theoretical and must start making decisions: which organizations do we most want to support? (Alternatively, which organizations would not be as good a use of the grant money given to us?) We have logic models and carefully-chosen readings to support us in the process, but even these cannot carry us through. What matters in these conversations is not just the knowledge we have but the persons we are.

We need wisdom and the ability to communicate. We recognize that this course offers us the choice between many good options; this makes it more difficult to discern the best of these. Wisdom here looks like viewing our initial preferences through the lenses of the resources that we have in the readings and in those around us. My initial preferences – gut instincts, perhaps – have been developed through my own experiences and knowledge, and they may not match those of the other members of my group. We all, then, need the ability to state not just which choice we believe is better but also the ability to articulate why we believe this.

This wisdom requires humility. A firm belief in my own intelligence and superiority has no place here; rather, careful listening will allow us as a group to come to understanding and agreement, sharing our own resources of experience and knowledge with one another as we make decisions. Additionally, we need humility as we interact with the organizations we are considering for a grant: there is so much about Waco, about the work of a social sector organization, and about people in general that I do not know, and a willingness to learn from these organizations and from one another is vital.

We need patience here. This process is long, and it is challenging. With so much we do not know, we struggle to communicate clearly with one another and with social sector organizations. Often the questions we ask do not provide us with the answers we most desire. Sometimes our very ignorance keeps us both from understanding an answer and from understanding that we do not understand. Making wise decisions and communicating clearly through it all is a challenge.

Which is why we need commitment. If this were just about a class, perhaps it would not matter so much. We could be content with a decent decision and move on with our college experience. But this is not just a class; this is about the place where we live and the people who live in it. The understanding that this is so much greater than us compels us to see this experiment in philanthropy through to the end, and it demands that we be people of character – wise, humble, patient, and committed – who give our best.

Equipped to Do Good

By: Caroline Ragsdale, BBA 2018

Prior to this class, I had thought about my desire to be generous. However, I had not considered how to begin, let alone how to go about strategically giving. I am thankful to be in this class because it is equipping me to do just that. The amount of good needed is overwhelming. There are so many different philanthropies that alleviate different levels needs. For example, an organization that feeds the hungry may be more urgent than an arts organization that educates and provides joy. Yet joy satisfies a very important need. The debates over what good is most important cause inefficiency and take away from the purpose of philanthropy – to benefit people. Additionally, many people have heard stories about good intentions that caused more harm than good. This instills a fear that encourages people to write-off philanthropy as worthy of their time and resources. We need to change this outlook on philanthropy.

I was honestly overwhelmed when I left pitch day. My group had heard from eight incredible organizations. With a finite amount to allocate, I was probably more sad by the idea of saying no to some organizations than I was excited for the good that was to come. While I still wish that our resources were not limited, I am now so excited for the projects that we can contribute to. Through examining the goals that our group had previously determined, we have narrowed to four groups that seem to fit what we want to accomplish. This week we meet with each organization and continue to wrestle with which projects we should and can afford to grant. I am excited to observe the organizations on their own sites and to talk with leaders more about how funds can best serve them.

I am beginning to apply what we are learning in class to my own life, as I am trying to determine how I can be generous with my own resources. With the freedom to choose organizations that are domestic and global come even more options. There are so many good organizations doing good and necessary things, yet I cannot spread resources among all of them. It simply would not be practical or helpful. Instead I am learning to put my resources towards best things. That is not to say that one organization is the best; it merely means that some projects will fit my mission and goals better than others. A couple of options that I am considering include sponsoring a student in Uganda or contributing to a school for refugees in northern Iraq. I can already see how being strategic and determining a mission statement will be beneficial in my life.

The Logical Model

By Ashley Alston, BBA 2018

It has been two weeks since “Pitch Day,” and the teams are finally making the difficult decision of which organizations to do site visits with.  My team, whose primary focus is on health, poverty, and nutrition education, has narrowed the search down to three organizations. During this process we took time to consider the vision of the organization and compare it to the goals we hope to accomplish by giving this grant.

In class this week, each team built a logical model for each non-profit they were considering.  We based this model off the ideas of Peter Frumkin, who described the model to be a formal explication of how a philanthropic intervention proposes to achieve its ends.  The model consists of the three theories: the theory of leverage, the theory of change, and the theory of scale.  These theories help paint a clear picture of what our goals and objectives are as donors. In class there was an emphasis placed on breaking down the theory of change. We learned that the theory of change is further broken down into three categories: activity, outputs and outcomes. The activity category breaks down what the organization plans to do if given the grant. The output category focuses on immediate results given the plan proposed during the activity category is successful. Lastly, the outcome category demonstrates the long term effects of goods and services being delivered and output being met.

After fully understanding each category, our groups went through every organization and discussed their main activity, what their immediate results would be, and the overall outcome they wish to achieve.  As we continued to narrow down organizations based off of their visions compared to our goals, we were able to use the logical model to help us decide which ones we wanted to further pursue. Each group focused on three or four organizations they wished to meet to explore further collaboration.  We are in the process of contacting the directors of each organization and setting up site visits. This will help us better understand each of our potential grant recipients vision. I am excited to continue learning about how to strategically give to others while also having the opportunity to make a significant impact on both an organization and those lives it touches.

Waco: A City of Hope

By: Micah Furlong, BA 2018

Like many Baylor students, I found myself pretty quickly in the ‘Baylor Bubble.’ I-35 on one side and the six-lane LaSalle on the other insulate our little community from the realities of everyday life for the rest of Waco. We are surrounded by most of the businesses relevant to our daily lives, and though many students have cars, they most often drive from home to class or church, but never venture far beyond our little world. But in my time here, my work with the Baylor Democrats, my church, and my synagogue, I have been able to see a side of Waco that many Baylor students never see.

Our little bubble is a haven of prosperity in a city with many challenges.

On the other side of I-35 are huge swaths of affordable apartment complexes, built to house an ever-growing population of people with limited financial means. In North Waco, there are mixed neighborhoods, where nice homes are often just a block or two away from run-down and abandoned buildings. The main thoroughfares often avoid great displays of poverty, and from the sizes of the church buildings around our little city, you would expect the city to be prosperous. But just across the river, a vibrant minority community lives in old homes, threatened by the aging buildings and insufficient funds to repair them. Whether or not we intend to, we as the Waco community hide our poverty well–or at least make it easy for us to avoid the burden on our conscience.

But that is not to say that those who have seen that side of our community have not taken up the task of addressing it; in fact, the great beauty of Waco is that in many ways, it is facing this challenge head-on. Non-profits like Keep Waco Beautiful ensure that our riverbanks and lake are kept in pristine condition and are somehow able to have 16,000 volunteers every year! Mission Waco fights against chronic homelessness, and in a partnership with the city, has eliminated functional chronic homelessness here. New non-profits like Unbound and the Cove work to prevent trafficking in the city by targeting the most vulnerable and making sure they are safe. Well-established institutions like Caritas are moving from the old model of charity as solely providing basic needs, and moved towards the work of transforming lives by paying the fees keeping many from achieving technical training for better jobs. These non-profits are joined by local churches who seek to make Waco a better place, out of the sheer love of our community.

So many of the beautiful things going on at Baylor need to be made part of the greater Waco community. We who have been given this great university have a responsibility to open up our eyes to the problems facing our community. Even if we might only be here for a few years, by partnering with longer-term institutions, we are able to make a real, positive impact, and bring new life to the city that gives us the ground to begin our own.

 

Process of Illumination

By: Justin Pittman, BBA 2017

While learning about eight wonderful nonprofit organizations recently, it was easy to get carried away in imagining endless possibilities for philanthropy with all of them. Each project we were presented with had merit and contributed towards causes my team and I believed were important and compelling. Every individual we met spoke directly from the heart, conveying a captivating passion for their work, the city of Waco, and humanity in general. Regardless of the manner in which each organization I heard from chooses to bring about positive change in Waco, I am sincerely impressed with all of them and saw direct links between the money we could potentially contribute and the benefits the organization and Waco at large would receive.

Last Thursday, however, reality struck. $50,000 is a great deal of money, but it’s not nearly enough to fulfill all the funding needs that the nonprofits we have corresponded with are requesting. Although the trees that adorn our campus are quite lovely, money certainly doesn’t grow on them. Therefore, we have begun the process of moving from receptiveness to all the options presented to us towards considering how to allocate our resources as strategically and mindfully as possible. This involves making some difficult decisions in order to narrow our list of possible organizations with the eventual goal of making sizable impacts on each organization we end up giving to.

With every organization being perfectly worthy of grants to support their mission, how are these decisions supposed to be made? After all, we are all newcomers to grantmaking and don’t have experience with weighing criteria between different grant proposals. What we do have to offer is a group consensus of how we’re hoping to transform Waco through our monetary gifts. Because we were given ample opportunities for self-examination of our values and beliefs from the beginning, we all entered this process with a solid sense of personal identity. I was fortunate enough to be placed in a team in which it was immediately apparent what our mutual areas of interest were. By examining how well each organization’s ambitions align with my team’s collective vision, the screening process we used to shrink our list of potential grant recipients was much less painful than I anticipated.

An exciting development took place towards the end of Thursday’s session when three of our class’s four teams, including my own, discovered we all had mutual interest in the same organization. It was amazing seeing the classroom suddenly transform from four isolated pods into two groups, one large and one small. Before we even knew what hit us, the money on the table tripled from $10,000 in each group to $30,000. However, I know this may come at a price. With each team possessing their own set of philanthropic goals, the distribution of my team’s funds would no longer exclusively be in our hands if we decide to pursue this. If my team does undertake the opportunity to collaborate with other teams, we will need to ensure that our priorities are reflected in the grant that is written alongside the other teams’ priorities in an equitable fashion.

As we continue moving towards the ultimate goal of granting real money to deserving organizations, I hope to confront challenging decisions not as a roadblock to be overcome but as a passageway into better opportunities. Choosing from a pool of qualified organizations isn’t easy, but we’re already starting to generate new ideas for giving that weren’t visible to us when the range of possibilities was so expansive. Because of this, I think the next few weeks will feel less like an excruciating process of elimination and more like a process of illumination that sparks our creativity and leads us towards using our gifts as wisely and effectively as possible.

To Whom Much is Given, Much is Required

Amy Adams BBA 2018

They say that to whom much is given, much is required. I have heard this my whole life, but I assumed that what was required was just generosity in monetary giving. What I never knew and didn’t expect was just how much truly goes in to making philanthropy effective.

In the past, my efforts have mainly been limited to volunteerism a couple of times a week. I love doing this, however as a business major I have felt that there must be an even better way to help people that uses both my time and talents. Through the philanthropy lab, we have learned about strategic giving and how it is an art form to be able to give not only generously, but also tactfully in a way that maximizes limited resources. I have enjoyed seeing how this class combines my time and talents to make philanthropy more effective through planning and strategizing.

One thing we did recently was called “Pitch Day,” during which we have a brief amount of time to interview representatives from up to eight philanthropic organizations. As the different representatives discussed their organizations and the hope they have for the grants, I was able to see how much they put in to philanthropy, as well. These people were passionate about helping; so much that they had made sacrifices of themselves in order to do what they felt was needed in the community. Some had left other jobs or put careers on hold; some had started from the ground, creating a new organization where they saw a need; some had come out of retirement when called on to serve; and some were still students that sought out a way to help other students however possible. It blew me away the amount of passion, talent, intelligence, and drive we saw in only a couple hours of interviewing. Additionally, these people were only representatives of larger organizations that were backed by sometimes hundreds more employees and volunteers that held the same devotion to the organization and the good that they aimed to do.

It has continued to open my eyes to how much is put into doing philanthropy well as we have debriefed from Pitch Day. As we collaborated and discussed, I saw how even within our class there had been so much effort and research put in. However, none of us could have done all of this and sufficiently represented all of these organizations on our own. It took the efforts of the whole class to truly get a picture of what all is going on in the philanthropic sector of our community. Each of us had invested ourselves in deeply in learning about just a few organizations, but by our work we were able to contribute to a larger idea of what options we had and how we could best use our resources. We still have not reached decisions– in fact we have merely presented options– but it is intriguing to evaluate the broadness and diversity of the not for profit sector.

Aristotle once said, “To give away money is an easy matter and in any man’s power. But to decide to whom to give it and how large and when, and for what purpose and how, is neither in every man’s power nor an easy matter.” I think the truth of these words becomes more evident every day as we continue working towards deciding how to give out our grants. It takes a lot of time, talent, diligence, and collaboration, but we know that all the effort and anticipation make will it all the more meaningful, because for us, given much, this is what is required.