By Diana Castillo, BBA 2017
We are so close! The end of the semester is approaching soon and our class is in the process of finalizing our grant decisions f. It is not only exciting, but also overwhelming. There are so many great partnerships with the different organizations and so many great options, yet the money is limited and the time is running out. This past week our class has been working on logic models for possible outcomes and on the class collaboration grant. Both things are important because understanding what a logic model is and how it can help in our process, then impacts how we choose to collaborate as a class and have the greatest impact with our grant.
According to The Essence of Strategic Giving, a “logic model [is] a formal explication of how a philanthropic intervention proposes to achieve its ends” (Frumkin 51). Within a logic model there are three theories: change, leverage, and scale. The theory of change is focused on the activities that are in play, outputs of what we would give, and outcomes of our decisions. Here, “the theory of change. . . commits the donor to a set or class of giving targets. The theory of leverage focuses on inputs, or the process for how we will decide to give all our grant to an organization or part of it. This part is key because here “leverage. . . increases the effectiveness of [our] giving” (Frumkin 53). Lastly, the theory of scale is focused on the broad public impact that each of our grants would have on the community of Waco. This theory “increases the impact of [the] giving” process (Frumkin 53).
When understanding what a logic model is, then we can go back to the planning boards and get working on some theories for how things could work out for each of the class’s groups. Our class has recently met up and made some big decisions about our collaborative grant. Having made those decisions helped our individual groups have a better perspective as to how we will be working within our immediate set of organizations that we are partnering with. With my group we interviewed about 8 organization at pitch day, we then went on site visits with 4 organizations, and now things get hard. There is definitely an organization that has won all our hearts and that makes it hard when you have monetary limitations and as a team of 4 students,we are only able to help a few of the organizations that we all so passionately want to help and fund. Although there is one in our hearts that we are willing to advocate for, the other three are also in our hearts and we are fighting hard to work out some logic models and make some other connections that would also benefit them. Overall, there is so much to do, so much to decide, and so much to give out, yet so little time. These last few weeks are crucial and I am hopeful for what is to come.