Category Archives: Uncategorized

Last week, we wrapped up class which means we will be presenting our grants to organizations at the end-of-semester reception in just a few short days! To echo what several others have said, this semester flew by so quickly. It is amazing when you step back and realize how much we have done in such a seemingly short period of time.

We had only one reading for class last week and I think it was my favorite of the semester. The chapter focused on the “Ethics and Metaphysics” of generosity and asks the reader a number of deep, thought-provoking questions. It mentions the inherent smallness of a human being and their actions relative to the universe, but that humans are the only thing in the universe with the powers to know and love. That is what differentiates us from the sun, the earth, and even animals. It represents untapped potential and infinite possibilities. It states that we ourselves, not money, are the most pivotal instruments of philanthropy because of what we uniquely possess – in particular, our dreams and imaginations. This seems to be a recurring theme of the semester because you can throw as much money as you want at an organization but if they do not have passionate leaders with dreams that can carry it forward, no amount of money will do them any good. Below I’d like to share my favorite quote from this selection:

Perhaps part of our mission in life is not merely to give what we have to people in need, but to draw out from the world and the people around us goodness that would otherwise remain invisible. In the Genesis account, God says, “Let there be light,” human beings are said to be made in God’s image, and God inspects his handiwork and pronounces it good. What if our mission is a semi-divine one – to bring goodness to light? Even if we are not the light’s source, we can still act as lenses, refracting what Jesus intended in calling human beings the light of the world.

                                                                                     – We Make a Life by What We Give

This is a very interesting take on what our job is as Christ-followers and philanthropists, to not only spread the light of Christ to the world but also to draw out that light from other places, to bring light to areas that many may not have realized even had it within them.

If you turn on the news or check social media, you are likely to hear and see an imbalanced proportion of negativity. After continually watching this and feeding into that mindset, you are likely to feel that little good is left in the world and today’s society. After this semester and being able to see how SO MANY organizations (including a great number that I had never heard of before!) are doing such unique, impactful work in Waco alone, I know this is far from the truth. These organizations are doing their best in acting as lenses for this good work, showing their community (and beyond) the light and goodness that still exists in the world. I believe that we as a class this semester have done this as well in our work, and going forward, I hope to continue this practice in my life each and every day, to discover – and be – the good that exists in the world and to bring that goodness to light.

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.

By: Hallie Hillebrand, BBA/MAcc 2018

This past week we have been intently focused on decision-making. These are very important decisions because they will determine the organizations that we will be moving forward to perform site visits with. Our group has narrowed down our pool of 11 to 4 and to do so, we had to make a lot of tough choices. There are so many great organizations doing such great work in Waco and other places but we know we only have a limited amount to allocate. In making our decisions, we focused on a number of key concepts, detailed below.

The first thing we were looking for in an organization was passion. If the person running the organization doesn’t have a passion and a drive for their organization/cause and the energy to ensure it runs smoothly, how can we except it to be very effective? A second critical item is determining whether they are an effective leader and if they are able to clearly communicate their mission and vision for the organization/project. Again, if they cannot do this, it’s a sign that they might not be very effective. A third thing was how permanent the project is. We were still very open to proposals that were temporary in nature, but the projects we all seemed to be most drawn to were ones that will have a more long-lasting effect for the population they serve and the community as whole, along with a proven track record of success in this area. Keeping this in mind, we still had to eliminate some that met all of these criteria due to our limited funds.

This week we also turned in the next chapter of our Briefing Book, in which we provided information on the organizations we met with on Pitch Day as well as an answer to the topic of what obligations are implied in a grant giver/receiver relationship. Our answer drew heavily from readings that demonstrated both positive as well as negative obligations/relationships. A quote that kept coming up in these readings was “He who has the gold makes the rules”, also known as the “Golden Rule of Grantsmanship” according to some. This is in stark contrast with what our team views as the type of relationship we are seeking with the organizations we are moving forward with. We are interested in eliminating any sort of power dynamic that is common in this type of relationship, and instead desire to have an intentional partnership in which both our team as well as the organizations are clear on each other’s focuses and desires. We plan to dedicate ourselves fully to the partnership, whether we are able to fund their project or not, and hope that they will do the same. We don’t want to be the ones making the rules, rather, we hope to collaboratively eliminate any “rules” and go at it together, with passion and a clear vision for their project.

We will be going to our site visits this week with this in mind and hope to learn more about each organization’s passion and vision as well as their goals for our partnership.

Jacq Kasemsri, BBA 2018.

As the excitement from Pitch Day wears off, our class is now faced with the difficult next step: narrowing the organizations down. My group met with eight wonderful organizations and that’s not even counting the people that the other three groups met with. Each meeting on Pitch Day made us realize how many great philanthropies there are in Waco, but unfortunately our class has a finite amount of money to give.

In order to narrow our options down, our current readings are emphasizing the importance of making sure our contribution is impactful. One of our most recent readings from Peter Frumkins’s book, The Essence of Strategic Giving, focused on the task of the donor to know the ultimate goal of their giving. Each organization we talked to on pitch day came into the meeting with definitive projects that had end goals. However, it’s our job as donors to assess whether the donation they are asking for will contribute to them getting to their end goal. Not only do we have to analyze which contributions will be help an organization meet their end goal, but we must assess the end goal itself. There are many aspects of an ultimate goal that we have to consider. One is the feasibility of the objective; whether or not it can actually be achieved. There are many factors that can help or hinder the goals that were presented to us. One organization we talked to has been successful in 22 other countries and the Waco location will be their first site in the US. However, they face the obstacle of not having government programs here, which is how other locations have reached their target group. Another aspect we as donors must consider, is the effectiveness of the organization’s objective. A big theme we’ve talked about in class is generativity. Philanthropy emphasizes that we must not give to simply satisfy a need, but instead give to build a better community. A proverb that helps illustrate the concept of generativity is “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. As donors we are faced with the task of assessing the feasibility and generativity of each organizations mission.
In addition to discussing the importance of the organizations’ goals, we also have harped on the fact that we ourselves must have goals we want to achieve to through giving. Supposedly if we do both, we will be able to narrow down the organizations we want to donate to. I hope this will be the case, but after pitch day it seems like it’s going to be a hard process. It’s amazing how many philanthropies are doing great work for the Waco community. Regardless, with our budget we cannot help every organization. And so our task of narrowing them down begins.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to a technical glitch, this is posting 10 days after it was written]

Ana O’Quin, BSW 2020

This week of class has been the hardest yet, not because of workload but because of our goal to start narrowing down organizations that we have decided to move forward with in our grant giving. “Chapter 2” of our Briefing Book is due this Sunday, and by then we hope to start visiting the sites of social sector organizations that we have chosen to give to. Yet choosing which organizations to visit has proven to be extremely challenging. When choosing, we use this algorithm: if we have a 50 percent or more chance of moving forward with them, we conduct a site visit.

Everything in me wants to say that I have a 100 percent chance of moving forward with every organization we have encountered. But I know that with 10,000 dollars, or with any amount of money for that matter, it is impossible to say yes to everyone. Yet these difficult discussions are the heart of philanthropy; as philanthropists, this semester, we are challenged to take the resources we have, no matter how big or small, and make the greatest amount of impact we can with them. My group has realized that no matter where we give our money, all these organizations are working towards the same goal: the bettering of the Waco community and in the process our greater society.

To try and start to make a seemingly impossible decision possible, my group operated on a few guidelines while making our decisions.

• First, we ensured that we had collected as much knowledge as we could. We meticulously and thoroughly researched the issues we had chosen to focus on: sex trafficking, failures within the foster care system, and lack of education readiness. We learned as much as we could about their implications in Waco, Texas, and worldwide. Next we spent large amounts of time learning about the organizations that are working within these spheres. We spent time during “pitch-day” asking the heads of these organizations prepared questions to try to understand them even better.
• Next we accepted the fact that no organization can permanently “fix” the issues that we are trying to tackle. As wicked problems, they are deeply rooted and intertwined, and will take years of collaboration to fix. These social sector organizations, can, however, move the needle on issues. Our eyes were out for organizations that were aiming to prevent, not simply reduce, needs.
• Innovation was another key factor as we looked for organizations. These organizations don’t just “give a man a fish”, but “teach a man to fish.” More so, they are revolutionizing the whole fishing industry.
• We looked for organizations that matched our passions with the needs of the community. Philanthropy is not about the grantee and the recipient, but about recognizing that both grant giver and receiver can learn and gain from each other.
• Within the organizations, we looked for a few key factors: clear mission and vision, passion and organization within the executive director, skilled decision making, diverse board members, and financial sustainability.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to a technical glitch, this is posting 10 days after it was written]

Katie Yarbro, SWO, 2017

From the beginning our class has known the task at hand and end goal–to financially gift a local non-profit with the purpose of assisting the good and hard work they are doing. With this in mind, we all began the semester with excitement to jump in and get our hands dirty! But before we could do this we spent weeks reading materials related to grant-making in order to be best prepared for the decisions we would make. While this was not the most enjoyable, it was definitely necessary prior to Pitch Day interviews.

Pitch Day was a great success that allowed us to hear first-hand from passionate experts about the work being done to eradicate the wicked problems that permeate our city and society at large. My group in particular is most interested in food insecurity.  It was fascinating to hear each grant proposal because it allowed us to learn more about the lens through which each organization sees the problem and also their particular approach to solving the problem.

As you can imagine, following Pitch Day came multiple lengthy discussions among our class about the intricacies of doing the most good with our allotted money. The challenge really began when it came down to sifting through the various organizations with our groups. The difficulty resided in the fact that we enjoyed and support every group we had the opportunity to meet, however, we realize we do not have the capacity to meet the needs of all.

Since our grouping, my group’s highest priority has been generativity. We desire for our grant(s) to not only impact us and our grantees, but also future generations from both sides of the relationship. We believe the most good is exemplified when a gift is granted and then expanded on through other resources to create something bigger and thus, more effective and impactful. We have identified several organizations who align with our group values and we are excited to take the next step in site visits, so stay tuned!

Caroline Ragsdale, BBA 2018

I have learned much from my class, my group, and myself this semester. I enjoyed working alongside students from different areas of Baylor. As a business major, I rarely have classes with students from the Honors College or School of Education. The insights and ideas that students from diverse majors brought into the class were valuable and I cannot imagine the class without them. My group worked really well together. We learned as we talked to organizations and made difficult decisions. I am thankful that we had similar interests for the purpose of this class and that we all agreed in the end on which grants to fund. The decisions were hard to make individually, so debating would have been even more difficult. As we walked through this entire process, I was constantly prompted to decide how I would continue to be generous after this class. The Journey to Generosity experience was inspiring – especially because we were able to discuss generosity in the context of faith. Moving forward, I will continue to reference the curriculum for ideas and encouragement.

Prior to this semester, I was mostly unaware of the grant-making process. I have been fortunate to experience the process from both sides over the past five months. I was the chair for an All-University event this semester that raised funding for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. I had to apply for grants to cover the costs of a $30,000 event, while also seeking other outlets to raise funds for the actual philanthropy. This gave me a deeper understanding of what non-profit organizations have to do before their purposes and projects can be implemented. While the process and scale of the grants that I applied for were different than those of the organizations that we met with, I gained an appreciation for the difficult work that accompanies financing an organization. I am thankful that I got to be part of both sides of the grant process within this one semester because I was able to apply what I learned and experienced in class to the work I was doing for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Today culminated a wonderful semester of learning about and experiencing philanthropy. Dr. Hogue, Dr. Garland, and Lucy Bray spoke eloquently about the importance of our work and how we went about it. Awarding the checks to the non-profit organizations made this afternoon joyful and special. When I began my undergraduate experience at Baylor, I did not expect to have an opportunity to learn about giving or to be able to give as a student. Furthermore, I never imagined that I would experience giving in a class! I am so thankful for the purpose and generosity of the Philanthropy Lab and for a community at Baylor that fosters a culture of generosity.

Harper McGee, BBA 20118

One word that I would use to describe our giving ceremony this week would be joy! It was the day that our class has been waiting and working for all semester. We were finally able to present the giant checks to the different organizations that we chose to give grants to. It was a day of excitement and celebration for all the good that is happening in Waco, and as I looked around the room, I was struck by the pure magnitude of all of the good that was going on in Waco.

My group, the arts and culture group, was able to give to the Youth Chorus of Central Texas (YCCT), Creative Waco, and Cultural Arts of Waco. These three groups were so deserving of our resources and their projects aligned with our group’s original goal of funding projects and organizations that focused on bringing arts education to children in poverty. We were able to give equipment and scholarships to the YCCT. Although this was a seemingly smaller amount of money, it will drastically change the organization. We were also able to fully fund the playing cards project for Creative Waco. This project will inspire and pay 52 Waco artists, and all of the proceeds selling these playing cards will go into the AMP fund which will give out grants to other arts and culture organizations. This allows me to have peace of mind knowing that even though we cannot fund all of the organizations that we would like to, we are able to help them in a small way through this fund. Finally, we were able to give funding to the Cultural Arts of Waco for the plans for their new building on Elm Avenue. This soon to be art gallery and studio will aim to educate the Waco youth about the arts and to inspire the next generation. It will provide a safe and creative outlet for so many children that would not have one otherwise.

As I looked at all of the good in Waco that I was able to be a part of, I was also in awe of all that I learned along the way. As my professor, Dr. Andy Hogue, continually points out, in this class our experience is our textbook. Through this class I learned many things including just the basics of what the grant process looks like, what the important questions are to ask these organizations, that we can give more than just money, and that sometimes a small amount of money can go far in an organization.

Although those are all great things to learn, I think the main thing that I learned through this process was how vital arts and culture organizations are in a community. So many times in impoverished areas, like parts of Waco, arts education is the first thing to be dropped in the school system. However, the exposure to arts and culture at a young age is imperative to a child’s ability to think creatively and a direct link to a his or her success in the future.

It was an honor to take this class, and I am forever grateful for the lessons that I have learned.

By: Clara Binder, BS 2017

One of our main aims this semester has been to explore the idea of mindful, strategic generosity: what does it look like, and how do we get there?

But what we have experienced and learned through our philanthropy course this semester cannot be fully described as generosity. Generosity is giving of time or energy, more than could reasonably be expected (according to a cursory Google search). We have certainly seen this. The Philanthropy Lab has given financially to us in order to see this program take flight. We as a class have been able to turn and give that money to local social sector organizations. Those social sector organizations will now use these grants to give to others, whether that means the food insecure or the middle-schooler struggling to read or the community member who needs more beauty in his or her life. Generosity is so present here.

There is more, however, than generosity at play here. We can be generous without truly looking at the people to whom we give – but that has not been our experience. Especially as we have interacted with various social sector organizations, what we have experienced from them is better described as hospitality. We have been welcomed into their dreams for the good that their organizations can do and the good that Waco can be. We have been welcomed into offices, onto farms and construction sites. We have been given time and thoughtful answers and firm handshakes.

I hope and pray that the hospitality that we have received is reflected back in the hospitality we are able to give. I hope that today’s awards ceremony was not simply a time of networking and the giving of big checks but instead a moment when the people behind the organizations to whom we have given grants felt welcomed into our Baylor community. I hope that we communicated that our interest in these organizations does not stop with the grant, but that our involvement with and care for these organizations (and the people they work with and serve) continues beyond the scope of this class.

For those of us whose giving is motivated by a desire to be like Jesus Christ, giving is not enough. As Christians, we are not called to a generosity that gives of time and money and then disappears.  Jesus and the early church were known for welcoming all members of society and for freely sharing with one another. A hospitality that welcomes and embraces people who are not necessarily like us is not a wild dream but rather an expectation. As we give to local organizations, and as we offer hospitality to those who offer hospitality to the neediest in our community, we reflect not only the hospitality we have received from these groups but also the hospitality of Jesus.

I want to reflect a mindful, strategic generosity. But I want it to go further — becoming a true hospitality, not just giving but welcoming.

Paul Kiekhaefer, BBA ‘17

This Friday evening, our class participated in a “Journey of Generosity” in order to more deeply explore why we are engaging in this project at all. Full disclosure: my idea of a perfect Friday afternoon/evening does not usually include a class retreat talking about serious issues. However, the experience ended up being a bright spot of the week and an excellent refresher in our core values as we cross the midpoint of our semester.

For the last few weeks, our groups have been visiting the sites of the respective organizations which we have decided to continue considering for our grants. In choosing which groups we wanted to continue with the process, we also needed to choose those who we would not be giving a grant. This process made for difficult decisions and deliberating, and I found that it was easy for me to get caught in the trap of focusing on statistics and the minutiae of the projects in which the organizations sought to engage using our grant. Turning away organizations with passionate individuals and important missions that serve populations in need was hard, but there was no way around it.

The process left me feeling slightly despondent about the whole process of philanthropy. While at first, our fifty thousand dollar grant seems like a lot of money (one whole year of Baylor!), very quickly I realized that it is a drop in the bucket of what is needed  to help support the organizations who need it in Waco, not to mention the United States. According to Giving USA™, Americans donated around $350 billion dollars to charitable organizations. I would be willing to wager, however, that if one were to go around and ask every nonprofit if they could use more money in their budget to do their work, nearly all of them would say yes. There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight, no matter how much is given.

From this position of discouragement, the journey of generosity provided a great re-focus on what really matters. In this experience, we heard from a number of individuals with different experiences in generosity: recipients, reluctant givers, and radical innovators. A common thread among all of the people we heard from was faith: a young couple starting a family amidst mounting debt, a doctor deciding to live on a small fraction of her salary in order to give away the rest, a group of men entrusting each other with guidance over their finances by being open and transparent. However, the motivation behind the giving in each situation was love. People felt drawn to giving based on the love instilled in them by the Lord.

In 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul discusses the interconnectedness of faith, hope, and love and how each is essential. He concludes by saying “the greatest of these is love.” In light of these thoughts, the mission for our class going forward has been reestablished: we are not simply giving simply so that we might have the highest impact, but we give out of love for our neighbor, a love demonstrated by Jesus.