Grantmaking and the Foundation Landscape Reflection

On Wednesday, April 3, 2013, Allowance for Good began its newest program, Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy: A Student Seminar Series. Chicago-area youth are invited to participate in a weekly seminar to learn more about the global philanthropic sector and how they have the power to be philanthropists and agents for change.

Grace reflects on our third session, focused on Grantmaking and the Foundation Landscape.

This week at Allowance for Good we went to the Evanston Public Library. When we first got there we started to talk about the story we had read for homework. It was called Alex's Lemonade Stand. This story was about a young lady with childhood cancer. After she got out of the hospital she started this stand. She made lemonade and sold it for 50 cents a cup. This story got us talking about what we can learn from her work about the power of spreading a movement. When talking about this one of the key points we brought up was even though she was young and is now dead her project is still raising money so that other children like her will not need to share her fight.  We also talked about how she was so passionate and if she had not felt so strongly about this it would not of gotten very far at all. She was also very outgoing because she wanted this more then someone might want a new phone. She wanted this because she wanted to be a hero for herself and for many others. After we had talked about this for some time we went off by ourselves and thoughts about what we would do if we had a hunk of money, meaning what would we donate it to, how would we spread it out, how would we raise it, and other things around theses lines. After we did this we shared our ideas and then headed down to the arts and crafts center. When we got there we each got a little canvas and some paint. We then painted them how ever we wanted and donated them. Each one was different a special.