Meet the Class Monday #3!

Happy #MeetTheClassMonday Everyone!!!

The Life You Can Save

Hello All!

Although we had time off this past week to enjoy our Spring Break, we still worked to increase our knowledge on effective philanthropy by reading the book, The Life You Can Save, by Peter Singer. The main argument challenges readers to invest more of their income as well as their time to support reputable nonprofit organizations. This influential book made us think about how we give our time, talents, and treasure to worthy causes. We discussed in depth how we may change our philanthropic practices in order to be more informed and more committed donors in the future! We encourage you to check out this book and let us know how you feel!

Meet the Class Monday! #2

We are continuing our #MeetTheClassMondays and would like to wish you a Happy First Day of Spring!

Meet the Class Monday! #1

We are very excited to start a new set of blog posts dedicated to introducing the students in our Strategic Philanthropy class! Here is our first #MeetTheClassMonday!

Meet Team #4!

Happy Friday!

Today we will introduce our last an final group, "The Event Leaders"

This group is responsible for holding a public event at the semester's end to present our check to the organization we chose to give our grant money to. This group was in charge of developing an invitation list and sending out a "save the date" announcement, which is already open to the public. Members of this group are also responsible for making all arrangements for the event(handouts, speakers, food, etc), promoting it to various audiences, presenting the check, and speaking at the event about how the class has impacted them. We hope to see you at the event, May 3rd at 4:30pm!

Meet Team #3!

Hello there! Today we introduce the third active group in our class, “The Catalysts”!

They will work to encourage classmates, social media followers, and community members to advocate for our cause! The Catalysts will develop opportunities for people to do something to address the cause in the future. They will communicate our class’ efforts throughout the UW-Green Bay campus, as well as write a press release and provide information on various social media platforms in order to engage the Greater Green Bay community. We are all called to take action to “do something” when a worthy cause is presented. Being engaged with the mission of our Strategic Philanthropy course is your chance to help as much as it is ours! Do not hesitate to contact us with more ideas to be innovative advocates of our class mission!

Group #2- The Nonprofit Liaisons

We are very excited to introduce you to group #2, the nonprofit liaisons!

The main goal of the nonprofit liaisons is to write up, edit and publicize the RFP (Request For Proposal). Once the RFP is created and presented to the class, the group will publish a press release. The press release will go out to our community lists and organizations that we think target issue that we want to invest in. We hope to get a decent amount of proposals back to choose from! The nonprofit liaisons are then in charge of facilitating site visits and informing the other classmates about the details of these visits. One of their most important jobs is communicating back and forth with the organizations that are participating. Once the class decides on the winning program, they get the exciting job of notifying the winners! The winners will be invited to our end of the semester event and will be presented the check for $10,000. How exciting!

Meet Team #1!

Hello there! This week we will be posting each day with a new introduction of the four teams that have been assembled within the class. Each team and its members will play a large role in the success of our class and of this grant! The first team we want to introduce is the Social Media/ Blogger group! These four students took on an active role right away, jump starting the newest blog and keeping up with the current facebook page for the class. ➤ Make sure you check our our facebook page if you haven't already: https://www.facebook.com/uwgbstrategicphilanthropy/

One goal that we have as a class is for the University and wider community to be able to follow our progress – to build interest and excitement. As mentioned, we've continued the Facebook page that a previous class had started in hopes that students would follow and share with their own family and friends. We are going to be utilizing the blog as our website and it will be where we direct applicants to our request for proposal (coming soon!) At a minimum, this team will share progress on our Facebook page and maintain a blog that is updated weekly. The blogger team has a lot of great ideas- some include introducing students in the class, sharing more photos, posting student reflections and writings, posting advocacy materials for all of our groups’ causes, and providing basic information about our event! We hope our readers will be generally interested, entertained, and choose to connect with us! Stay tuned to learn more about all of our teams!

Decisions...Decisions...

Hello Readers! This week we are going to be highlighting one of the major aspects of this class: the topics! We’ve spent the majority of our class periods so far working on this portion of the strategic process. After some light research on the issues in our area, the class came up with over a dozen topics to learn more about. After an entire class period of discussion, we finally brought the number of topics down to 4! The following week we broke into groups of three or four students and got right into researching more about these issues. You are probably dying to know which issues we found the most important, yes??? Our top four areas were Health, Hunger, Youth and Arts. In the following paragraphs we’re going to break down the groups’ researching goals, presentation information, and problem statements.

⇨ One of our interest areas covers the broad topic of health. Health can cover quality or quantity of care, costs, mental health, physical health, well-being, kids, adults, and so on. The opportunities for research are endless. This group decided to find out more about obesity in the area, specifically searching for information and data regarding youth. Unfortunately, the statistics available and research done on children can be scarce. The presentation included a lot of good statistics anyways, including national, state and local facts and information. Can you believe nearly 1 in 4 children in Wisconsin is overweight or obese? Or that obesity and inactivity is the second leading cause of deaths in the U.S.? The most recent LIFE Study came out this February and included a graph showing that 66% of Brown County Adults are either obese or overweight, that is over HALF of the population for adults in the county. (Life Study link: http://lifestudy.info/) On a more positive note, there are multiple organizations and programs in the area working to combat this issue, in many different facets.

⇨ Another interest area that we covered is Hunger. The definition of positive food security is having access to enough food at any given time, allowing you to live an active, healthy life. The group decided to really focus on access to fresh foods, and how to make farmers markets more affordable and accessible to everyone.  Brown County definitely has many people who suffer from hunger.  In 2015, there were almost 15,000 more visits made to food pantries than in 2011. This statistic does not include trips made to Paul’s Pantry (one of the area’s largest pantries). There are many organizations in Brown County that are already working on this problem.  Some of the most well-known include: Brown County Food & Hunger Network, FoodWise, UW- Extension Community Gardens, and Green Bay Garden Blitz.  There are also over 25 food pantries throughout Brown County.  Due to the many organizations that are trying to fight hunger, the $10,000 would most likely directly impact people, and not used to build infrastructures (because they already exist).  This group’s main goal is to seek proposals from the community for programs that promote the consumption of fresh and affordable produce to lower income families.

⇨ A unique subject that one group covered for the class is Youth Empowerment. This was a challenging topic to narrow, however, the group defined youth empowerment at the individual level as exercising power over one's life by being skilled, critically aware, and active in creating community change. They shared some surprising statistics about youth in the Brown County Area from the 2016 LIFE Study such as 18% of students live in poverty, and that hundreds of children are in the foster care system as it increases each week. Youth that are in negative situations beyond their control may not feel that they can make a difference because they do not have the correct resources to teach them what self respect and dignity are. The group found that there are direct links between low self worth and prevalent issues such as high dropout rates in schools, or increased human trafficking in the area. While there would be a wide variety of organizations that could propose for a grant, we as a class would be willing to do the work if we decided to give the $10,000 to an organization that empowers youth in Brown County.

⇨ The fourth interest area our class chose was to focus on the arts. This group decided to focus on engaging the elderly in the art community through different creative outlets. The arts are proven to benefit senior citizens in many psychological areas including communication, stress, pain, motor skills, mental health, and sense of empowerment. With this, many different types of activities can be completed for seniors to participate in. Painting, scrapbooking, knitting, crocheting, macramé, photography, music, dance, and chorus are just some of the activities that can benefit dependent senior citizens. According to the Life Study in Brown County, about 30% of community members and leaders rated Brown County as fair or poor on the issue of care for vulnerable people in the area (e.g., elderly, individuals with disabilities). (Life Study: http://lifestudy.info/) This group also found that there are 14 nursing homes in Brown County, serving 1,299 residents, that could be positively affected from this opportunity. This group would seek proposals for community programs that offer art related events and activities to the dependent older adult community.

What do YOU think is a major issue in our area? There are SO many opportunities to help different groups of people in different situations. We have the opportunity to put REAL money where our interests guide us and with the strategic process, we can find an issue that is worth our time and effort. Keep following our journey to find out where we decide to focus our concern and help us spread the word!