BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Learning by Giving Foundation and Northeastern University have announced the results of Giving With Purpose, their massive open online course (MOOC) on effective charitable giving. Grants totaling $150,000 will be awarded to 30 nonprofit organizations across the U.S. that were nominated and assessed by students who took the course this spring.
This was the second offering of Giving With Purpose and the first time it was hosted on the edX online educational platform. The course, which was originally created in 2013 by the Learning by Giving Foundation and Rebecca Riccio, Director of The Social Impact Lab at Northeastern University, taught thousands of students worldwide how to identify effective nonprofit organizations and allowed them to collectively determine which of their nominees would receive grants. Guest speaker philanthropists Warren Buffett, Doris Buffett, Cal Ripken, Jr., Patrick Dempsey, Tom Werner, Soledad O’Brien, and Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (Ben & Jerry) contributed their insights to course lessons and activities.
Riccio congratulated the MOOC students and grantees, who were vetted through a rigorous process. “We teach the students to hold nonprofit organizations to high but fair standards and ask them to invest significant time and thought in the review process. The list of grantees represents a lot of hard work by the students and the organizations they have chosen to support.”
Three organizations, Positive Tracks, the American Public Health Association (APHA), and the Red Sox Foundation, sponsored Giving With Purpose teams whose members collaborated in choosing some of the grantees. The Learning by Giving Foundation matched the team sponsors’ contributions to the grant pool, enabling the teams to award a total of $50,000 to 10 organizations. Individuals taking the course awarded an additional $100,000 to twenty organizations with funding provided by the Learning by Giving Foundation, Northeastern University, and Duncan Niederaurer, CEO of NYSE Euronext.
The Red Sox Foundation sponsored a Giving With Purpose team of Red Sox Scholars, Boston Public School students whom it supports through mentoring, enrichment activities, and college scholarships. “Through Giving With Purpose, our Red Sox Scholars were given the opportunity to not only learn the basics of nonprofit organizations, but also to give back to some of the organizations that have given them so much,” commented Tyler Petropulos, Program Specialist at the Red Sox Foundation. “The winning organizations were a product of their desire to help others in their community, and we could not be more proud of the responsible citizens they have become.”
Reading Partners, a nonprofit organization in Dallas, Texas, was awarded one of two $10,000 Giving With Purpose grants. Executive Director Kaitlin Guthrow explained how it will be used: “As the recipient of this grant, Reading Partners will be able to serve students, kindergarten through fifth grade, who are struggling to master basic literacy skills in the Dallas community. We are grateful to the Learning by Giving Foundation for their support and the important work they are doing in the community.”
More information about all of the 2014 Giving With Purpose grant recipients is available on the foundation’s Grant Map.
About the Learning by Giving Foundation
Doris Buffett created the first Learning by Giving Foundation program in 2003 and has since partnered with over 35 colleges and universities around the country. Each class receives a $10,000 grant for the students to distribute to local nonprofit organizations. Through the program, the Foundation encourages the teaching of philanthropy while simultaneously making charitable investments to people and communities in need.
