Meet the Class Part 5: Group 5, Disadvantaged Youth (25 or less)

Finally, the fifth faction. From left to right: Matt Vukovic, Tyler Gladden, Hermes Lee, Rebecca Tummers, Dom Ventresca, Kyle Yip-Chuck. Their focus was on disadvantaged youth (25 or less).

Meet the Class Part 4: Group 4, At Risk Children (5-13)

Meet the fourth faction. From left to right: Laiba Noor, Alyssa Stone, Ryan Stegmaier, Chelsea Parker, Matthew Parliament, Nathania Ofori, Hardip Singh. Their focus was on at risk children (5-13).

Meet the Class Part 3: Group 3, Nutrition (General)

Meet the third faction of the RFP wars. From left to right: Cristen Lauricella, Andre Marini, Isa Mulder, Kristen Massola, and Dominique Krawchenko. Their focus was on nutrition in general.

Meet the Class Part 2: Group 2, Mental Health (Youth, 11-18)

Meet the second faction in the RFP wars. From left to right: Gurpreet Badwal, Simon Bugiardini, Drew Bryant, Diana Albanese, Rob Brown, and Rebecca Butkevicius. Their focus was on youth mental health (11-18).

Meet the Class Part 1: Group 1, Mental Health (General)

Meet the first faction in the RFP wars. From left to right: Christina Del Sordo, Manprit Kaur, Daniel Higgins, Jordan Cole, and Julian Gerhart. Their RFP was centered around Mental Health in general.

The RFP Wars Part 1 (Class 3)

Sept 30/2016

This class was a big day for all of us, this was the day that each group presented their idea for the class RFP. The class had been divided into five groups after the first week and each group presented what they wanted the focus of the RFP to be. Our final focuses were; mental health (general), mental health (youth 11-18), nutrition and food (general), disadvantaged youth, and at risk children (5-13). After much debate and deliberation, the class managed to agree to focus on youth mental health in priority neighbourhoods, with a rough age preference of 12-24. It was a long and arduous process, as many individuals were passionate about their respective focuses and everybody had something to say about why their cause should receive the spotlight. The class ended with everybody agreeing on the focus, but there were still many questions about what our other criteria would be.

Has Overhead Gone Over Our Head? (Class 2)

Sept 23/2016

Much the same as our first class, our second class began with another guest speaker; Sharon Charter of the Hamilton Community Foundation. Sharon gave us more perspective from the eyes of a grant giving body and gave us an introduction to some of the charities and non-profits in Hamilton. Additionally, we received our first exposure to some of the programs that non-profits ran, and some of the impacts that these programs had. We also first learned about the problem of overhead within the non-profit sector. Many funders (corporate, grant giving, and private) prefer to have their money used to directly impact the people that charities serve, and some put limits on how large overhead costs can be for organizations that they will fund. This can serve as a real problem, since many organizations need to incur overhead costs in order to expand, as well as attract, train, and retain the highest quality professionals for the job. While I won’t get into the specifics of it, it’s certainly worth looking into if you plan on working in or for the non-profit sector. Our Professor recommended an excellent Ted video with Dan Pallotta entitled “The way we think about charity is dead wrong” which I recommend watching for more information.

Our Story Begins… (Class 1)

Sept 9/2016

Bright eyed and bushy tailed I made my way to my first and last class of the day; commerce 4MG3 Strategic Philanthropy and Leadership. The class was scheduled from 8:30-11:30 on a Friday morning and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Upon entering the room, the Professor, Lynn Fergusson, introduced herself to the class and had us introduce ourselves to each other by “connecting” ourselves to one another. This was done by linking the previous person’s introduction (experience with the non-profit sector, what they expected of the course, program, etc.) with our own, and was designed to create more memorable connections with our fellow classmates. After our introduction, Professor Fergusson gave us a quick explanation of the non-profit sector, explaining the LGF and how much of an impact the Foundation creates for classes across North America. This was essentially a warm up for us before our first guest speaker; Tamer Ibrahim from the Laidlaw Foundation. He told us his story with the non-profit sector and how he had been part of a grass roots movement in Toronto called UforChange. We also learned about the Laidlaw foundation and got a sense of what it was like to look through the lens of a grant giving body, which, we would soon become (for a semester). After our wonderful guest speaker, we finished up with our introduction to the non-profit sector and learned about the RISE (Relevance, Impact, Sustainability, and Excellence in Management and Operations) framework for social change, ending our class for the day.

Welcome to the Blog!

Hello and welcome to the blog for McMaster University's Strategic Philanthropy and Leadership class for fall of 2016. My name is Matthew Parliament and I'm the Student Ambassador for this course. I'll be working with my fellow classmates and the Learning by Giving Foundation (LGF) to tell the story of our class over the term. I'll be posting on a regular basis with updates on, and stories from, myself and my peers, so stay tuned! I'll start us off by bringing everybody up to speed with what happened during the first 4 weeks of class (prior to the creation of this blog).



Myself (Matthew Parliament)