Spring Break
The Harbus Foundation: Giving Has its Rewards
Marni Weil (ND), Contributing Writer
Issue date: 4/19/05 Section: News
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Marni Weil is a member of one of this year's Harbus Foundation Venture Philanthropy Teams. Come learn more about HBS' Harbus Foundation and meet student-selected grant awardees at a celebration on Wednesday, April 20th from 5:15 pm to 6:15pm in the Spangler Meredith Room.
Before I came to HBS, the word "philanthropist" conjured up names like Rockefeller and Carnegie, and in today's world, Gates. I never imagined that there would be a student organization where I could have experiences similar to those of these civic icons (albeit temporarily and at a somewhat smaller scale!); but low and behold, at this fall's HBS Club Fair I was introduced to the Harbus Foundation.
The Harbus Foundation is the only entirely student-run foundation in the country. The Harbus Foundation was originally founded in 1997 by The Harbus News Corporation after a windfall in advertising dollars left the organization wondering how to employ a lot of excess cash on hand. Today, approximately 35 students team up into seven teams and each team awards a grant for $10,000 to a local non-profit focused on education, literacy or journalism. What most attracted me most to the foundation was its dual mission: to give back to the community surrounding HBS as well as to get HBS students actively involved in philanthropy.
I joined one of the teams focused on venture philanthropy, a discipline which encompasses both financial and managerial assistance through consulting services. (The Harbus Foundation teams fall into two buckets, five teams focus exclusively on the grant making process giving a grant of $10,000 and two additional teams also offer the winning organization pro bono consulting services for one semester.) The following experience is one that I could only characterize as one of the most rewarding I've had here at HBS.
Our team was composed of a group of people new to Boston and unfamiliar with the network of non-profit organizations. With only three weeks to identify the non-profit sector where we'd like to donate, find good candidates in that sector, and complete due diligence on multiple candidates we needed to move fast. Our process led us to identify a truly compelling candidate, Women Express, as the winner. We chose Women Express because of their unique structure as both a learning center where college-age mentors help teen girls develop essential life skills, such as writing, editing and critical thinking, and an international print and online teen issues publication that provides positive messages and real life stories (written by the girls in the center) to offer an alternative to glossies like Cosmo Girl.
Before I came to HBS, the word "philanthropist" conjured up names like Rockefeller and Carnegie, and in today's world, Gates. I never imagined that there would be a student organization where I could have experiences similar to those of these civic icons (albeit temporarily and at a somewhat smaller scale!); but low and behold, at this fall's HBS Club Fair I was introduced to the Harbus Foundation.
The Harbus Foundation is the only entirely student-run foundation in the country. The Harbus Foundation was originally founded in 1997 by The Harbus News Corporation after a windfall in advertising dollars left the organization wondering how to employ a lot of excess cash on hand. Today, approximately 35 students team up into seven teams and each team awards a grant for $10,000 to a local non-profit focused on education, literacy or journalism. What most attracted me most to the foundation was its dual mission: to give back to the community surrounding HBS as well as to get HBS students actively involved in philanthropy.
I joined one of the teams focused on venture philanthropy, a discipline which encompasses both financial and managerial assistance through consulting services. (The Harbus Foundation teams fall into two buckets, five teams focus exclusively on the grant making process giving a grant of $10,000 and two additional teams also offer the winning organization pro bono consulting services for one semester.) The following experience is one that I could only characterize as one of the most rewarding I've had here at HBS.
Our team was composed of a group of people new to Boston and unfamiliar with the network of non-profit organizations. With only three weeks to identify the non-profit sector where we'd like to donate, find good candidates in that sector, and complete due diligence on multiple candidates we needed to move fast. Our process led us to identify a truly compelling candidate, Women Express, as the winner. We chose Women Express because of their unique structure as both a learning center where college-age mentors help teen girls develop essential life skills, such as writing, editing and critical thinking, and an international print and online teen issues publication that provides positive messages and real life stories (written by the girls in the center) to offer an alternative to glossies like Cosmo Girl.
