Giving Compass' Take:

• A new MBA course at Texas McComb called Investing in Philanthropy teaches students how to effectively measure nonprofit success while looking at how to make an impact on social problem-solving. 

• How can donors help elevate these courses for students? How can funders get more educational institutions to add philanthropy-related courses? 

• Read about why philanthropy in the classroom will help students. 

Nearly two dozen graduate students crammed into an 8-by-32-foot tiny house on a cold, wet February day. Texas McCombs Associate Dean Gaylen Paulson and his wife, Kristin, were sharing stories about their family’s 18-month experience in their home. During that time, the Paulsons lived as neighbors to more than 200 Austinites struggling with chronic homelessness in an innovative 51-acre community called Community First! Village.

The on-site visit is a good example of the unique learning opportunities students enrolled in the new Investing in Philanthropy course get to experience. Introduced this spring, the course is taught by Finance Professor Laura Starks and Business, Government, and Society Associate Professor Minette Drumwright.

“It involves a lot of thinking about being a good steward of one’s resources and how to help nonprofits be effective,” Drumwright says. “Many of our students will be board members of nonprofits, probably sooner than they expect.”

In addition to classroom lectures, discussions, guest speakers, readings on subjects from financial economics to philosophy, and on-site visits, students practice actual philanthropy. They are divided into five teams, each focused on a specific area of philanthropic investment: education, environment, health, arts, and human services.

Individual teams conduct research and create their own framework for selecting the nonprofit most effective at solving a societal problem, which they pitch to the rest of their classmates. “The experience helps students to think more broadly,” Starks says. “Not just about philanthropy, but about measuring impact.”

Read the full article about investing in philanthropy by Jeremy M. Simon at Medium.