Fidelity to boost student philanthropy

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Dec 25, 2007 | by Jilian Mincer Dow Jones Newswires

NEW YORK -- A number of colleges allow students to invest a piece of the endowment pie. Now, students at five schools will get to give money away.

Fidelity is launching with Campus Compact a program called Students4Giving, which is designed to get young people involved in philanthropy.

Fidelity Investments will provide $15,000 in a donor-advised fund to five schools -- Boston University; California State University, Fresno; Portland Community College in Portland, Ore.; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Whitworth University in Spokane, Wash. Students participating in nonprofit and philanthropy courses will oversee the funds, solicit grant applications from charities in their communities and recommend donations.

"This will enable them to teach the students about philanthropy and to tackle community problems," said Maureen Curley, president of Campus Compact, a coalition of more than 1,100 college and university presidents. It selected the five schools from 35 proposals.

"I think giving money away is very difficult work," said Curley. "There are many good causes."

Even though students will have to give away more than half the money by the end of the spring term, organizers hope the programs will become permanent and models for other schools. Campus Compact plans to post information about the college programs on its Web site.

"I'm very excited to see the effect these dollars will have in the community," said David Giunta, president of the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund. "I'm very excited to hear the feedback from the students."

He said discussions about getting more young people involved in philanthropy lead to the idea for the program.

Morgan Simon, co-founder and executive director of the Responsible Endowments Coalition, said a number of schools allow students to get involved in the investing process, but she thought it was the first time students would be given the opportunity to use donor-advised funds to give away money.

"I think that giving them the experience of giving away money will hopefully help them think more about philanthropy," said Simon.

While each program varies, students at the participating schools will learn about nonprofits, donor-advised funds and philanthropy before soliciting grants from local charities. Students will make recommendations to Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, which makes the distribution if the charity is a legitimate nonprofit.

Katherina Rosqueta, executive director of the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania, said, "People from Carnegie through Buffett have said how very difficult it is to disperse money wisely philanthropically."

The Students4Giving program will "help students understand some of the issues," she said.

Lynn W. Blanchard, director of the Carolina Center for Public Service at the University of North Carolina, said the donor-advised fund will enable students to understand that public service includes more than volunteering: "It's important to feed people at a soup kitchen, it's important to sit on boards, and it's important to know why people are hungry."