Instructor
Usha Pasi
Description
Overview
Nonprofits are a valued engine for community engagement and innovation across the country. They play a highly visible and essential role meeting community needs, and they serve as laboratories for experimental, innovative strategies supporting individual opportunity, expression, and community equity objectives. This increasingly complex sector is built on the desire to do good through scalable, sustainable organizational strategies that deliver impact.
You will learn about what it takes to be a successful nonprofit: vision, resources, leadership, and execution. Through case analysis, press analysis, group discussions, and interactions with nonprofit leaders, you will learn how entrepreneurship and philanthropy are deeply intertwined in healthy, high-performing organizations. You will also develop the skills to assess the connection between nonprofits, social change and justice through direct conversation with grant makers and nonprofit leaders, and will devise a grantmaking strategy awarding $25,000 in grant funding to local nonprofits through support from former Tufts trustee Nathan Gantcher.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this course, students will:
- Understand nonprofit and philanthropic structures and objectives in the US
- Know how to devise and deploy a theory of change to drive impact
- Understand principles, motivations, and decision making embedded in individual and organizational philanthropy, as well as the critical role volunteerism and boards play in the US
- Know how to build a successful nonprofit by combining personal interest, existing solutions and comparative approaches to a societal challenge
- Have learned how to pitch for feedback and support to launch a nonprofit
- Have learned how to make grants as part of a team to local nonprofits
Course topics and objectives
- Learn about the contour of nonprofits and funding in the US
- Assess theories of change and nonprofit impact
- Explore dynamics of power, trust and ethics in philanthropy
- Develop a mock nonprofit and learn to pitch for support and board engagement
- Articulate team nonprofit areas of interest and conduct a landscape analysis
- As a team, award grants to local nonprofits
- Meet practitioners and experts in the field to get a first-hand look at nonprofits
What people say
“This course was one of the best that I’ve taken at Tufts. I always knew that I had a passion for social impact, but this course gave me the context, tools, and frameworks to apply my interests in real life. We experienced different sectors of social impact, from grant making to nonprofit development to academic ideology. Leaving the classroom to listen to renowned speakers or visit local community organizations gave me a deep understanding of the challenges facing this industry. This class changed the way I think about applying for–profit/business principles to the nonprofit sector. As an economics major, this was an interesting lens to apply to my previous coursework and volunteer experiences.”
– An ENT142 Student
“This course has made me think more critically about philanthropy as well as more expansively about the role of nonprofits. While learning about the different modes of philanthropy, we discussed interesting questions, for instance, comparing perpetual foundations and sunset foundations, and discussing the potential pitfalls and advantages of both, as well as their implications. We also had readings which pointed out how while philanthropy is vital, the ability of some individuals to give such substantial donations to those in need is reflective of an unjust, broken system, and perhaps even the existence of philanthropy points to the need for systems change.”
– An ENT142 Student