“The non-profit sector is perhaps the least well-understood component of American society. . . Without a clear understanding of the non-profit sector, it is as impossible to comprehend American society and American public policy today as it was in the time of de Tocqueville.”

- Lester Salamon, in America 's Non-Profit Sector (1999).

In 2003, the non-profit sector represented 8.8% of the GNP, employed 11% of the U.S. workforce, and comprised an astonishing 1.2 million organizations, yet this industry was tragically underrepresented in the nation's institutions of higher education, especially at the undergraduate level.

Following the remarkable success of the Student Sunbeam Program, the Sunshine Lady Foundation (SLF) established a new partnership with selected colleges and universities called “Learning By Giving.” In 2003 the collaboration began with Dr. Ken Menkhaus and his class “Philanthropy and the Non-Profit Sector”, at Davidson College . The class researched various local non-profit organizations, solicited proposals, developed a system for studying the requests and debated the merits for receiving the grant money. At the end of the semester, the students distributed $10,000 of Sunshine Lady Foundation funds to the philanthropies they chose.

In the spring of 2005, the University of Virginia 's McIntire School of Commerce launched a course for 3 rd year students focused on teaching non-profits and philanthropy in partnership with SLF and the Learning By Giving Program. One of the strengths of the program at the McIntire School is its focus on the business aspects of philanthropic work and non-profit organizations. McIntire immerses its students with one of the best undergraduate business curricula in the country. As this is extended in the non-profit course, students are required to examine potential grant recipients not just by the merit of their cause, but the quality of their organization.

In the past two years, considerable attention has been given to the importance of Philanthropy in the modern economy. For example, in 2005, Time magazine recognized Bono, Melinda and Bill Gates as Persons of the Year for the way they were reshaping the non-profit landscape and bringing unparalleled resources and intelligence to the task of taking on the world's toughest problems. The Sunshine Lady Foundation continued to blaze a path into higher education by working with top ranked universities to develop classes that would fit with the Learning By Giving program and then partnering with those schools and their new course offerings. In the fall of 2005, the University of Mary Washington began teaching a class called “The Economics of Philanthropy and the Non-profit Sector.” The following spring, Cornell introduced “HE 207, Leadership in the Non-profit Environment.” A year later, Tufts offered “The Undergraduate Philanthropy Program.”

The Sunshine Lady Foundation is working hard to find and support new schools interested in offering classes that will enrich this area of study and arm the next generation of philanthropic leaders with the tools necessary to make important decisions about how to effectively allocate scarce resources to the causes that need them the most.

For more information on this program, please see the FAQ section of this site, or contact the director of the Learning By Giving Program:
Alex Buffett Rozek at
SLFwebform@gmail.com