Philanthropy In Our Hands

$60,000 Worth of Harbus Foundation Grants Awarded to NPOs

Heidi Yip (NC), Contributing Writer

Issue date: 4/28/08 Section: News

The Managing Editor and Publisher of the Harbus present the check for the latest donation to the Foundation

The afternoon of April 15th saw Hamilton Lounge abuzz with a peculiar group of people: Did the Executive Education program organize a mixer? (Yes it did, but this wasn't it.) It was, rather, the Harbus Foundation Grant Reception which was the culmination of six months of work by members of the Foundation. The Trustees, Management, Grant Teams, Harbus News Corporation's Board of Directors, and - by far the most important - the grant recipients, all came together to commemorate the closing of the 2007-2008 grant-making cycle.

The only student-run foundation in the US, the Harbus Foundation is entrusted with the dual mission of promoting student involvement in social enterprise and generating positive social impact, especially in the areas of education, literacy and journalism. The Foundation is funded by generous contributions from the profits of the Harbus News Corporation currently led by Publisher, Aastha Gurbax on the business side and Editors, David Rawlinson and Karen Singson on the content side. The Venture Philanthropy Project, launched in 2003 to complement the grant-making abilities of the Foundation, enables HBS students to be actively involved in helping early to mid-stage nonprofit organizations address financial constraints as well as overcome strategic and operational challenges. Since October last year, 24 RCs and ECs in six grant-making and Venture Philanthropy teams have been working with nonprofits in the greater Boston community to identify urgent but unmet funding needs that could benefit from the Harbus Foundation grants.

The reception was kicked off with an introduction by the Harbus Foundation trustees, Kate Randall, Peter Park and Peter Stone. This was followed by presentations by the grant teams on their award decisions. Beaming faces were not in short supply as team after team gave commendations to the vision and drive of the respective nonprofit organizations they have been working with, and proceeded to present each grantee with the $10,000 award.

All these organizations already had spending programs lined up for the funds. Spare Change News, for instance, will be using the grant to support a long-term marketing strategy to increase the awareness of the organization amongst the general public and generate broader distribution and commensurate aid for its vendors. Centro Latino de Chelsea, on the other hand, will be allocating the grant towards building more capacity across its service programs aimed at workforce training and integration for immigrants.

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