One thing I am learning about my giving experience is that every organization is worth giving too. I think that has made it pretty hard to choose which one to give too, but it has also made it easy in the sense that there are no wrong choices so you can’t go wrong. I think my group is closing in on it’s final decision but we have not yet made it definitive. I think we are excited to donate to a good cause and help out people in need, and this whole process has really showed me how awesome giving is.

One thing I learned from the panel is that again, all of these organizations have very good causes and are all worthy of donations. It’s very sad to hear about all the struggles and problems that these organizations face and it’s great to hear about all of the people and things that they have helped. I think my group and I did a good job during this panel discussion and I don’t believe we need to do anything differently for the second one. In terms of raising money my group hasn’t done too much yet but have raised a little money through donations but we are planning a bake sale event that should bring in a good sum of money for our donation.

One thing that sticks out about our analysis is that all of the organizations we looked at had very good ratings.  We have contacted a few different organizations and we are very close to having one to come in for each day of the panel discussion. Although we have had a little bit of trouble getting in touch with these organizations we are making progress and we are taking steps for everything to work out. For our fundraiser we have decided to do a large bake sale and our planning is almost complete. We plan to sell at a school open house for about 2 hours and I am considering getting some of my families homemade maple syrup to raise lots of profits.

My group is moving along very well. We are making calls to different organizations about coming in for a presentation as well as organizing a plan for our fundraiser. We are also reviewing different 990 tax forms and we have been getting good results in terms of how good the organizations we are looking at are. I myself reviewed the kewaskum food pantry form today, and the amount of the money they donate is very good and they are definitely one of the main organizations my group is looking at. We hope to soon begin to raise money and are also planning on a possible after school volunteer opportunity.

My experience was really just about finding the purpose of our group. We wanted to set a clear goal of what we wanted to do to help. This is important in creating a series of steps of which you can follow to achieve that goal. We are very determined to raise money for the hungry so that was the thesis of our mission. I expect to encounter a few obstacles like analyzing these different organizations, but I think if we stick to our plan we will be able to achieve our goals.

This week was an important week because we got together in our groups. The one main thing my group had is that we all had hunger as one of our choices for charities to donate to from the mad cards. Therefore my group decided that we wanted to donate to a food related charity. After discussions and weighing through options, we are pretty sure we would like to donate to the kewaskum food pantry. During class we brainstormed many different ways in which to raise money for this cause. Some of our ideas were a different assortment of bake goods, to possibly T-shirts. Although we have not gotten anything done with our fundraiser yet, i’m sure we will soon.

My experience with the mad cards was an experience of making tough decisions. You go through the cards and there are so many good charities yet you must only pick a few in which you can donate to. While they are all good causes you must decide which ones you believe in the most. The thing I hope to gain most from the Main Street philanthropy program is probably just some charitable experience.