In week eight of main street philanthropy in our team decided which organization to donate our funds to. We struggled to choose between organizations because all organizations had great ways they were going to use our funds provided. In the end we decided to donate to the Non-profit charity of Big Brother & Big Sisters. The organization decided to use the donation towards funds of activities. This money we donate will go towards the children fun activities such as brewers games and movies because children are unable to be a part of activities through their family. In the end, our group worked well together to create a good profit margin for our charity. Although sometimes our group had some miss communications throughout the experience, we gained more knowledge on leadership in groups of more than two people. The result of our groups decisions ended in a great achievement to not only help charity but learned some more skills when we enter the workforce or college after our high school career.

     In week 7 of Main Street Philanthropy we started to finish up our experience with raising money for non-profit charities. From these experience overall I learned many life lessons. These life lessons include the difficulty of raising money for causes, communicating with local businesses, and charities. To me this experience was not easy but at the same time not hard. I don’t struggle communicating with others in the community but I struggle with organizing events to fund raise for our charity. From this experience I gained more enlightenment about how fundraising works and how to communicate to charities/businesses in the community. In the end we have to decide which charity to donate our earnings to. This will be a difficult decision because there are so many great charities out in our community. I do think thought our group is ready to make our final decision because we have communicated with the charites, researched about them, and looked at their tax forms. With this information, our group will struggles less to choose who to donate to.

In week 6 through the Main street Philanthropy program our group learned multiple things that will help us choose our nonprofits to donate to and not only that, the future. In the panel discussion, we learned about the organizations programs, missions, and the way they run on a day to day basis. From listening to their responses in the discussion, I learned more about non profit organizations and their struggle to provide the necessities to succeed in their mission. This would include donations and volunteers. With this information, I would like to take away the fact that there is multiple ways to help others through simple and easy tasks. From my fundraising experience our group realized that organizing and fundraising is not as easy as it looks. Fortunately, we created a game plan and succeeded by selling products to the public to raise a profit for these charities in our local community. Our goal is make a difference in someone’s life, to change the outlook of your world today.

In week five our the Main Street Philanthropy course we learned about different ways to evaluate companies and charities. These ways to analyze the company include the 990 tax form, researches through websites, communicating with employees of the charity/company, and so on. The most reliable way to research is through the 990 tax form. From this one source, you are able to understand the charity/company with information about how productive or the profitable they were. By analyzing this data, you are able to see which charities are more productive compared to others. As we conduct research in class to decide which charities to donate to, we are seeing that many charities are ranked highly for productivity. Although it may be easy to see the quality of each charity, our group will struggle to choose who to donate to since so many charities are great organizations. Either way, our decision on which charity to donate to will lead helping others in the long run.

In week four of our journey through the program of main street philanthropy, our class learned how to analyze data and research investment opportunities. As our class prepares to discuss which organizations to donate to, we looked into our organizations. During this process, we conducted research to determine the goals that each organization is trying to reach. We also analyzed tax returns to understand the financials of these organizations. By analyzing organizations tax returns, we are able to see the qualifications of the organization. While my group looked into a few of the organizations we were interested in, we gained the knowledge that many of these organizations have great records for earning money for their charity. By learning this new knowledge about our organizations, our group will be able to discuss our options of organizations to donate to.

In our second week of main street philanthropy, we gained the experience to start developing ideas for our charity projects in class. In this idea process, we started creating proposal and mission statements to guide our thought process to ensure our success in earning funds for the charities we decide to donate to. With these steps, we are hoping to encounter great experiences with the people and companies within our community. Our class is looking forward to asking the community for their support by providing donations and other needs to raise the assets to donate to our charities. We all expect to encounter challenges in our path to creating a successful plan to raise money, but we all hope to succeed from the downfalls and grow in leadership skills through this experience.

 Within the first class of main street philanthropy, we learned more about our own and each others thought processes by using the MAD (make a experience) cards. Through this class activity I learned that I struggle to choose between multiple charities or causes to help support. With mad cards, we had to go through the process of elimination to choose our cards. I learned that having more choices to choose from causes more struggle in the picking process. Through this activity I learned that others have different thought processes to choose their charity compared to me. I related my choices to logical factors that made sense to me, where others put in there own life experiences to make their decision.