MISSOULA –

The University of Montana is one of 15 institutions in the nation selected to receive grants from the Sunshine Lady Foundation’s Learning by Giving Program, which will allow students to allocate $10,000 to area philanthropic organizations.

UM joins institutions such as Tufts, Cornell, Brandeis and Georgetown universities and the University of California, Berkeley, as participants in the program, whose benefactor is Doris Buffet, sister of Warren Buffet.

 Students in a new UM School of Business Administration course – Individual and Corporate Philanthropy – will take part in a philanthropic experience through a project that involves developing a request for proposals, reviewing and evaluating those proposals, and making the funding allocations.

The course is taught by Bambi Douma, UM’s Deborah Doyle McWhinney Faculty Fellow, and Andrea Vernon, director of UM’s Office for Civic Engagement, who wrote the grant to bring the Learning by Giving Program to UM.

“Philanthropic education is a fast-growing concept in universities and colleges,” Vernon said. “The goal of educators and donors is to build upon a surging interest in social responsibility among college students and make philanthropy part of the mainstream curriculum. The courses can strengthen town-gown relations and help communities meet real, pressing needs.”

For more information about the UM course or the Learning by Giving Program, call Vernon at 406-243-5159 or e-mail andrea.vernon@mso.umt.edu.

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