Kellogg grants $7.5 million for philanthropy education cooperation.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation granted $7.5 million to three of the nation's leading nonprofit academic centers to launch a cross-institutional collaboration. Through faculty, program and student exchanges, the centers aim to change the face of philanthropy and nonprofit management.

The directors of The Center for Nonprofit Leadership and Management at Arizona State University, The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, and the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership at Grand Valley State University, along with representatives from the Kellogg Foundation, began brainstorming the idea of a joint initiative during 2002.

"The objective was to address how we could move the field forward, how we could catalize the growth in the field, how we could make the field deeper and stronger," said Joel Orosz, Ph.D., interim executive director and professor of philanthropic studies at the Johnson Center at Grand Valley State University. This past November, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation awarded the centers $2.5 million each to form the AIM (Arizona-Indiana-Michigan)Alliance.

According to Robert Ashcraft, Ph.D., director of The Center for Nonprofit Leadership and Management at Arizona State University, there are two primary objectives of the AIM Alliance. The first course of action, he said, will be to begin implementing a program of knowledge-sharing and cross-delivery of each center's flagship programs. The next objective, said Ashcraft, "is to improve quality of life in communities of color through the application of these tools." The centers will focus on bringing individuals from these communities into leadership positions through working alongside organizations that serve the communities and promote leadership, he said.

The youngest of the three, the center at ASU is a leader in the field of nonprofit leadership and management research, having created effective board development education and training programs and NSTEP, an organizational self-assessment program. The Center at Indiana University is regarded for its strong graduate programs, and for the Fund Raising School, the only international fundraising program housed within a university. The Johnson Center is recognized for its progress in funder effectiveness, particularly through its Grantmaking School. "Our hope is to take the strengths of each place and come together and elevate those to a greater potential," said Ashcraft.

The much-discussed need for new generations of strong nonprofit sector leadership highlights the importance of initiatives such as this that combine research and professional practice to prepare and strengthen future nonprofit leaders, said Eugene R. Tempel, Ph.D., executive director of The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. But, according to Tempel, this will take time.

"We feel like we have the resources to correct the imbalance, and we're going to be putting together joint programs that will attract more people of color, women and youth into careers in philanthropic and nonprofit leadership. But it's going to take a little longer to work with the communities and get that program up and running."

In 2004, foundations in the United States gave approximately $32 billion in grants to individuals and charitable organizations, according to a Foundation Center study. That same year, according to the United States Census Bureau, Hispanics living in the United States sent more than $40 billion in remittances to support family and friends in their countries of origin. "Now that's philanthropy, by any standard," said Orosz. "We don't understand what's making it tick, and exactly where those dollars are going and what it's achieving in other countries. And that's a hugely important issue that we've got to figure out and understand and give people credit for."