Unlikely Heroes of Nonprofits

The inheritance from grandma was substantial, certainly enough for Brian Swett to equip himself with whatever a college kid might dream of. A new Beemer, for instance.

Instead, the Brown University senior used grandma’s check to start a nonprofit foundation to benefit the Lakota Indians of South Dakota.

“I didn’t have any needs that I found worthy of spending money that she made and saved during her life on myself,” said Swett, 22. “It felt better to give it to a cause that she was passionate about.”

So, in addition to juggling a major in public policy and international relations with a full schedule of intramural sports, serving on a university advisory committee on socially responsible investing, mentoring at a Providence high school and keeping up an active social life, Swett recently was busy signing incorporation papers for the Internal Revenue Service.

As president of Naca Cikala--the name means Little Warrior, after a Lakota tribesman--Swett joins a growing number of college undergraduates who are establishing philanthropic foundations. Often on a shoestring and increasingly aided by the wide reach of the Internet, these students are breaking ground as social entrepreneurs.

At a time in their lives when party-party-party and me-me-me are the expected norms, Swett and others say they find a sense of connection through their unpaid efforts. Unlike an earlier generation that looked to the public sector for change, many students express frustration with government and more established philanthropies.

But even supporters worry that this enthusiasm for small-scale charity may come at the cost of more traditional political or benevolent activity, or that splintered efforts by novice fund-raisers may unknowingly duplicate other efforts.

Such reservations do little to discourage 20-year-old Ryan Dibble, a manager of the Philanthropic Fund at USC.

“People nowadays are more encouraged to take things into their own hands rather than elect representatives to do something for them,” said Dibble, who distributes grants to USC students working on housing, tutoring and other projects in the gritty area of downtown Los Angeles around the school. “It’s more popular to say, ‘I’m going to do this myself.’ It’s about being part of a tangible effect.”

No one keeps count of undergraduate-initiated nonprofits, but those in the field say the number appears to be growing. Nearly 250 colleges and universities offer courses in nonprofit management--up from about 100 only a year or so ago. Enrollment in an Indiana University summer program for student philanthropists has tripled since the program began three years ago. In a recent Glamour magazine survey of leading female college students, almost all said they had started nonprofits.

The efforts are as diverse as the students who launch them.

Harvard University senior Justin Pasquariello, adopted at age 9 after a childhood in foster care, is starting a nonprofit to provide mentors for adopted children and those in foster care. After affirmative action was abolished in California schools, UC Berkeley senior Celina Mei Young founded Promise America, aimed at helping disadvantaged students achieve academic goals. Nicole Kirkwood, a senior at the University of Iowa, has established enABLE to assist people with mental health problems. And Texas Christian University senior Marshawn Evans has addressed more than 300 schools and conferences about how leadership skills can combat violence since establishing her nonprofit, America CAN (Children Achieving Now).

While still small, the number of charities launched by undergraduates “has in the last couple of years become something of a tidal wave,” said Joel Orosz, program director of philanthropy and volunteerism at the Kellogg Foundation in Michigan. He said students who not long ago might have channeled entrepreneurial inclinations into business are expressing a sense of social concern.

“It’s a change, very much so,” Orosz said. “The old days when foundations could make or break these efforts really are gone. If they can’t get money out of Kellogg or Ford or Packard, they can literally find out how somebody started a foundation with $500 and built on it, then follow that model.”

As it happens, $500 is just about how much Harvard students Sandra Leora Nudelman and Cristina Weiner each invested in their charitable start-up. Yet only months after its inception, Youth for Organ Donor Awareness--YODA--already has held a national conference with a Nobel Prize-winner as a speaker and a deputy surgeon general among the guests.

Like many undergraduate philanthropies, YODA grew out of personal experience. Nudelman saw her ailing grandfather thrive after a liver transplant from a 19-year-old woman. When Weiner’s twin brother died in 1999, her family donated his organs.

Little did Nudelman--a sophomore with a special major in the behavioral foundations of economics--know she would be bonding with directors of national and international organizations, making cold calls to pharmaceutical companies or spending entire days at the law library, researching bylaws. Nor did she expect the 2 a.m. trips to Kinko’s.

Recently, she looked in the mirror and thought, “I look like I haven’t slept in a month. Then I realized: I haven’t slept in a month.”

But Nudelman, 19, insisted she still found time to get an A on her last midterm, exercise daily and work as a research assistant. “This organization--this cause--was something that hadn’t been taken up, and I saw a need,” she said.

Fellow Harvard sophomore Aalap Akshay Mahadevia spends 25 to 30 hours a week establishing his nonprofit, Allforindia.com. His aim is to help curb hunger, health problems and illiteracy in India, where his parents were born.

“It’s always been in the back of my mind, how much poverty there is in my motherland,” said Mahadevia, who was raised in Iowa.

Working with students from other universities--all of Indian descent--Mahadevia said a major challenge was gaining credibility with sponsoring organizations. Allforindia.com is designed as a “funding intermediary,” informing site visitors about problem areas so they can choose a cause to support. A primary sponsor of Mahadevia’s site is CARE International, a worldwide nonprofit. Mahadevia said that when CARE executives at first admonished that the project could become time-consuming, he responded that he would gladly take a year off from Harvard to run it.

“When you show your dedication, they’re even more willing to work with you,” the 19-year-old government major said. “College students are filled with idealism and energy and all that. I think people see that, and respond.”

Many students saw their parents donate dimes to huge charity operations. For these undergraduates, by contrast, hands-on community service was often a curriculum requirement, as early as first grade.

Their involvement in nonprofit endeavors mirrors a larger change in public philosophy about how one individual can make a difference, said Leslie Lenkowsky, a professor of public policy and philanthropic studies at Indiana University-Purdue University/Indianapolis. “It is tied to a kind of anti-government feeling,” he said. “There is a sense that government has limits.”

That sentiment causes some “worry that this kind of enthusiasm for community organization comes at the expense of political involvement,” Lenkowsky said.

But social activist Bill Shore, founder of Share Our Strength in Washington, said those concerns might be unfounded.

“If you’re into the work for very long at all, you start to realize you’re not going to be able to get your ideas to be sustainable ultimately without some form of public support,” Shore said.

One thing that helps this generation, he said, is a strong sense of business acumen: “When I was growing up, your law degree was your necessary tool for social justice. Today it’s a business degree.”

Those getting involved also may be seeking a sense of connection.

“You hear from many students, maybe a third of respondents, that the single most important change in society during their lifetimes was the decline of the family,” Lenkowsky said. “Not only families that are divorced or separated or what have you, but kids who have grown up in households where both parents are working. So the sorts of things that kids might once have gotten involved with have changed. In some ways their first chance to establish these connections is when they are in college. So one should not underestimate the importance of these associations for just bonding.”

At Brandeis University, senior Wendi Adelson agreed. “What I see is a generation that predominantly grew up with the largest economic boom in U.S. history--not experiencing any major wars, not experiencing any true difficulties besides small things that our families had to deal with.”

Venturing into nonprofit work “comes from a search for meaning, a desire for something more,” said Adelson--who ought to know. She still sits on the board of Starting Blocks, the South Florida nonprofit she set up in junior high school. Using her life’s savings of $200, Adelson printed up a letterhead and persuaded toy dealers to donate excess educational games. Adelson carted the toys to the child care center where she volunteered.

Starting Blocks remains in operation. And Adelson wrote her college application essay about her experience. With a major in American studies, a minor in peace and conflict studies and a passion for Latin dancing, Adelson plans to remain in the nonprofit sector, with a job lined up with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace after graduation.

Her boyfriend, 22-year-old Michael Masters, shares similar ideals. Masters, a University of Michigan senior, founded the Four Directions Unity Project, targeted at children on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

With a $5,000 budget, mostly from university grants, the project sets up university pen pals on the Internet for the reservation’s Porcupine School. Every year, a group of UM undergraduates heads to South Dakota to take Porcupine students on a two-week camping trip. This fall, students from Pine Ridge will visit the Ann Arbor, Mich., campus as part of what Masters calls “a full cross-cultural exchange.”

But after spending more than a year working on former Vice President Al Gore’s presidential campaign, Masters decries the notion that among his generation, politics and philanthropy are mutually exclusive.

“I really believe [politics] is a way to initiate change,” he said. “But it is not necessarily the best way to initiate change. So then you look outside the box and see what you can come up with.”

Last summer, Swett of Brown University was looking at a newspaper when a check “in excess of $20,000” arrived from his grandmother’s estate. Swett spotted an article about a telephone lineman from Massachusetts who transports food, clothes, toys and books to the struggling Lakota. The story reminded him of his grandmother Muriel Swett, a social worker who died at age 87 and had a lifelong interest in American Indian culture. Swett promptly tracked down the lineman.

Swett’s undergraduate studies had taken him to Third World countries, but he was unprepared for the poverty on a 1.7-million-acre reservation where a man’s life expectancy is 48 years. More than 70% of the reservation’s babies are born with fetal alcohol syndrome, Swett learned. The average annual family income is $3,000.

“This was very much of a Third World situation within America’s borders,” he said. “People don’t know about it, and we’re not doing enough to help.”

Working with the Lakota, Swett earmarked his inheritance to start a counseling program for alcohol and drug abuse. After graduation, Swett plans to spend a year seeking grants and donations to enrich the foundation. With such formidable problems on a remote reservation, his effort is in some ways a drop in the bucket, Swett acknowledged.

“But I think the way the nonprofit world looks at things is, it’s not who you are not helping, it’s who you are helping,” he said. “One of my criteria for trying to be involved in social services is to get the most bang for the buck. I could have donated this to an established organization, then I would have had 20% to 30% going to administrative fees. In this way, 100% is going to program works, setting up what we want to do.”

Swett is appreciative of a comfortable upbringing that left him with neither college debt nor material needs. He said his grandmother was a maverick who taught him the virtue of saving pennies to benefit others. His charity keeps her alive. Most days, he says, he feels her smiling.