Philanthropy Grant
Learning by Giving Philanthropy Grants
Fall 2026
Learning by Giving Philanthropy Grants
Since 2003, Davidson College students enrolled in POL 381, "Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector," have allocated grants to local non-profits as a central part of the course. A total of $170,000 in grants has been disbursed over the past 23 years. Funding for this course was made available through the generosity of the Learning by Giving Foundation, established by Doris Buffett, in order to promote student learning about effective and responsible philanthropy. In 2003, Davidson College’s Philanthropy and the Non-Profit Sector class was the first course to receive grant money from Ms. Buffett. That experiment at Davidson was a success and served as the model for her Learning by Giving Foundation, which expanded its grant-giving program to classes to 35 universities and colleges across the US. Though the Learning by Giving Foundation closed in Spring 2024 a few years after Ms. Buffett’s passing, the endowed funds it donated to Davidson College will continue to provide financial support for the Philanthropy class to use for its grant-giving exercise into the future.
In 2026, the Cannon Family Charitable Trust generously offered to provide funds for the course through the Cannon Family Nonprofit Education Fund. Their support will enable the class to award $50,000 in total awards to selected non-profits in the fall semester of 2026, a considerably larger amount than was possible in the past. We are deeply grateful to the Cannon Family Charitable Trust for this support, as well as its financial support for expanding high-impact summer programs that place students directly in North Carolina communities.
Fall 2026: Cannon Family Charitable Trust Western NC Grants
Since 2013, our grant target area has been the greater Charlotte area, and the grant process has employed the traditional “request for proposals” approach.
This fall, the course is experimenting with a different approach.
First, the geographic target area of the grants has been shifted to non-profits serving communities in rural western NC. Non-profits in the Greater Charlotte area will not be eligible for the 2026 grants. The shift to a focus on rural Western NC was driven in part by a recognition that rural needs in NC are high and its non-profits are less well-funded than their urban counterparts, and in part due to unmet needs and new challenges resulting from the devastating impact of Hurricane Helene.
Second, we are shifting from a “request for proposals” model to a “by invitation” approach to reduce the administration burden placed on non-profits. Students in the course will be tasked with reviewing and assessing the work of 100 non-profits in western NC that were vetted over the summer. The students will then work in committees to create a short list of 20 non-profits which will be invited to send a short statement of how they would make use of a grant. The students will then deliberate on allocation of the $50,000.
This experiment with the “by invitation” approach means that there is no open application process this year. Following completion of the course and the grant-giving exercise, we will review lessons learned from the experiment. Those lessons will inform future structuring of the grant-giving exercise.
For questions about the course or the Cannon Family Nonprofit Education Fund Western NC grants, please contact Dr. Ken Menkhaus at kemenkhaus@davidson.edu.