New Fundraising Series and Grant-Writing Class Open to All Georgia State Students This Fall

ATLANTA—The Andrew Young School of Policy Studies recently received a grant from Georgia State University’s Women’s Philanthropy Network to fund a new year-long initiative aimed at empowering the next generation of community fundraisers through training and a new grant-writing course. It will launch in fall 2022.

The Women’s Philanthropy Network Fundraising Series will feature lectures from the Atlanta nonprofit community’s most influential and successful fundraisers and offer hands-on workshops for students to practice fundraising best practices through role play. Open to all undergraduate and graduate students across Georgia State’s Atlanta and Perimeter campuses, the series will help them learn more about fundraising as a career, raise funds for their research projects and seek internship opportunities at nonprofit development departments around the metro area. The grant-writing course — Gender, Generations and Grant Writing — will show students how to overcome obstacles in language, styling and phrasing to generate successful grants.

The demand exists. Georgia State’s Nonprofit Management graduate program ranks No. 9 in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report. Its annual grant-writing course fills so quickly with graduates and public policy undergraduates pursuing concentrations or minors in nonprofit leadership, many interested students find themselves unable to enroll.

“We’ve built our nonprofit studies program around the needs of students seeking careers in the nonprofit sector, and we see great demand for a better understanding of nonprofit fundraising,” said Dean Sally Wallace. “This initiative will help them meet their goals while expanding the culture of philanthropy at Georgia State University and helping us strengthen our future pipeline of support.”

Wallace emphasized the vision of the Women’s Philanthropy Network in supporting learning focused on philanthropy that will be available to students in all majors across all Georgia State campuses.

“Increasingly, students seek to have an impact that’s broader in scope than their majors,” said Wallace. “We see this in those who participate in our campus wide initiatives, like the Social Action Alliance, and we expect to see high participation levels in our new fundraising series and grant-writing course. We are very grateful to the Women’s Philanthropy Network for funding this initiative.”