Past Projects

This project works with the Arise Shine Congregation in Southern India to help evaluate effective tools for increasing economic impact in Christian villages.

The Be a Philanthropist project is founded on the principles described in the book Grassroots Philanthropy by Bill Somerville. Through the allocation of micro-grants, this project enables individuals to engage in philanthropic behavior that they would not be able to engage in otherwise. The structure of the project encourages immediate charitable action when a specific need has been identified in a community and/or organization.

An individual submits a short application and receives notice of approval within six weeks of their application. All grants will be approved within two weeks of the application deadline. The individual carries out the proposed project and reports the success of the project to the Grantwell team.

By the end of the project deadline, the Grantwell team will utilize a program evaluation to determine the success of the micro-grants.

This project evaluated how its project went last year. They also marketed the program: giving out 10,000 dollars in increments of 300 dollars. This project provides funds to people who otherwise would not be able to participate in philanthropy and allows individuals to make the difference that they have wanted to make.

Care for Life is a nonprofit working to build capacity in Mozambique. They have primarily worked to improve infant mortality rates. Grantwell will help Care for Life with defining the gold standard for donors so they can position themselves to increase their funding. 

This project will strategically plan and organize information on Cleidocranial dysplasia (CCD) to help inform and direct people who have CCD related questions for the organization. We will also be creating a comprehensive resource that makes CCD smiles the number one resource for individuals with CCD. Skills utilized will be strategic planning, resource development and marketing research.

Project 1 — This team developed best practices for a board members handbook. This handbook will be used as a training manual for executive directors who are training new board members. This project consisted of two main research projects. The first was gathering secondary sources from the Internet about the best practices of nonprofit boards. The second phase consisted of survey responses and interviews of current and previous board members and other individuals that have had experience with board leadership.

Project 2 — This team helped Charity Squared, a philanthropic consulting company, to create a crowdsourcing tool kit. In the future, Charity Squared will provide this toolkit to philanthropies and foundations who are interested in crowdsourcing. More specifically, this toolkit will provide Charity Squared’s clients with the framework, information, and resources they’ll need in order to run a successful crowdsourcing campaign.

Project 1 – The City of Moab residents voted to adopt an additional sales tax to fund recreation, arts, and parks (RAP) within the City. This project will recommend best practices for structuring a committee that reviews applications for internal and external funding requests annually. It will also recommend best practices for the RAP tax application processes. The skills involved will be creating grant vetting processes and allocation standards, and advising on board structure.

The end goal of this project is to provide the Community Foundation of Utah a deeper awareness of the current trends in corporate social responsibility in the Lehi corridor. Our team will research the top 10 companies in the Lehi corridor and their involvement in corporate social responsibility. We will continue our research to gather the desire and need for CSR services in those companies, and the value of those services to them. The semester’s deliverables will include a final report including a market analysis for CSR, definition of the current gaps in CSR, and a cost-benefit analysis to analyze a market price.

The Jimmer Fredette Family Foundation established a protocol for their grant-giving process.

Interfaith 20 is a nonprofit organization working in the religious freedom space. IF20 is poised to become the G20’s engagement group on interfaith dialogue worldwide. They host annual conferences in the same location as the G20 in the weeks preceding their conference. Grantwell plans to help them become more financially independent to be able to cover the costs of their conferences.

Self-Reliance Services (SRS) would like to become more effective and influential in the education nonprofit industry but first needs to understand who the most impactful players are, what they do, and how they do it. SRS needs a comprehensive model to guide them in how to begin partnering with impactful education nonprofits and create a long-term strategy to continue departmental development.

The Project Mission is to identify the most impactful educational nonprofits in Church-focused areas of the world and create a long-term model of the functional and operational aspects of the industry.

We are working with a corporate partner we are developing an implementation plan by conducting research on the best practices for lifting entire communities out of the cycle of poverty.  -Mitch Lancaster

The Romney Institute is hoping to design a fundraising program for alumni and students of the Romney Institute. The Grantwell team plans to coordinate the program with the Philanthropies department of the Church, and use them as a resource for implementing some of the program. The project goal is to get 100% participation from all students and alumni in supporting the MPA students.

The Life School Foundation is a nonprofit organization providing educational opportunities to underserved children in the highlands of Guatemala. Currently, the school provides classes for pre-K to 8th grade students. Their goal is to expand the school through 12th grade. To do this, it will need to move from its current location. Grantwell will help them obtain a land grant in order to purchase land and build a new school.

This project seeks to establish a local grassroots and strategic plan to achieve the company’s community initiative. They seek to support their goal of food equity in minority and underserved communities in Utah, New Mexico, and Nevada. Skills involved will be corporate DE&I consulting, grant allocation, RFP and logic model creation, and presenting. 

The Tyler Robinson Foundation helps needy families with the unexpected costs of cancer. In order to help them with the process of choosing which families are the most needy, this team created an entrance survey and vetting tool. The entrance survey consists of questions that belong to four different categories, and the scores from the four different categories will be used to determine a final score with the vetting tool.

Fall 2013 — This team created an application process and evaluation tool to analyze grant applicants on their qualitative aspects.
Winter 2013 — This team provided a tool to analyze the 990s of grant applicants to determine their financial responsibility.

In this project you will improve UCCJJ grant monitoring team’s ability to objectively perform risk-based monitoring of grantees and sub-grantees! At a minimum the tool will allow for basic input of risk scores and result in a randomized list of which grants to monitor based in part on those risk scores. Develop skills in qualitative and quantitative data analysis, excel coding, and state government monitoring practices.