Service learning and civic engagement are sometimes wishful ideals for the university classroom. Incorporating the external world into the campus setting with a useful and beneficial project takes more effort in course preparation than a traditional course and takes time and effort by external organizations to accommodate the students’ work, and students may simply not have enough skills yet to assist external agencies. This article describes a grantmaking project incorporated into undergraduate and graduate courses for the past three years. Both graduate students and freshmen researched local nonprofit organizations and awarded a large grant to the organization of their choice. Although the instructional focus of each course was different, in both courses the grantmaking project proved easy for the instructor to set up and implement and easy for nonprofit recipients to accommodate. The project can be accomplished in a variety of courses commonly offered in schools of public policy and administration.
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