August 9, 2007 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Q: I am a graduate student working on a project with a charity that helps young fathers who don’t have custody of their children learn parenting skills and get more involved in their children’s lives. We depend on grants, but because of the charity’s shortage of staff members, it has been hard for us to gather and analyze the data about the programs. And we need to show foundations these sorts of results in order to keep grant money flowing. How can a charity meet challenges like this when it’s so thinly staffed?
A: As a graduate student yourself, you already embody the most obvious and probably most feasible answer to the question: Find fellow graduate students to help. Some charities have looked to students of business or nonprofit-management programs to volunteer, for academic credit, their help with fund raising, marketing, and other important functions (see “School Work,” June 15, 2006). But in the case of program research you may get more appropriate help from aspiring anthropologists, economists, political scientists, or social scientists, who have the data-gathering, analysis, and writing skills you seek.
It is important, however, to recognize that such students aren’t just cheap labor. In fact, they are well on their way to becoming experts and can provide very sophisticated and otherwise expensive skills for little or no pay, notes Tommy Darwin, director of professional development and community engagement at the University of Texas at Austin. Nonprofit groups get the benefit of the research, while graduate and doctoral students get access to subject matter and, in some cases, the basis of a dissertation topic.
“Nice exchanges can and do happen,” Mr. Darwin says. But charities that work with advanced students must give them challenging tasks appropriate to their skills, or else risk souring the relationship before it begins.
Finding such students is getting easier because more and more universities have established some kind of office that enables partnerships among faculty, students, and civic groups, says Ira Harkavy, director of the Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania.
If the academic institutions in your area do not offer such an obvious channel, you’ll have a bit more legwork to do.
“Try to find which school or department is most oriented to this kind of work, and see if you can locate individual faculty members who might already be involved” in researching the field in which your charity operates, Mr. Harkavy suggests.
Alternatively, most colleges also have a community-relations office as well as a student-volunteer office that may be of assistance. Your state chapter of Campus Compact, a national coalition of college and university presidents interested in promoting community service, may also be able to help.
While your nonprofit organization is struggling to obtain research help right now, don’t neglect to think about possible long-term relationships between your group and a local college or university. Mr. Darwin advises that you “spend some time getting to know who is at the university, looking at newsletters and publications that talk about the kind of research you seek. Orient yourself toward the people who work on the issues that resonate with what you’re doing.”
In other words, don’t just look at the university as a provider of skills but as a source for partnerships that can advance your charity’s mission. Town-and-gown partnerships of this kind can be “powerfully enriching to the community,” says Mr. Harkavy. Mr. Darwin notes that universities generally also have a strong measure of clout and legitimacy with potential donors, making it easier for the charity to attract gifts.
