Philanthropy center receives $1.5M endowment

The Center on Philanthropy at IU announced last week that it received a $1.5 million endowment from the Wilbur and Hilda Glenn Family Foundation to help further programs and education.\n“We are a family foundation, and we typically make grants to organizations involved with health, education, human services and environmental conservation,” Thomas Glenn, president of the Wilbur and Hilda Glenn Foundation, said in an e-mail.\nThese involvements are only part of the work the IU Center on Philanthropy does. The center runs a fundraising school at IU-Purdue University at Indianapolis that teaches students the current issues along with how to go about building fundraising and philanthropic resources.\nAccording to the center’s Web site, teaching students about philanthropy is not the only work done. Research is conducted on such topics as households in America who give money to relief efforts; families and how they give throughout their lives; and lists of people who have given a gift of 1 million dollars or more in the past 33 years. \nThe money awarded will be used as a matching fund to help expand beyond the maintenance fees paid for by two other endowments from the Lilly Endowment and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and will increase the impact that all three will have, Communications Manager at the Center on Philanthropy Adriene Davis said. It will also make the work the Center does more permanent as operational costs will no longer be an issue.\nWhat will be done with the money has not been decided yet, but Davis said it will be used as “seed money,” which will allow the money to be taken directly from the fund rather diverted from some other program. \nThe center will most likely use the money to develop new programs in philanthropy education, Davis said.