University of Guelph-Humber

For one cool November afternoon, the University of Guelph-Humber’s atrium was transformed into a busy and bustling charity marketplace. Students stood around brightly coloured booths and drew people over to them. Some had food to sell, others had raffle tickets and some even had carefully colour-coordinated their clothes, booth and presentation board. While it looked like a marketplace, the students weren’t really selling anything. Instead, they were collecting donations for charities.

The plan began a few months earlier when Prof. Paul Sherman, Program Head of Family and Community Social Services at the University of Guelph-Humber, was planning his fourth-year course on agency administration and community relations. He decided that to complement lectures on non-profit management issues such as, interagency collaboration, agency governance, and budgeting, he’d include a hands-on component about fundraising. As the class learned about the theories of agency management, they were also tasked with raising money for a charity of their choice.

“Adding in this work helps the course come alive,” says Prof. Sherman. “The students have to research charities, find one they like, ask to fundraise for them, create a plan and ultimately donate their proceeds. They’re learning firsthand about the challenges of managing a community social services agency and raising funds.”

Splitting into small groups, the class selected 10 different charities and non-profits to fundraise for. They supported causes working on homelessness, sexual and domestic abuse, mental health and addictions, Indigenous persons and others, and spent weeks getting to know their causes and planning a fundraising strategy.

Lexus Gould, a fourth-year FCSS student, was working with her group to raise funds for Second Harvest, a Toronto organization that “rescues” food from caterers, grocery stores and restaurants that would go to waste, and delivers it to agencies like food banks. Lexus and her group saw that Second Harvest was a smaller, lesser-known organization, and decided to give them their support. After learning about how agencies are run in class, Lexus was thankful to get practical experience in its realities.

“The effort and planning that goes into this work is tremendous; it’s definitely not as easy as it seems,” she says. “There are so many agencies out there that you really have to do something to stand out, otherwise you just get lost in the noise. You need to have really dedicated people who are willing to go that extra mile in order to survive.”   

At the charity marketplace, Lexus and her group were selling baked goods and popcorn while telling passersby about the work that Second Harvest does. They and the rest of the groups had surpassed their initial fundraising goal, but were eager to do more to support the causes they cared about. Overall, the class raised nearly $5000 for their charities and organizations, a success that nonetheless drove home an important lesson.

“For many non-profits, funding doesn’t come easy,” says Prof. Sherman. “Giving students a chance to see that fact up close will go a long towards preparing them for working in the field.”

Learn more about Family and Community Social Services at the University of Guelph-Humber.