Grantwell Celebrates a Decade

PROVO, Utah – Apr 18, 2018 – The celebration to honor a decade of Grantwell was a night to remember.

The Romney Institute of Public Management at the BYU Marriott School of Business marked ten years of Grantwell with students, faculty, alumni, and donors. The event highlighted the program, which has provided students with the opportunity to advise large donors

“I loved that everyone in attendance was connected to Grantwell in some way,” says Elise Simonsen, a second-year MPA student and the current executive director of Grantwell. “It was awesome to meet alumni and learn what projects they worked on and what they are up to now. It’s incredible to hear about how much Grantwell has grown the past ten years.”

During the celebration, Grantwell faculty advisor and assistant teaching professor Aaron Miller addressed the crowd. One lesson he shared was that people don’t really succeed unless they can fail. In the past, Miller took the lead and had students work for him, but he learned that students are more successful when given responsibility and consequences for their actions. 

“The magic of Grantwell has always been the possibility of failure,” Miller said. “Many of my favorite experiences involved giving students room to fail and time to succeed. Every year Grantwell has become more and better than it was the year before because of this.”

Grantwell is a student-run, faculty-advised consulting program that was founded in 2008 at Brigham Young University. It addresses the joint needs of community donors, graduate students, and the Romney Institute. The program gives students a chance to apply the principles they learn in the classroom to real-world projects.

First-year MPA student Reed Segura hopes to pursue a career in consulting for public sectors. Through Grantwell, he’s able to experience what it’s like working with actual partners as a student.

“The point is to get students professional experience working with real donors and real money,” Segura says. “The last ten years we’ve advised $30 million in donations, so it’s a lot of cool, high-impact situations.”

Each project completed has an effect not only on Grantwell but also on community partners the students work with. This semester, students created the first-ever annual report for a foundation in Utah that will serve as a framework for future annual reports. As the executive director, Simonsen also helped restructure Grantwell’s board to be more accessible and beneficial for the organization in future years.

As students gain real-world experience through Grantwell and contribute to its legacy, they leave with valuable insight to offer and confidence when entering the nonprofit sector.

“Grantwell has given me a passion for philanthropy as a fulfilling career option,” Simonsen says.