The Final Decision

Overall, the final decision making process was comprehensive and focused. We sparked the discussion with each student stating their top choice of the five finalists and why he or she supported that specific organization. This step was important because it refreshed each organization in our minds but more importantly it gave some of the less vocal students a chance to contribute new perspectives that were not presented prior. We then moved to the voting stage. In the beginning of the semester we chose a voting method that consisted of a round by round elimination of the bottom organization, then the final decision would be made with a two-thirds majority. From the first round, two organizations were the clear favorites; inevitably, they were the two finalists. During the final round of voting a student proposed to spilt the funds between these two organizations. This quickly became a popular option for the class and the final vote was a stalemate between giving the full $10,000 to one organization or separating the funds and giving $3,000 to one and $7,000 to another.

The main reasoning behind the specific values of $3,000 and $7,000 was the fact that there was an interesting component to one organization’s proposal that part of the class felt had potential to have a significant impact in the long run. One organization proposed to send one of their trained mental health professionals to a conference in Boston. At this conference, there will be research leaders and the biggest names in the field of mental health revealing new findings, answering controversial questions, and working with the attendees in problems present in their own organizations. What appealed to this portion of class was the innovation and potential transformation of the organization’s approaches and practices in the mental health area. However, there were many skeptics who weren’t convinced that the risk was worth taking because they feared that this conference would not be as beneficial as many believed. There is the possibility that the information at the conference is not especially groundbreaking or the representative that is sent may fail at effectively implementing the material into the approaches of his or her organization. This dilemma of a high-risk, high-reward option polarized the class at first, but after discussion and debate, the final outcome was to split the funds, which worked as a compromise between the two organizations.

Chiefly, although this process caused a few moments of class division, there was not as much pressure because there was really not a bad option. Once we narrowed the list down to the final five organizations, we were basically searching for the better of goods. Finally, after the entire process of solidifying class philanthropic values, conducting phone interviews, visiting the sites first-hand, debating and voting in numerous stages, we found two organizations that were both deserving of our funds.

– Alpha S.