Ashton Hartman, Berks Catholic High School senior and Berks County Community Foundation Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) president, explains, “Grantmaking doesn’t offer those ‘aha’ moments; it’s more of a ‘eureka,’ a scientific discovery, where you make observations, learn existing best practices, and then everything falls together over time.” Sixty-five miles northwest of Philadelphia, in Berks County Pennsylvania, a group of 30 high school students are using fundraising as a tool to learn about and practice better grantmaking. “We spend about half of our year executing the grantmaking cycle. We decide on a theme for the grant cycle, create a request for proposals, conduct site visits, deliberate the applications, and then make our funding recommendations.” The YAC, which cur

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