CONTRIBUTED PHOTO — The 2022 Iowa Youth Philanthropy Conference was held on the campus of Marshalltown Community College in Dejardin Hall Tuesday. The event, which was organized and sponsored by the Iowa Council of Foundations, drew youth philanthropy groups from all over Iowa, and they posed for a photo just before they took a break for lunch.

The annual Iowa Youth Philanthropy Conference was hosted at the Marshalltown Community College campus on Tuesday, and youngsters from all over the state attended the event to learn more about philanthropy in Iowa.

The Iowa Council of Foundations (ICOF) organizes and sponsors the event every year in partnership with the foundations on their planning committee, and ICOF President Kari McCann Boutell was excited to be hosting the conference in person once again after taking 2020 off due to the pandemic and then going virtual in 2021.

McCann Boutell said this is the fifth time the conference has been held in Marshalltown, and every year, they try to discuss what philanthropy entails, how it might be showing up in different communities, and how philanthropy groups can identify community needs and assist in those areas.

This year, the conference had a special focus on showing the philanthropy groups how to use data and knowledge to make informed decisions regarding their grant making, and young philanthropists from six different counties — including Marshall — attended the all-day conference.

“This really is like a statewide reach, and that’s another one of the goals, is that the students can understand of course how their own youth philanthropy group works, but also get an understanding of some of the nuances and differences of youth philanthropy groups across the state,” McCann Boutell said.

Throughout the conference, they made sure that the voices of student philanthropy groups could be heard, so the projects other groups are working on could be shared and discussed.

uVoice, a student philanthropy group from Polk County, shared a project they are working on concerning the intersection of racial injustice and youth health during the event, and they discussed how the needs assessment was conducted for their community.

“I think one thing that we’ve done a better job of over the years is really letting young people be the voice of the conference,” McCann Boutell said. “It helps students think in new ways about how they can support their community.”

McCann Boutell believes these yearly conferences are important for a variety of reasons, and she felt it was a way to not only encourage youth philanthropy, but also future philanthropists. In a way, the conferences help to ensure that passionate young individuals will carry on the work as they get older and join the workforce.

“The reason (ICOF) supports youth philanthropy is because we know that students that participate in programs like this are more likely to become donors in the future, are more likely to be engaged in nonprofits and foundations in the future, and may even become staff members at those foundations,” McCann Boutell said. “I actually was a youth philanthropy student myself, and all these years later, I work in philanthropy. So we really know that investment helps build the talent and leadership pipeline for both nonprofits and philanthropy.”

Community foundations, private foundations and family foundations throughout Iowa sit on the planning committee for the conference, and they work hard to make it a success year after year. The Community Foundation of Marshall County (CFMC) is a part of the committee, and Executive Director Julie Hitchins was glad that Marshalltown could host the event.

“The Community Foundation of Marshall County is thankful that the Iowa Council of Foundations chose Marshalltown for the conference,” Hitchins wrote in an email. “(Students from the three student philanthropy groups in Marshall County) gained valuable knowledge about different approaches to grantmaking, how to craft effective grant guidelines, as well as understanding that student philanthropy programs may work differently, but we all have a common goal: to make this world a better place.”

McCann Boutell said hosting the conference in Marshalltown worked well because it has a “really great philanthropic network,” and it is also somewhat centrally located.

Students from West Marshall’s LUCC (Leaders Uplifting the Community with Charity), East Marshall’s SEAL (Students Empowering And Leading), and Marshalltown’s STEP (Students Teaching and Empowering Philanthropy) all attended the event, along with six other youth philanthropy groups from across the state.

The event wrapped up in the late afternoon, but it surely left an impact on both new and returning student philanthropists from across Iowa.

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Contact Susanna Meyer at 641-753-6611

or smeyer@timesrepublican.com.