Donor Profiles: Meg Ramsey

Those were the questions that led Meg Ramsey to join Foundation for MetroWest's advisory committee on Youth in Philanthropy. As a former software engineer for Bell Labs and founding member of a start-up technology company, she knows that the world of philanthropy “holds many more intangibles than software development, but it also contains many of the same challenges and questions. What are you going to do with information once you have it? What are you going to measure and why?”

Meg’s $100,000 challenge grant to expand the Youth in Philanthropy program was one way of answering her own questions. The students who sign up for the philanthropy program in their schools (at present there are endowed programs in five MetroWest schools with single-year programs in others) acquire new skills: they learn the discipline of having to commit their voluntary time; they learn how to read grant proposals from the MetroWest region; how to conduct site visits; how to develop decision-making strategies; and how to moderate respectful discussion among people who disagree. These are both life skills and philanthropic education.

“I tell them to ask questions, listen, observe,” says Meg. “I love having the opportunity to be a guest speaker at Youth in Philanthropy program meetings.”

“The program Youth in Philanthropy has opened my eyes, not only to many social problems,” observed one Youth in Philanthropy student, “but to the many services out there trying to counteract them. In a world where there seems to be an overwhelming amount of sadness and poverty, I learned there are many wonderful organizations and people willing to devote their skills, money and time to the causes they believe in.”