Feature Student: Hannah Gray

Hi! My name is Hannah Gray. I am a sophomore from Greensboro, NC studying public policy here at UNC. On campus I am a part of Alpha Phi Omega, the service fraternity, as well as Buckley Public Service Scholars. Through these two organizations I have done many different community service projects.  This semester I have also been involved with starting a new club on campus called Unsung People. Unsung People is a positive community journalism group that highlights people that constantly do kind things in their communities that often go unnoticed.

Hannah is pictured on the right

I chose to apply to this class because I’ve been interested in philanthropy for a few years now. I was first exposed to the philanthropic world when my dad began working for the Weaver Foundation in Greensboro. Then throughout my high school career I was participated in a unique opportunity known as the Teen Grantmaking Council. As a board comprised of high school students from around Guilford County, we were able to give out $10,000 to youth led projects across the county. After I joined Buckley Public Service Scholars last semester I was presented with the opportunity to be a part of this specific youth-led grant making board. Like my other experience with philanthropy, I’ve enjoyed every meeting and learning more about various non-profits and the administration side of community service. My favorite part of this class has probably been having guest speakers come and show us how you can turn this class experience into a life-long career. The four guests that have already come have all been informative and it’s been fun to hear their stories and the differences across foundations.

My involvement with the class has included being a part of the data committee. As a member of this group I’ve helped design a rubric that the entire class will use to score each grant application that we receive. We have also collaborated with the class committee and come up with a way to discuss each grant during class time. We didn’t do much in the earlier steps of the process, but now that we just received our grants we are beginning to review them with the rubrics we made. Overall this class had been an awesome experience that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.