Common Good Grant Program Turns Twenty, Students Give Away Record Amount
Bowdoin's Common Good Grant program (CGG) is twenty years old this year. Acting much like a foundation, students in the program solicit donations and award grants to local nonprofits, learning both about philanthrophy and the greater Brunswick community in the process.
From left to right:
Tom Ancona, Chanel Matthews ’21, and Ryan Telingator ’21. The 2021 Common Good Grants awards ceremony was hybrid this year, with guests and some students online and the rest of the students gathering in person in Main Lounge.
An anonymous donor from the Class of 1964 established CGG in 2001 with an original gift of $10,000. (That fund later became an endowed gift that generates at least $10,000 annually.) The donor hoped the exercise of giving would inspire students to commit to a lifetime of philanthropy, as well as teach them the ways local charities support communities, often on tight budgets.