The learner will:

• research a philanthropic organization and its mission.
  
• create a persuasive radio advertisement for a nonprofit organization.
  
• choose an organization to personally support with a donation of time or treasure and justify the choice.

Anticipatory Set:

Hand out a plastic straw to each student.  After they are seated, tell them to bend their straw (not break it) with their hands.  Tell them to remember how it feels to bend your one straw.  Collect all the straws, put them together tightly with rubber bands or tape.  Ask several students to try to bend the grouped together straws using the same force they used in bending their own individual straw.  Suggest to the students that this illustrates how people, when they work together for a common cause, are stronger and can sometimes accomplish more than individuals.  Combining energy and resources can result in more being accomplished.  Nonprofit organizations are made up of people who care about the same issues or causes and group together to address them.  Tell the students that they are going to investigate some nonprofit organizations in the local area to discover the mission around which it was established and how they are responding to a cause or issue.

 

• Arrange students into groups to research a philanthropic organization, accessing by computer or print copy “Organizations” Briefing Papers from www.learningotgive.org. (See Materials)
  
  
• Have each group select, or assign each group, a philanthropic organization about which they will write a 30-second persuasive radio commercial or public service announcement, encouraging support for the organizations through donations or volunteers.
  
  
• Students will have 20 minutes to work in groups of 2-3 to read the information and create a radio advertisement encouraging people to support the organization.
  
  
• Students will perform the radio “spots” for their classmates.
  
  
• After the presentations, ask the students to write a short paragraph about which of the organizations they would be most likely to support with a donation of money or time (volunteerism) and why.