(Source: Colgate University)

Ever wonder what it's like to play Santa Claus? Philanthropists experience it year-round. Now some colleges are helping students wear that (red) hat.

Read this from the New York Times:

Emily Katz has $10,000 to spend and, not surprisingly, she cannot wait to spend it.

But Ms. Katz, 19, is not thinking of spending it on herself or a loved one. She and seven classmates at Colgate University, a small liberal arts college here in central New York, are taking a new seminar in philanthropy, learning how foundations operate and studying ways to give money to people in need.

"Rather than helping someone out for the day, we get to really look at the root of the problem," she said.

Many universities offer courses in philanthropy, but Colgate's is unusual because in early May, at the end of the school year, the students will award $10,000 to nonprofit organizations of their choice, after researching worthy recipients. Only a few such courses nationwide give students the opportunity to give away real money.

"We're helping students learn the business of philanthropy," said Ellen Percy Kraly, the professor who teaches the course.

The seminar is financed by the Brennan Family Foundation of Ohio, which has ties to the university through Jay Brennan, a family member who graduated in 1981. Earlier this year, the foundation donated $50,000 for five years of classes, with each group of students getting $10,000 a year to give away.

The seminar is not offered for credit, Dr. Kraly said, because it was put together quickly over the summer after the college received the Brennan grant. She expects that credit will be offered in the future.

Part of the goal of the course, she said, is to help the local community, especially because the Colgate campus is an affluent enclave - where tuition, board and expenses cost about $45,000 a year - surrounded by a rural, economically depressed region. Dr. Kraly, a geography professor, is also director of the Upstate Institute, a research center of the college whose mission, according to its Web site, is to "create linkages between Colgate University and the regional community."

Although the class cannot award money to an individual, it plans to choose an organization small enough so that future classes can study how the money was spent and what it achieved.

Read the rest here.

Last year I wrote a Chronicle of Higher Education column on what it's like to "play philanthropist" for a day. You can read that here.