Back in 2014 at Emilio Bruna’s suggestion, we embarked on a new skills course for graduate students in the Tropical Conservation and Development program – Fundraising Skills for Conservation and Development.  Our goals for the course were to (1) to introduce students to the diverse set of private and public sources for funding their activities (2) to develop the skills needed to fundraise from these sources, and (3) to understand the ethical and legal issues surrounding fundraising. As in all TCD professional skills courses, we adopt the “learn by doing” philosophy.  Many experts on campus, and off-campus, have come to share their experiences with our students, including UF Foundation folks, Social media experts, crowd-funding experts, researchers examining development and NGOs, etc., and we all have learned a lot together. Over the years, the course has had a really gifted group of graduate students – check out their stories on the course website.  Happy to see the course getting some attention on campus as it is currently highlighted on the front page of UF.

To read more about the course see this recent news story  or visit the course website hosted by Emilio Bruna.  And many thanks to Emilio Bruna for taking on the last version of the course in Spring 2018 solo!  He’s an inspiring guy to teach with!