LAWRENCE: School solicits grant proposals

The Lawrenceville School Social Ventures Club (SVC) is soliciting proposals from Mercer County nonprofit agencies and organizations for grants of up to $15,000 in order to fund a project addressing an unmet need among adolescents in the county who are dealing with physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.
    Grant requests are due by March 23, and recipients will be announced by the end of May. Organizations interested in receiving grant proposal guidelines should contact Joanne Adams, director of Lawrenceville’s Community Service Program, The Lawrenceville School, P.O. Box 6008, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648 or email jadams@lawrenceville.org.
    SVC is student-club charged with developing and implementing a process for making grants to nonprofit groups in Mercer County that address the needs of youth in a focus area selected by club members. Over the past four years, SVC has donated a total of $41,000 to five Mercer County nonprofit organizations: the Lawrence Township Education Foundation (Lawrenceville), the Family Resource Network (Trenton), Isles, Inc. (Trenton) Mercer Street Friends (Trenton), and the Family Guidance Center (Hightstown)
    This is the fourth year the Lawrenceville School has received a grant from the Stuart Foundation to fund a Social Ventures Club for students interested in learning how to be grant-makers. An anonymous donor also provided a generous support last fall.
    “The Social Ventures Club has been a meaningful opportunity for Lawrenceville students to gain hands-on experience in fundraising and, most importantly, make a significant contribution to their community,” said Adams. 
“We are most grateful to our anonymous donor and to Elbridge Stuart, a member of Lawrenceville’s Class of 1966, and the Stuart Foundation for their generous support.“
    The club was modeled after Social Ventures Kids (SVK), a project of Social Venture Partners. SVK was launched in the fall of 2000 to provide young people with an opportunity to improve the quality of life in their communities. By introducing young people to the needs of their community through grantmaking, SVK hopes to get them involved in philanthropy at an early age and instill in them the desire to continue to engage in and give to their community throughout the rest of their lives.
    SVC is an outgrowth of the School’s Community Service Program, which encourages all Lawrenceville students to connect with the greater community, giving them the opportunity to serve — and learn from — a variety of people outside the students’ immediate world. Each term, students choose among 30 different weekly programs in the Trenton-Princeton-Lawrenceville area. The Lawrenceville student body completes more than 13,000 hours of service during a typical school year. Each May more than 100 Lawrenceville students are honored by the School for having volunteered over 200 hours of community service during their high school careers.
    Founded in 1810, The Lawrenceville School offers a comprehensive, coeducational program for 795 students, grades nine through post-graduate, who come from 40 states and 28 countries. The School is located on 700 acres in the historic village of Lawrenceville, N.J. For additional information, please visit www.lawrenceville.org.