Spring Hill resident Ashley Miller's grant writing project turns into real world ministry funding

BOURBONNAIS, IL (01/09/2013)(readMedia)-- Ashley Miller, a junior at Olivet Nazarene University, has seen the face of rural homelessness. She has opened the door to a safe place for people who had been sleeping in their cars. She has served them food and led a VBS for their children. She has heard stories of addiction and prayed for God's forgiveness to change lives.

This year, she found a new way to help the more than 600 people served each year by My Father's House Community Services (MFHCS), Paola, Kan., and Jay Preston, its founder and director.

As a student in Olivet's first offering of the course "Fundamentals of Fundraising," Miller applied what she learned about grant writing to her class project. The result provided a total of $60,000 for MFHCS - a grant of $10,000 from Nazarene Missions International and a matching grant of $50,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Miller is from Spring Hill, Kan., majoring in social work and intercultural studies and minoring in business. Teaching the course was Dr. Houston Thompson, chair of Olivet's Department of Social Work and Criminal Justice and director of the doctor of ethical leadership program in Olivet's graduate school.

"As part of the semester-long course, students spent six weeks learning the fundamentals of grant writing," Dr. Thompson says. "For their projects, each identified a not-for-profit ministry or organization he or she wanted to help fund. Then, with help from class members and me, he or she identified a potential funder, wrote the grant and submitted it to the funder."

Results of these grant applications continue to come in, and six of the 25 submitted have already been funded. In addition to Miller's success, other grant proposals funded in response to the applications that students wrote and submitted include:

• Bibles for a Youth for Christ after-school program from The Gideons International (Paige Maldonado, a junior majoring in social work, Joliet, Ill.)

• Sporting equipment for a church youth sports league from the Chatlos Foundation (Seth Rattin, a 2012 graduate with a business degree, Beaverville, Ill.)

• Women's care program needs from Omni Credit Union (Ariel Rock, a junior majoring in social work, Livonia, Mich.)

• Encouraging student philanthropy on campus from a private donor (Jean Martin, a 1972 graduate and Olivet's director of annual giving)

• Preschool literacy from the Ohio Literacy Foundation (Caylee Wagner, a senior majoring in business administration, Merillville, Ind.)

• Community outreach to the homeless in Kankakee, Ill., by Olivet's Capitol Hill Gang from Walmart (Abby Borland, a senior majoring in political science, Peoria, Ill.)

"Seeing my hard work pay off was encouraging," Miller says. "I set my mind to getting this grant, and I accomplished it. God used me at just the right time when My Father's House Community Services needed it most."

Olivet Nazarene University is an accredited Christian, liberal arts university offering more than 100 areas of undergraduate and graduate study, including the Doctor of Education in ethical leadership. Olivet has one main campus in Bourbonnais, Ill. - just 50 miles south of Chicago; three sites: Rolling Meadows and Oak Brook, Ill., and Hong Kong; and more than 100 School of Graduate and Continuing Studies learning locations throughout Chicagoland and the Midwest. From Oxford to Tokyo, hundreds of Olivet students also experience the global classroom each year, whether through study abroad opportunities or worldwide mission trips.

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Contact:

Laura Warfel

Public Relations Specialist

Olivet Nazarene University

Bourbonnais, Ill.

www.olivet.edu

815-928-5403

lwwarfel@olivet.edu