Learning to Give enhances civil society by educating the next generation about philanthropy, broadly defined as “giving, serving, and private citizen action intended for the common good.”

It includes the conception that most civic engagement in the world happens within the citizen nonprofit sector, and that deep democracy empowers organized citizens to engage in civic activity.

All of Learning to Give's resources have been created by classroom teachers to develop authentic and useful materials. Units range from one-day lesson plans to year-long projects.

At the elementary level, the lesson plans are shorter and easily integrated into a theme. At the higher grades, the lessons tend to be designed for 45 minute periods and are often focused on a particular economic concept, historic event, governmental principle, geographic analysis, story or novel, art project, or service-learning project.

The lessons can be downloaded and edited or expanded to meet the individual teacher's needs. Hand-outs, worksheets, and other classroom aids are included with the lessons. Scoring rubrics are available for traditional academic and philanthropy content.

Working in partnership with Grand Valley State University’s College of Education, Learning to Give has added many lesson extensions that support learners with a wide range of abilities. 

Learning to Give is successfully implemented in schools, and sections of the teaching resources have been rewritten as resources for youth workers, religious instructors, and parents.

Lessons are available to teachers free of charge and cover a wide variety of grade levels and many different topics… The service projects are tied to learning about history and social studies.

-CMS Review