Mentorship at all levels of leadership supports a thriving nonprofit ecosystem. At the Community Foundation of Utah, we partner with Morgan Stanley to offer the Morgan Stanley Community Development Graduate Fellowship to provide mentorship for Utah’s upcoming social sector leaders.
Graduate student Amanda Weller was excited by the opportunity to complete her Fellowship with The INN Between while she earned her Master’s in Social Work at Utah Valley University. “I didn’t think I would have an experience like this in a Master’s program. I anticipated needing to get a PHD to get the level of research and impact this Fellowship provided,” she said.
The Morgan Stanley Fellowship pairs graduate students with community development organizations and provides a $20,000 stipend to launch an aspirational project together. Through Amanda’s work compiling and comparing national utilization and cost statistics with data from Salt Lake County hospitals, The INN Between will be able to more effectively market and fundraise for their medical respite facilities serving homeless individuals. This data is also being presented in conferences nationally to advance adoption of similar programs across the United States in underserved communities.
Amanda was inspired by the staff at The INN Between who diligently work to create solutions for an underserved population of society. “This Fellowship was the best part of my Master’s program. The work I did for my Fellowship was more meaningful than my classes, and many of my clinical studies, because of the large-scale impact we made and what I was able to learn along the way,” she said. Amanda reflected that nonprofit work has taught her to think like an entrepreneur and create systems to solve unexpected problems in the workplace.
Since finishing her Fellowship, Amanda has been working for a nonprofit that connects female healthcare providers working in underserved communities with access to critical resources, like childcare, that they need to be able to stay in the field. She looks forward to conducting private practice therapy and taking the lessons she learned from her Fellowship with her in her career. “No matter where I go in the future, this Fellowship has taught me that even though I can’t solve every problem, if I do what is within my power to help, it can make a big difference,” she said.
See Our Investment in Social Sector Leadership
2023 - 2024 Morgan Stanley Community Development Graduate Fellows