Twenty successful nonprofits started by students

It was great to hear earlier this week from Sophia Coppolla, a content manager for OnlineCollege.org, who shared with me an article on nonprofit organizations started by college students around the U.S.  After I wrote about college student Brittaney Khong and her work with the UCSD Student Foundation recently, I really enjoyed learning about some other examples of highly motivated and entrepreneurial students working to make the world a better place by helping others less fortunate than themselves, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Below is the story Sophia shared, which can be found in its original form at OnlineCollege.org…

An Organized Mess – Nazareth College, Rochester, NY
A group of Nazareth students organized craft and classroom supplies to help RCSD School 41 prepare for their first day.

Colleges have always been hotbeds of idealism, where gifted minds, too young to be jaded, dream of better futures they want to bring into being. At the same time, one of our culture’s most widely promoted values has been the entrepreneurial spirit, especially in recent years. In the private sector, spinoffs of research done at institutions like MIT and Stanford have shaped our modern economy, taking companies like Google and Facebook from dorm rooms to the NASDAQ. Many business schools have recently made a significant shift in emphasis from molding middle management to acting as incubators for start-ups. So it’s no surprise that innovative ventures are actively being created, fostered, and rewarded in the nonprofit zone as well. Here are 20 amazing philanthropic organizations that began as student projects and are now going on to change their communities and the planet: