The Wilson Society

9th – 12th grade students who attend a high school located within Memphis city limits are eligible to apply.

Applying as a group is not a requirement, but group involvement is a great way to leverage more people for the project and issue area you are hoping to affect. You can organize a project with your friend group or a civic club within your school.

We're looking for community service projects that directly benefit a Memphis-area nonprofit. It can be a high-quality one-time service event or an ongoing volunteer initiative. Projects should have a clear purpose, a defined scope, and a nonprofit partner who is ready to receive the support and serve as the fiscal sponsor.

No. The Wilson Society is a competitive program, and only a limited number of applications are selected for funding in each cycle. We encourage every eligible student to apply, but submitting an application does not guarantee that your project will be funded. Strong applications have a clear project plan and a nonprofit partner who has genuinely confirmed their commitment to the project.

Past examples of student projects include (1) refreshing a community playroom at a family shelter for unhoused individuals by purchasing and assembling new furniture and toys, (2) coordinating and purchasing the initial stocked goods for a community fridge on the porch of a health clinic, (3) publishing a magazine with the anonymized stories of domestic abuse survivors, (4) student commitment to regularly serve and eat meals with unhoused individuals paired with funds to purchase necessary kitchen equipment and personal hygiene supplies for the nonprofit partner, and many more. The expectation isn’t that you recreate these projects; it’s that you put yourself at the intersection of a community challenge and an organization that’s already working in that space and ask how you can uniquely and creatively contribute to their mission.

As part of the project application, you will detail the costs, and these costs should match the project description you provide. For example, one past project was to purchase and build a chicken coop for an organization working with survivors of domestic abuse. The project budget detailed each item necessary for the assembly of the coop.

Each application can request up to $4,000 for a project, but we ask that your application’s requested budget match what your project actually needs to be carried out effectively. We want to be able to fund as many deserving projects as possible. To do that, we need your help to accurately estimate your costs. Some projects can effectively be done with a few hundred dollars while others with higher material costs would require more money (e.g., lumber and supplies for a large chicken coop cost around $1,000). Projects with budgets that do not accurately reflect the described project will not be funded.

No. Grant funds are issued directly to your nonprofit partner, not to you as a student. The nonprofit serves as the fiscal sponsor for the project — meaning it receives the funds, manages the budget, and is accountable for how the money is used to support your volunteer project.

Allowable expenses include project supplies and materials. While we do understand the value to nonprofits of unrestricted funds to cover volunteer supervision costs associated with a volunteer project, this grant is structured to cover material and supply costs so that multiple organizations can utilize the asset of youth volunteers from the Memphis community.

Yes. Because hosting volunteers takes real time and resources, we ask that applicants connect with their partner organization before applying and confirm that the organization is willing to serve as the project's fiscal sponsor and receive grant funds on the project's behalf. Applications without a confirmed nonprofit partner will not be considered.