A course in philanthropy at Northwestern University has been endowed with a grant from a Texas hedge fund manager, Geoffrey P. Raynor. It requires students to find and investigate nonprofit organizations and, if they stand up to scrutiny, gives them a portion of the five-figure cash pot.

The workshop - and others like it that have sprung up in the last few years at a dozen universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and Yale - offers a real-world experience of philanthropy that is rare in the cloistered halls of academia. Many students have embraced the challenge, viewing the courses as preparation for work in the nonprofit sector or even as training to one day become wealthy philanthropists themselves.