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The CEP blog aims to offer a range of perspectives, experiences, and opinions related to effective philanthropic practice. We welcome submissions that address crucial issues facing individual and institutional donors and are not self-promotional in nature. The views expressed in these posts are not necessarily CEP’s own.
The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s final report of its three-year study on the impact of MacKenzie Scott’s large, unrestricted gifts is overwhelmingly positive, with one notable exception: executives of other foundations have “mixed perspectives” on Scott’s...
I am still pinching myself from the first gift we received from MacKenzie Scott in December of 2020 — and somehow Undue Medical Debt (formerly RIP Medical Debt) has now received three. What these gifts presented to us was an unprecedented opportunity to approach our...
How can we support civil society to promote positive change – now and in the long term? For many of us working in philanthropy, this is an increasingly crucial question. Locally, nationally, and globally, we aim to partner with and empower people and organizations...
“I was left in awe. I didn’t know what to say except thank you. Our core values were repeated back to us as we were given this gift and investment. I thought, ‘Wow, we can now support the growth of our organization and concentrate on our work, not the fundraising...
Big, unrestricted gifts have a transformative effect on nonprofits that receive them. They can lead to greater financial strength and documented program results. They can also lead to increased confidence and reduced burnout of leaders. While foundation leaders have...
This year’s wildfires in Los Angeles didn’t only destroy homes and livelihoods they also revealed the longstanding inequities in disaster response. The workers who are clearing debris, the small business owners struggling to reopen, the laborers who lost their income,...
The speed and intensity of the unprecedented attacks on the nonprofit and public sectors unleashed in the first month of President Trump’s second administration has been staggering. While many of us anticipated disruption, the consequences for communities in the U.S....
In times of increasing uncertainty, from shifting federal priorities to crises like the wildfires devastating Southern California, nonprofit organizations face growing challenges in sustaining their work and responding to the evolving needs of their communities....
The scope and scale of the Trump administration’s ambitions are now strikingly clear, as is the degree of the administration’s hostility for the nonprofit sector in the U.S. and around the world. A White House memo issued Friday, February 7 states: “The United States...
Just as we adults are processing the White House's actions since the presidential inauguration, so too are our children. For those of us with young people in our lives — educators, parents, grandparents, and youth-serving professionals of all types — making sense of...
The recent Eaton Fire that ravaged parts of Altadena and Pasadena left a trail of physical destruction, but its impact goes far beyond property damage. Even as officials announce that the wildfires in L.A. have at last been fully contained, this disaster threatens to...
This post originally appeared on the author’s Medium page. Read it here and find out more about the Full Frame Initiative here. Anyone who has known me for more than a minute knows I love donkeys so much that I have five of them. Real live donkeys. They’re fabulous....
The remarkable and rapid capitulation of many corporations to the new administration’s anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) crusade is not just craven, it’s likely to impede the performance (and profitability) of these companies. Late last week, Target became...
Recently, I had a call with a funder who was considering whether to commission a Grantee Perception Report (GPR) for the very first time. Usually, these kinds of conversations have a predictable cadence and arc — an overview of CEP’s comparative dataset and the unique...
Nonprofits are facing significant, arguably unprecedented, challenges and it’s crucial that donors, whatever their ideologies or particular programmatic goals or priorities, pay attention. Three developments, in particular, worry me: a drop in rates of giving to...
Earlier this week, my colleague Emma Relle shared a post to kick off the new year featuring a selection of candid feedback for funders from grantees that CEP surveyed in 2024. Their comments bring into sharp relief the grantmaking practices, strategies, and attitudes...
A new year is often a moment to pause and reflect — about what we’ve been doing well that we’d like to carry forward into 2025, and some things that we’ll be glad to leave behind in 2024. But reflecting on ourselves in an objective, productive way can be difficult —...
In the final weeks of a year, when content calendars slow and we collectively begin to reflect on the year nearly gone — and plan, with some level of disbelief, for the one to come — we editors indulge in a favorite past-time: the curation of the year-end ‘best of’...
When I first met Michael Bailin in the office of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF) in New York in 2001, he described a new effort the Foundation was undertaking: to identify organizations with proven strategies to help young people living in poverty and fund...
When putting together year-end lists, it’s hard to avoid a slight feeling of déjà vu; after all, you’re not only looking back on the year that was, but repeating an annual exercise of reflection. Yet in wrapping up 2024, I’m not sure if my colleagues and I on the...