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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.
In the evolving landscape of philanthropy, lean funders — those operating with few or no staff — are playing a crucial role in advancing racial equity. The latest edition of Racial Equity in Lean Foundations, an annual report from Exponent Philanthropy, sheds light on...
After the hottest year on record, 2024 has continued to bring unprecedented heat and extreme weather events. Today, 80 percent of people globally want their country to do more on climate change. The calls for bold action are louder than ever, and much more is needed...
Funders have used CEP's Grantee Perception Report to gather candid, comparative feedback from their grantees for more than two decades. In addition to sharing confidential reports with individual funders to enable them to continually improve their own work with...
This post originally appeared on The Art of Association blog. It is challenging for philanthropic funders to get started and stay focused when it comes to strengthening democracy. The vagaries of our political system — really a complex system of systems cast on a...
Among the findings of Center for Effective Philanthropy's State of Nonprofits 2024: What Funders Need to Know, was a striking statistic: 95 percent of nonprofit leaders who responded to CEP's survey expressed some level of concern about burnout. Following the release...
It’s not easy being a corporate CEO these days. Just look at the recent travails of leaders at high profile companies like Boeing or Disney or Starbucks. They, and many others, are struggling to navigate multiple, often competing and invariably vocal, constituencies....
With November’s election looming in the United States, who will be in power is on most of our minds. The election represents a critical window to increase female representation throughout government. Beyond the presidency, women are vying for 21 seats in the Senate,...
A little more than a year ago, in a post that kicked off a series on AI and philanthropy on the CEP blog, we asked, “What does ChatGPT Know About Philanthropy?” A year later, that question has been turned on its head; what we hear more often is some version of, “what...
Burnout within nonprofit organization staff is a growing concern within the sector, as seen in the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s new research, State of Nonprofits 2024: What Funders Need to Know. The research shows that 95 percent of nonprofit leaders expressed...
From social media feeds to bus depots, messages about the importance of maintaining our physical health are all around us. In contrast, mental health receives far less attention, despite a growing awareness — particularly since COVID-19 — that disorders such as...
Social impact professionals are some of the most extraordinary people on this planet. They work tirelessly to confront injustice, corruption, global pandemics, crumbling democracies, and potentially harmful technological advances — all while designing innovative...
As the old saying goes “Victory has a thousand fathers.” And few victories come as close to that claim as the successes wrought by funders and their grantees. It takes the concerted effort, partnership, and co-creation of both funders and grantees to effect...
At the heart of the Latino Community Foundation’s (LCF) mission to unleash the civic and economic power of Latinos are our most passionate advocates: the members of our Latino Giving Circle Network®. Now the largest network of Latino philanthropists in the U.S., they...
Summer is heating up and so, too, are efforts to register voters and get out the vote in advance of what is promising to be a tense election season. Not only will voters take to the polls to decide who will represent them in local, state, and federal government, but...
As a global funder, we often hear from, and share with, our peers the challenges of collecting grantee demographic data internationally. This includes questions of how to navigate different legal landscapes in terms of what data we are allowed to collect; how to...
In the philanthropic sector, intermediaries and fiscal sponsors play a vital role. They are the critical links that connect resources from donors to historically overlooked causes and marginalized communities. Pooling funds, providing back-office support, and...
Part protest, part commemoration, and part celebration, Pride Month joyfully invites us all to see the rich and diverse lives of queer folks — and to recognize that as far as we’ve come (at least here in the U.S.), we still have a long way to go to achieve a world in...
For every time someone in philanthropy says, ‘if you know one foundation, you know one foundation,’ they have heard tenfold the call from nonprofits for more general operating support and multiyear grants. With philanthropy’s wide diversity of approaches and...
You are exhausted, a next-level fatigue. Your body is so tired, but your mind can't stop. It pings from what is right in front of you — grant deadlines, board meetings and two staff members who have just given notice — to the larger issues. Polarization and inequities...
As I read the recent Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) report on the state of nonprofits, a familiar feeling settled in. The invisible lines between the findings began to form, and a picture not explicitly told in the data emerged. On the surface, the CEP report...