From 2018
October 10, 2018
Using Client Feedback to Stay on Course
Kevin Bolduc and Phil Buchanan
Stanford Social Innovation Review
Like a good GPS system, signals from multiple sources—grantees, staff, other funders, and beneficiaries—can help pinpoint where foundations stand.
“Make a legal U-turn.” “Exit right in two miles.” When we drive, many of us now have an electronic voice telling us the shortest route, how to avoid detours, and how to correct wrong turns. We’ve recycled our atlases and put our trust in global positioning systems—GPS. The power of GPS is immense. It knows exactly where we are, even when we don’t. Using a process called trilateration, it locates our position via simultaneous signals from four different satellites. Thanks to this precise measurement, overlaid on maps in our digital navigation systems, we’re never lost and can usually travel along a continually updating, optimized route.
So what does this have to do with foundations trying to navigate toward solutions to tough social and environmental problems? Foundations can take almost any course of action, but they don’t always have enough input to choose the best direction and stay on course. The good news is that there are at least four, readily available feedback sources—four signals—that can help them hone in on the most effective approaches for achieving impact. These include feedback from grantees, foundation staff, other funders, and beneficiaries. Taken together, they can help pinpoint where foundations stand…>read more.
September 4, 2018
Amid Healthy Critiques of Big Philanthropy, Don’t Lose Sight of Its Crucial Role
Phil Buchanan
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Critiques of philanthropy and nonprofits appear to be intensifying, in part fueled by a broad and understandable distrust of powerful institutions and of the “elites.” That is healthy, of course: There is legitimate reason to be concerned about those who seek cynically to wrap themselves in a flag of charitable do-gooding only to perpetuate inequality or stand in the way of real change.
“Even as they give back, American elites generally seek to maintain the system that causes many of the problems they try to fix — and their helpfulness is part of how they pull it off,” writes Anand Giridharadas in a provocative op-ed in the New York Times. “Thus their do-gooding is an accomplice to greater, if more invisible, harm.”
Books such as The Givers: Money, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, by David Callahan, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, by Giridharadas, and the forthcoming Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better, by Rob Reich, raise important questions about whether philanthropists are wielding inappropriate levels of power and influence.
Such skepticism of big givers is often warranted and has always been part of our country’s philanthropic history. But I worry about the potential to overlook the positive stories about giving in the United States and about all the nonprofits that depend on private giving to support their missions.
Let’s not take for granted the good — indeed vital — work being done each day by crucially important nonprofit organizations, often supported by generous donors across a range of income levels who don’t look anything like the Davos-attending ultrawealthy power brokers whom Giridharadas describes (and often rightly calls out)…>read more.
July 27, 2018
Forum Annual Conference 2018: When learning is both personal and professional
Grace Nicolette
Alliance Blog
One of the unique aspects of working in philanthropy is that when we come together with peers in our field, the lessons we learn can be both personal and professional in nature. I was reflecting on this truth after the United Philanthropy Forum conference in Boston last week, where a consistent theme threaded throughout the sessions was the importance of racial equity and inclusion.
The professional takeaways as they relate to racial progress are loud and clear. From each plenary speaker, we heard the call to action for funders and philanthropy-serving organisations (PSOs) to take up the mantle to speak out and advocate for policy change in a time when so many marginalized communities and civic institutions are in crisis. It was necessary to be faced with our painful history, hard data, and moving stories — and to be able to celebrate hard won victories together — in order to sharpen our collective sense of urgency and the knowledge of what’s possible. The week was also a great response to the Forum’s own racial equity scan of philanthropy-serving organisations, which found that 43 per cent of PSOs say that they are just beginning their race equity journey, with a request for more frameworks, resources, and peer learning…>read more
April 4, 2018
Putting ‘New Power’ to Work in Philanthropy
Phil Buchanan
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Black Lives Matter, the ice-bucket challenge, the National Rifle Association, and ISIS don’t, at first glance, appear to have much in common. But all are highlighted in an important new book by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms for their ability to harness what the authors have dubbed “new power” — a power that is “made by many … open, participatory, and peer-driven.”
New power, they argue, operates “like a current and, like water or electricity, it’s most forceful when it surges.” Contrast that with “old power,” which is “held by few … closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven,” operating “like a currency.”
Their rich and deeply researched book — filled with business, government, and nonprofit examples — is called New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World — and How to Make It Work for You. It describes a fundamental shift in the way people get things done in an age in which our devices connect us wherever we go — and in which expectations for participation and engagement are high, especially among millennials…>read more.
From 2017
August 17, 2017
In Defense of Perpetuity
Phil Buchanan
Stanford Social Innovation Review
Limited-life foundations are currently all the rage, but Fleishman’s book reminds us that perpetual, endowed foundations are in many cases preferable.
Perpetuity is so yesterday. Or so it sometimes seems, as many high-profile philanthropists make clear their intention to do their “giving while living,” rather than establish endowed, perpetual institutions. The once-multibillion-dollar Atlantic Philanthropies is in the final stages of winding down operations. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to spend down within 20 years of its founders’ deaths. And donors such as Sean Parker (of Napster and Facebook fame) have announced that their foundations will be time-limited.
Parker has gone so far as to publicly deride perpetual organizations. “The executive directors of most major private foundations, endowments, and other nonprofit institutions are dedicated, first and foremost, to preserving the resources and reputations of the institutions they run,” he wrote in a 2015 Wall Street Journal essay. “This is achieved by creating layers of bureaucracy to oversee the resources of the institution and prevent it from taking on too much risk.” The best way to avoid “philanthropic decay,” Parker argued, is “spending down all of your philanthropic assets during your own lifetime.”
But in his persuasive new book, Putting Wealth to Work, Duke University’s Joel Fleishman, formerly an executive at the Atlantic Philanthropies, argues that Parker has it wrong….>read more.
August 9, 2017
Working With Big Business Isn’t Always the Way for Foundations to Achieve Their Goals
Phil Buchanan
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
There’s much talk lately among foundation leaders and major donors about the need to work in collaboration with business. Proclamations about “harnessing the power of the markets,” “sector agnosticism,” and “blurred boundaries” are now the norm at philanthropy conferences. Everyone nods.
Indeed, out of a list of 24 potentially promising practices for increasing philanthropy’s impact, foundation CEOs rated collaboration with business and other spheres in the top five in a survey conducted last year by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, which I lead, Fifty-nine percent said that “foundations simultaneously collaborating with other foundations, business, government, and nonprofits” holds “a lot of promise” for boosting impact.
But in my work with grant makers and donors over the past 16 years, I have grown worried that too many are naïve about business as a “partner.”
Of course, business plays a crucial role as an employer, a provider of needed (and unneeded) products, and, sometimes, a driver of progress and innovation. Business, big and small, affects all of us. For good or ill (or a mix of both), it influences many of the challenges philanthropists and foundations seek to address. But these statements of the obvious are too often followed by a reflexive declaration that, therefore, “we need to work with business.”…>read more.
May 3, 2017
Barriers to Funder Collaboration and the Will to Overcome Them
Phil Buchanan
Stanford Social Innovation Review
Any thoughtful observer of philanthropy will note that, when working on stubborn societal problems, no single actor—even the wealthiest of foundations—can accomplish much by itself. This is both a historical fact and a present day reality.
Yet most would likely agree that there still isn’t enough collaboration and that the collaborations that do occur aren’t always effective. According to research we conducted at the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), commissioned by the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, foundation leaders see a lack of collaboration as a barrier to progress. However, they also believe more and better collaboration could unlock much more impact.
This begs the question, if foundation leaders themselves acknowledge collaboration as crucial, why isn’t it happening more?…>read more.
From 2016
December 5, 2016
Foundation CEO Angst: Moral Imperatives and Insomnia
Phil Buchanan and Ellie Buteau
Stanford Social Innovation Review
October 4, 2016
Ditch Strategic Philanthropy — but Don’t Throw Out Strategy With It
Phil Buchanan and Patricia Patrizi
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
September 7, 2016
Black Lives Matter partners with charity in sign of growth
Phil Buchanan
Take Two (KPCC 89.3)
August 22, 2016
HR Insider: Hiring Practices at the Center for Effective Philanthropy
Leaha Wynn (Interviewed by Victoria Crispo)
Idealist Careers
August 16, 2016
The Ripple Effect of Foundation Culture
Kevin Bolduc
Stanford Social Innovation Review
July 6, 2016
Think Giving to Groups That Support Nonprofits Is a Waste? You’re Wrong.
Jacob Harold and Phil Buchanan
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
May 29, 2016
Phil Buchanan interviewed by Denver Frederick on radio show The Business of Giving
Phil Buchanan
The Business of Giving
Phil Buchanan, president of CEP, was recently interviewed by Denver Frederick, host of the radio show The Business of Giving.The program is the only show of its kind that focuses on solutions to today’s complex social problems. Each week, listeners hear from philanthropists, corporate CEOs, nonprofit luminaries, celebrity ambassadors, government officials, and social entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of the transformative changes that are occurring around the world.> listen here
May 3, 2016
5 Issues Foundations Must Confront to Stay Relevant
Phil Buchanan
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
From 2015
December 2, 2015
Zuckerberg May Have Learned Philanthropy Lessons from Newark
An Interview with Phil Buchanan
WYNC News
October 5, 2015
The Leaner-Is-Always-Better Myth: One Size Doesn’t Fill All Foundations
By: Phil Buchanan
To hear some tell it, big, heavily staffed foundations are on their way out. Like bookstores and taxis, they’ll soon be obsolete, if they’re not already.
Sean Parker, of Napster and Facebook fame, declared in an essay in The Wall Street Journal that “the executive directors of most major private foundations, endowments, and other nonprofit institutions are dedicated, first and foremost, to preserving the resources and reputations of the institutions they run. This is achieved by creating layers of bureaucracy to oversee the resources of the institution and prevent it from taking on too much risk.”
As a result, he writes, “many large private foundations become slow, conservative, and saddled with layers of permanent bureaucracy, essentially taking on the worst characteristics of government…”>read more.
July 6, 2015
In Search of the Magic Formula for Philanthropy
By: Phil Buchanan
Foundation staff and major donors may not hear much direct criticism of their foundations or giving, surrounded as they are by grantees and grant seekers. But it seems like everyone has a point of view on what philanthropists should be doing: You can’t flip through more than a few pages of The Chronicle of Philanthropy or Stanford Social Innovation Review — and recently The New York Times and Wall Street Journal — without finding an article with the words “foundations should” or “philanthropists should.”
Yes, I admit it. I have sometimes uttered — and written — those words. So have many inside and outside philanthropy — including Silicon Valley tycoons and consultants and foundation leaders seeking to influence the practices of their peers…>read more.
April 23, 2015
Why Philanthropy Should Push Back Against the Business Mindset
An Interview with Phil Buchanan
Giving more money to altruistic initiatives should make those programs stronger, right? Not necessarily. Even some of the most well-known, well-intentioned programs have fallen short of their promises, especially ones funded on hunches instead of data.
Take the anti-drug program D.A.R.E. and the anti-incarceration program Scared Straight.
“(Both) received lots and lots of funding without clarity about whether they work,” says our guest Phil Buchanan, President of the Center for Effective Philanthropy…>read more.
January 20, 2015
Technology Start-Ups Don’t Hold All the Answers for ‘Broken’ Nonprofits
By: Phil Buchanan
For the 13 years I have worked in philanthropy, I have heard again and again the same sweeping generalizations about the supposed ineffectiveness of the nonprofit sector—typically followed by a pronouncement that the answer lies in “business thinking” or acting “like a start-up.”
It has become downright tiresome.
And just when I think that, maybe, just maybe, the sea monster of arrogance and ignorance about nonprofits has been slain, it rises, horror-movie like, to prey again on those who don’t know better…>read more.
From 2014
October 23, 2014
Q&A With Ellie Buteau: Foundations and Nonprofits Disconnected on Key Issues
By: Ellie Buteau
“In order for nonprofits and foundations to work most effectively together, they must understand each other’s perspectives.” This is a key point that opens a report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy, entitled Transparency, Performance Assessment, and Awareness of Nonprofits’ Challenges: Are Foundations and Nonprofits Seeing Eye to Eye? The problem is these two groups misunderstand each other on some crucial issues.
According to the report, CEOs from foundations and nonprofits do not agree that funders adequately support the performance evaluation requirements of their grantees, or that they provide adequate transparency. Why the difference in perspective? I asked one of the report’s co-authors, Ellie Buteau, Vice President of Research at the Center for Effective Philanthropy…>read more.
September 2, 2014
What Community Foundation Donors Value: The AdNet Conference 2014
By: Phil Buchanan
On the 100th anniversary of the community foundation – as we contemplate how these crucial institutions can be even more relevant in the next century of their existence than they have been in their first – it’s crucial to look hard at what donors value.
Turns out, donors value what community foundations are uniquely positioned to deliver.
Research conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, the organization I lead, has shown that donor satisfaction is tied both to intent to give in the future and referrals.
So donor satisfaction matters.
But what does it take to increase donor satisfaction? Our research, based on analysis of more than 6,000 completed donor surveys of about 47 community foundations, shows that it’s not primarily about administrative fees and endowment performance…>read more.
September 2, 2014
Foundation CEOs Need Candid Feedback to Succeed in Driving Change
By: Phil Buchanan
Leading a foundation is hard. That’s among the messages in a thoughtful, just-released letter from Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, reflecting on his first year in office.
Mr. Walker writes that he was “unready” to take on a “job for which one might assume I had been preparing for years.”
“Easy as foundation work may look from some vantage points, the truth is that it is hard,” Mr. Walker writes. In his letter, he remarks with candor on both the joys and unexpected challenges of his role. “My single greatest fear is that I am not hearing enough constructive criticism.”
His fear is a well-founded one…>read more.
May 18, 2014
More Grant-Maker CEOs and Presidents Should Serve on Foundation Boards
By: Phil Buchanan and Jennifer Glickman
Experience in philanthropy is becoming a more valued asset for foundation leaders.
In the past year alone, the Ford and Kellogg foundations looked within their staffs to find Darren Walker and La June Montgomery, respectively, to lead their organizations. California Wellness named Judy Belk, formerly of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, as its new CEO. And the Barr Foundation named Jim Canales, former CEO of the Irvine Foundation, as its first president…>read more.
March 3, 2014
Beyond formulas and easy answers
By: Phil Buchanan
Context is everything.
That’s what I take away from this deeply thoughtful set of articles exploring the role of grantmaking, why (and even whether) it matters, and how to do it best. Barry Knight and Jenny Hodgson make the argument particularly powerfully, cautioning against the simplistic matrices and frameworks promoted by the likes of FSG Social Impact Advisors. ‘We should run a mile from management books or consultancy advice that promote a single, simple answer – otherwise we will fall prey to unevaluated fashion,’ they write…> read more
This article was originally published in the March 2014 issue of Alliance magazine. The original article can be found atwww.alliancemagazine.org/en/content/march-2014. For more information about subscribing to Alliance, please visitwww.alliancemagazine.org/subscribe.
February 24, 2014
Unlike For-Profits, Nonprofits Succeed by Sharing the Work and the Glory
By: Phil Buchanan
In recent years, foundation and charity leaders have paid increasing attention to questions of performance. The focus on impact, outcomes, and assessment, while not new, has certainly intensified among both foundation and charity leaders.
This is a positive development, but too often performance is defined in a way that can undermine the effectiveness of the nonprofit sector as a whole.
The analog seems always to be business, where the focus is on competition among institutions—a zero-sum perspective in which organizations strive to best each other…> read more
February 12, 2014
Five Myths that Perpetuate Poor Philanthropic Strategy
By: Phil Buchanan
“Stop, Daddy!” That is the refrain, screamed from the back seat of the car, that I’ve heard from the day my older daughter could string together a few words—and really ever since—every time I sing along to the radio. The problem isn’t that she and her younger sister, who has joined the lament, don’t like music. They love music, love to sing, and love to play their instruments. They just don’t like my singing—and for good reason. I have a terrible singing voice.
The way my daughters feel about music—including bad music (like my singing)—is more or less the way I feel about strategy in philanthropy. I am a big proponent of more strategic philanthropy, better assessment of effectiveness to fuel learning and improvement, and iteration of strategy. But I have a real problem with poor strategy. It makes me want to scream “Stop!” from the back seat.
I think those in the philanthropic sector at times create poor strategies because of five prevalent myths…> read more
February 3, 2014
Getting the Data We Need to Combat Bullying
By: Phil Buchanan and Marny Sumrall
The three year anniversary of the suicide of Phoebe Prince, the South Hadley high school student who took her life after enduring relentless bullying at the hands of her peers, passed last month with little notice. The publicity surrounding her death briefly brought bullying in schools to the fore, both in Massachusetts — where the Legislature passed a law in response — and nationally. But there is little evidence of a decline in bullying…> read more
January 24, 2014
Embrace Transparency and Remain Open to Change
By: Kevin Bolduc
Here are a few thoughts for your next phase of planning, based in part on my experience working with the Foundation on its Grantee Perception Report and Applicant Perception Report. None will be earth-shattering. But I hope they’re a good reminder of the importance of organizational effectiveness and leadership within the context of the particular program goals you will choose. So here goes…> read more
From 2013
October 20, 2013
Foundations Should Use ‘Giving Tuesday’ to Show How to Choose Charities
By: Phil Buchanan
Giving Tuesday, a new effort to promote end-of-year giving by Americans, offers an opportunity for foundations to make a statement about how to support effective nonprofits and help the public learn more about what foundations do. It’s an opportunity I hope they seize…> read more
October 17, 2013
Foundations Should Work to Fix a Broken Washington
By: Phil Buchanan
The stunning display of our government’s dysfunction hardly ended when lawmakers last night approved a deal to open the government and allow the nation to pay its debts. And that leaves the question: What can be done to persuade lawmakers that it’s their duty to govern responsibly? Robert Gallucci, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, suggests in an eloquent op-ed for this newspaper that foundations must step up to help make the case….> read more
September 23, 2013
Getting the Facts Straight About the Nonprofit Sector
By: Phil Buchanan
Dan Pallotta’s TEDTalk has received a lot of attention. Too bad, then, that it is built on so much ignorance about both the history and present-day realities of the nonprofit sector.
There are at least four crucial fallacies in Pallotta’s argument…> read more
August 5, 2013
Peter Buffett Is Right to Call for Philanthropic Change
By: Phil Buchanan
When Peter Buffett took to the pages of The New York Times to lament what he calls a “crisis of imagination” in philanthropy—a failure to envisage a way for our society to function that puts an end to what he calls a “perpetual poverty machine,” he ignited a quite a debate. Mr. Buffett, chairman of the NoVo Foundation and son of Warren Buffett, critiqued our capitalist system, while being careful to emphasize that he is not calling for an end to it…> read more
July 30, 2013
Active Listening
By: Mark McLean
On the heels of the second Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) Perception Survey, CEP’s Mark McLean, shares the value of and challenges in collecting candid feedback from grantees and applicants…>read more
June 16, 2013
‘Strategy’ Is Not a Bad Word: It Is Essential Even to Grass-Roots Movements
By: Phil Buchanan and Aaron Dorfman
In philanthropy, the word “strategy” gets tossed around a lot.
To some, it’s become a bad word, conjuring up images of consultants dressed in business casual who don’t understand nonprofits or the issues they face, brewing up strategies depicted in PowerPoint that get approved by a foundation board and then forced down the throats of grantees…> read more
April 7, 2013
The Hard Work of Achieving Results
By: Phil Buchanan
The hype related to “social entrepreneurship” and “social entrepreneurs” is as overheated as it is ubiquitous.
Entire journal articles have been devoted simply to trying to define the terms, and skeptics—sometimes including me—have wondered what all the fuss was about.
My doubts have been several.
I have wondered whether we’re just putting a snappy new label on something that’s been around for centuries—individuals building organizations that act as catalysts for significant social change.
I have wondered whether…> read more
March 10, 2013
As Nonprofit ‘Research’ Proliferates, It Must Be Viewed With Healthy Skepticism
By: Phil Buchanan
In the last decade or so, the number of organizations and academic institutions doing what is billed as “research” on philanthropy has proliferated.
That is, by and large, a good thing, and I have been heartened at the Center for Effective Philanthropy by how hungry foundation leaders are for pragmatic information about what it takes to do a better job. But the rise of so many research groups increases the importance of understanding what—in the slew of reports and articles being e-mailed, tweeted, and otherwise distributed—is based on…> read more
February 21, 2013
Listening to Those Who Matter Most, the Beneficiaries
To become more effective, nonprofits and foundations are turning to various sources for advice. Some look to experts who can share knowledge, research, and experience about what works—and what does not. Others turn to crowdsourcing to generate ideas and even guide decisions about future directions or funding.
Experts and crowds can produce valuable insights. But too often nonprofits and funders ignore the constituents who matter most, the intended beneficiaries of our work: students in low-performing schools, trainees in workforce development programs, or small farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. In bypassing the beneficiary as a source of information and experience, we deprive ourselves of insights into how we might do better…> read more
January 23, 2013
What Capitalism Can’t Fix
By: Phil Buchanan
Increasingly, I see people looking starry-eyed to business and markets to solve social problems. In so doing, they run the risk of dismissing the impact of nonprofits — and diminishing the value of organizations that seek to make a difference without creating the potential conflicts that come with the profit motive. My view is that pretending companies and markets hold all the answers actually puts at risk our ability to deal with our most pressing societal problems — and to help our most vulnerable citizens…> read more
From 2012
December 19, 2012
Mistakes to Learn From in the Charitable-Deduction Debate
By: Phil Buchanan
A few years back, I sat in the audience of a session at an Independent Sector conference listening to a marketing consultant say that the best way to inform the American public about the value of the nonprofit world was by telling one charity’s story at a time. A number of us asked how we might do a better job of clarifying the important role and contribution of all nonprofits—and showing the collective force of organizations that share key attributes and are separate and distinct from business and government…> read more