April 25, 2019

Effective Philanthropy with Phil Buchanan

Phil Buchanan
Successful Generations with Ellie Frey Zagel

In this episode, Ellie interviews Phil Buchanan, President of the Center for Effective Philanthropy and author of the new book, Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count. Phil describes four dimensions of effective philanthropy and much more. > listen here

April 24, 2019

Phil Buchanan of the Center for Effective Philanthropy Takes on the Naysayers

Phil Buchanan
Let’s Hear It Podcast with Eric Brown and Kirk Brown

Phil Buchanan, the President of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, has been helping foundations do their work better for almost two decades. But given that philanthropy is one step removed from the action, does that mean that Phil is helping people to help people who help people? What role do foundations and the organizations that support them play in improving people’s lives? And maybe most important, how can donors of all kinds figure out how to make sure their funding is as effective as possible?

In this episode of Let’s Hear It, Phil talks with Eric about how philanthropy can make a difference, and they discuss Phil’s new book, Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count. Eric notes that Phil, a former door-to-door fundraiser, has gone from playing the kazoo in the subway to conducting at Carnegie Hall. > listen here

April 18, 2019

Phil Buchanan discusses his new book with Carol Massar and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Businessweek Radio

Phil Buchanan
Bloomberg Businessweek Radio (Podcast)

Phil Buchanan joined Bloomberg Businessweek to discuss some of the main ideas in Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count with hosts Carol Massar and Jason Kelly. The segment featuring Buchanan begins around the 7:30 mark.> listen here

April 16, 2019

Phil Buchanan talks about his new book Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count on Moolala

Phil Buchanan
Moolala: Money Made Simple with Bruce Sellery (Podcast)

Phil Buchanan joined Bruce Sellery on Moolala to discuss some of the main ideas in Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count. The segment featuring Buchanan begins around the 20:50 mark.> listen here

April 15, 2019

Philanthropy’s blighted reputation threatens global giving

Phil Buchanan
Financial Times

Charitable giving worldwide supports a diverse and vital group of non-government organisations working on issues from disaster relief and global poverty to educational opportunities for girls. But today, at least in the US, it faces what experts warn may be the beginnings of a decline due to a recent trend of lower giving among small-gift givers. Initial projections show giving in 2018 in the US may have increased at a slower rate than inflation — Blackbaud Institute for Philanthropic Impact pegs the increase at just 1.5 per cent, down from a more than 5 per cent increase the previous year.

Decreases among everyday donors would be cause enough for concern on its own. But there is another looming, less discussed, threat: giving among the biggest donors worldwide may also fall as their charitable efforts are increasingly caricatured as self-protective ruses. In the case of the Sackler family, some of whom own Purdue Pharma — who appear to have used their philanthropy to burnish their reputations with one hand while fanning the flames of the opioid epidemic with the other — the shoe fits. The Sacklers have suspended their giving to UK museums, amid increasing wariness about being associated with the family name.

It’s tempting to portray the Sacklers as the norm, and many can’t resist. The very rich, once criticised for not giving enough of their fortunes away, are now being chastised for being too philanthropic. Dutch Historian Rutger Bregman made a viral splash at Davos when he took the World Economic Forum’s attendees to task, suggesting they should stop talking “about all these stupid philanthropy schemes” and “start talking about taxes”… >read more.

April 15, 2019

How Christians Can Better Support Nonprofits

Phil Buchanan and Grace Chiang Nicolette
Sojourners

In seeking to better steward their resources, Christians may sometimes wonder how their giving to the poor and marginalized might better reflect God’s ultimate gift and sacrifice. The truth is that giving well and wisely isn’t easy – as givers from Andrew Carnegie to Warren Buffett have observed – and it requires wisdom and its own set of skills.

Maybe you’re faithfully tithing to your church and also supporting other important ministries or nonprofits. Or maybe you’ve struggled to identify the right organizations beyond your church to which to give. Or maybe you’re just getting started with giving, period.

Regardless, the questions are the same: Now what do I do? Which organizations do I support?

April 14, 2019

Phil Buchanan discusses his new book with 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

April 11, 2019

Keeping the Faith and Closing the Distance

Phil Buchanan
Giving Compass

Jason Hackmann comes from the small, rural town of Winfield, Missouri. He describes his childhood as ordinary, growing up in a lower-middle-class family. He graduated from his small high school—his graduating class had just sixty-eight students—in the spring of 1995.

That’s also when his brother was killed by a drunk driver. The crushing loss of his brother fueled Hackmann’s ambition to be successful and to break free of the small-town life he’d grown up living. He built a successful career, eventually founding a life insurance agency in St. Louis that caters to wealthy clients. After his first child was born, in 2004, Hackmann began thinking about what really mattered to him. “It was at that time that I began my journey back to Christ,” he told me. His past giving, he confessed, had been made with “ulterior motives” related to his business interests.

It was on a vacation in Turks and Caicos in 2008 that his perspective changed. One day on the beach, Hackmann said to his wife, Jennifer, that he felt uninspired by the books he had brought on the trip. Jennifer pulled out a just-released book and suggested Hackmann read that. The book was called Jantsen’s Gift: A True Story of Grief, Rescue, and Grace, by Pam Cope. It chronicles the author’s story and the link between her loss of her 15-year-old son to an undiagnosed heart ailment and her desire to help others, particularly to do something about child slavery in Ghana.

Hackmann connected with her story, reading the book in a day, and decided he, too, wanted to do something about the issue… >read more.

April 2, 2019

What Grant Makers Can Do to Help Small, Local Nonprofits Thrive

Phil Buchanan
The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Julie Phelps grew up “really poor,” as she calls it, in rural Minnesota. In high school, she worked at the local Burger King, the best-paying job she could find. She was so organized, and such a natural leader, that she was promoted to night manager while still a teenager.

Phelps had always loved theater and the arts, particularly dance, even though her family could not afford formal lessons. But when she went to Macalester College in St. Paul, with the support of significant financial aid and scholarships, she majored in psychology. “I didn’t really know — and no one told me — that you could actually study the arts in college, that it could be a viable option,” she says.

But Phelps’s passion for the arts never left her. When she moved to San Francisco after graduating from Macalester, she worked in cafes and got involved in dance performances at local nonprofits. Today, at age 34, Phelps runs one of those organizations, CounterPulse, in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. CounterPulse provides “space and resources for emerging artists and cultural innovators, serving as an incubator for the creation of socially relevant, community-based art and culture.” Its $1.2 million budget includes about $230,000 in ticket sales and other earned revenue, with the rest coming in contributions, primarily foundation grants.
Getting to CounterPulse’s door often involves navigating huddles of homeless, mentally ill, and drug-afflicted people — those desperately in need of services and help in the shadows of the gleaming towers of San Francisco’s financial district. CounterPulse stands as a pillar community arts organization in a neighborhood that desperately needs pillars.

As its leader, Phelps is among a legion of unsung American heroes: nonprofit executives running small, community-based organizations. While doing research for my forthcoming book Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count, I interviewed some of these executive directors: of the health organization in Texas serving the desperately poor, of the youth organization in Massachusetts seeking to lure the most violent gang members out of gang life, of the legal-services organization in New York providing pro bono representation for undocumented minors…. >read more.

March 31, 2019

Disaster relief done right: 4 mistakes people make when trying to help after a disaster

Phil Buchanan
Salon

The cyclone that hit Southeastern Africa in mid-March and devastated regions of Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe has taken at least 700 lives, left hundreds of thousands in need, and has escalated into an even bigger humanitarian crisis due to waterborne and infectious diseases. It’s been described by the UN as possibly the worst ever disaster to strike the southern hemisphere.

Yet Cyclone Idai and the havoc and suffering it has created has received less attention in the media than other terrible, but less catastrophic, natural disasters. This almost certainly means less giving will go to help those affected than would have been the case if this crisis received the attention that, in my view, it deserves. Indeed, one nonprofit leader I know involved in disaster relief globally told me matter-of-factly that there is “not much donor interest” in this event. I can’t imagine that would have been the case if a major natural disaster of this order had occurred in, say, Europe or Canada.

But, sadly, such is the nature of disaster-related philanthropy, which is largely driven by media attention, which of course is affected by whatever biases – implicit or otherwise – the media may hold…. >read more.

March 13, 2019

Giving Effectively More Difficult Than Getting, Expert Says

Phil Buchanan
Your Mark on the World

CEP president, Phil Buchanan, recently joined Devin Thorpe, on The Social Impact Podcast – Your Mark on the World with Devin Thorpe to share some of his insights about philanthropy. Devin is an author, educator, speaker, and founder of the Your Mark on the World Center, and has established himself as a champion of social good. Your Mark on the World Center seeks to solve the world’s biggest problems before 2045 by identifying and championing the work of experts who have created credible plans and programs to end them once and for all.

In this podcast, Buchanan notes philanthropy is different from investing–in many ways more difficult–and requires a unique set of skills. He also argues that nonprofits must by their nature collaborate rather than compete…. >listen here.

From 2018

October 27, 2018

5 Philanthropy Book Recommendations From The Center For Effective Philanthropy

Grace Chiang Nicolette
Giving Compass

Here’s what we’ve been reading at CEP in recent years that has shaped our thinking on philanthropy:

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World—and How to Make It Work for You by Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans

At first glance, the title of this book may not reveal its relevance to philanthropy, but the connections are vital. Henry Timms, head of New York’s famed 92nd Street Y, is also the founder of the global #GivingTuesday phenomenon. He and his co-author, Purpose CEO Jeremy Heimans, are very attuned to the changing landscape around social movements and how modern change is being made in the age of social media and instant news. Filled with memorable and often hilarious stories, the authors are clear-eyed about the enormous opportunities that “new power” can wield, as well as its dangers. This book will make you look at the world around you with different eyes.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

At CEP’s 2017 conference, Bryan Stevenson nearly brought the house down with a stirring talk based on his critically-acclaimed and bestselling book. Drawing from his stories representing juveniles and the wrongly-accused on death row through his organization, the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson brings us vividly into the sobering realities of mass incarceration and racial injustice in the United States. His stories are indelible, and his hope for America’s future on these intractable issues is contagious… >read more.

October 22, 2018

Crazy Rich Asians In An Age Of Inequality

Grace Chiang Nicolette
Giving Compass

Like many, I flocked to see the romantic comedy film Crazy Rich Asians in August, drawn in by the previews of the cross-cultural love story written by author Kevin Kwan — and by the excitement of supporting a practically all-Asian international cast. Since its opening, the film has grossed over $169 million at box offices worldwide, making it the most successful romantic comedy of the past decade, not to mention its significance in advancing Asian representation in Hollywood.

As someone who lived in China for seven years earlier in my career and traveled extensively in the Asia-Pacific region, there was something comforting about seeing familiar and beloved city scenes and hearing the different Chinese dialects spoken on the big screen. Having worked in the philanthropic sector there, it was also striking to see glittering reminders of the enormous wealth among the relatively few. There are now more billionaires in Asia than in the North America¹, and the rising economic tides of the last two decades have been both a boon, raising millions out of poverty, and a contributor to pervasive social and economic inequality… >read more.

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

From 2014

October 23, 2014

Q&A With Ellie Buteau: Foundations and Nonprofits Disconnected on Key Issues

By: Ellie Buteau

 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