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...
Blog
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.
Elections Are Coming, and the Time for Funders to Act Is Now
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...
Making It Count: Expanding the Ford Foundation’s Diversity Data Collection Beyond the United States
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...
Reimagining the Philanthropic Resource Chain: Lessons from Fiscal Sponsorship and Intermediary Funds
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...
A Pride Month Call to Action: Highlighting the Less Positive Experiences of LGBTQ+ Grantees
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...
Let’s Go Beyond ‘One Foundation’: The Promise of Changing Practices in Philanthropy
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...
Adopting a Mental Health Mindset Will Help Both Funders and Nonprofits Thrive
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...
Funders: Let’s Stop Making Nonprofits Choose Between Balanced Budgets and Burnout
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...
Here We Go Again (and Again and Again): Let’s Stop Looking for the One ‘New Approach’ to Philanthropy
If one thing is clear to me about philanthropy, it’s that there is no single right model or approach that makes sense in every context. We at the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) have developed a working definition of philanthropic effectiveness that lays out...
Enhancing Grantee Well-Being Leads to Long-Term Impact
People working for social change operate in chronically stressful, under-resourced environments. Constant pressure can take a toll on the mental and emotional well-being of nonprofit staff, who can identify so strongly with their organization’s mission that they...
To Ensure Nonprofit Well-Being, Invest in Wages, Workload, and Working Conditions
Funders are finally noticing the flashing red lights of growing burnout across the nonprofit sector. And there's a growing trickle of philanthropic response. But grantmakers are missing the fundamental connections between their own funding practices, how grantees can...
Foundations Are Concerned About Nonprofit Staff Burnout, Too
“We are in what feels like daily crisis mode. Our staff is small and overtaxed. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to run the organization, and we haven’t had the luxury of much down time.” The sentiment above was shared by a respondent to a CEP survey of nonprofit...
This Year’s State of Nonprofits Highlights Mounting Concern About Burnout
Burnout is top of mind for nonprofit leaders in 2024, despite relative consistency in nonprofit organizations’ finances and relationships with funders. This is one of the key insights in a new CEP report, State of Nonprofits 2024: What Funders Need to Know, released...
Going it Together: Three Foundations, One Office
[vc_row el_class="sixtysix-thirtythree"][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]It’s not often an executive director can say, “Projections for 2024 occupancy-related costs will decrease by approximately 40%.” Especially when working from a newly occupied, 3,000 square...
Prioritizing Grants Management: An Unsung Key to Effective Funding
Often, when I hear talk about funders and the ways they can achieve impact, the conversations tend to revolve around the same few groups: program staff, senior leadership, and boards. No doubt, these roles are essential for driving impact in philanthropy. But, in my...
Closing the Feedback Loop with Grantees: A Conversation with the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation
One of the most frequently asked questions I receive from grantmakers after they complete a Grantee Perception Report (GPR) with CEP is, “How would you recommend sharing these findings back to our grantees?” While we encourage all funders to, at the minimum, thank...
How Listening Helped One Funder Set Strategic Direction
[vc_row el_class="sixtysix-thirtythree"][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]In my many years working with funders at the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), one of the most common phrases that comes up in discussions of results is “we’re different” — and there...
What the Music of Taylor Swift Can Teach Us About Great Philanthropy
Great music is more than the sum of its parts. A certain combination of notes, chords, and lyrics may create an exquisite gem of a song — or a barnburner of a jam — but what’s required to elevate music to the level of greatness is something else: an artist’s specific...
Four Data-Driven Principles for Better Board Performance
“CEO oversight? Evaluation? Strategy? No, we don’t do that. But if you want a fundraising gala, I’m your guy!” That’s how a colleague once heard another board chair describe his own role, and the role of the board he led. That remark is not representative of most...
Your Questions About Demographic Data Collection, Answered
In recent years, CEP’s analysis of demographic data from its Grantee Perception Report and research datasets found that both Native American nonprofit leaders and Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) nonprofit leaders were having less positive experiences with...