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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.
One of the founding ideas of our work at the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) was that funders could — and should — learn from each other’s experience — not just in an anecdotal way, but systematically. Today that doesn’t sound like such a wild idea, but back...
The shocking uptick in violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in 2021 has catalyzed new attention, support, and action from grassroots activists to national philanthropy and the most prominent AAPI leaders in the country. Within this context,...
This is part one of three in a CEP blog series in which leaders from eight foundations shared — in their own words — the most important changes they have made at their foundation since 2020 that they plan to sustain going forward. These funders’ stories, which can be...
It should be obvious that “who” is doing a job or playing a leadership role informs how the job is done. Who we are as people — the experiences that we have, the skill sets and perspectives that we bring, the communities and contexts we call home — all of these things...
In its recently released report, “Foundations Respond to Crisis: Lasting Change?,” the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) shared new research in which foundations reported working differently now than in early 2020 — and indicated plans to sustain most of these...
It was late 2007, the eve of the Great Recession. With the foreclosure crisis already leaching the life out of many neighborhoods across Detroit, the Kresge Foundation launched an ambitious effort to help re-stitch the city’s physical and economic fabric, primarily by...
For Native-led nonprofits, the integrity with which funders build relationships and invest resources directly affects their ability to make community impact. The weight of this power dynamic between funder and nonprofit underscores the need for funders to address...
“Nuance.” That was investor and donor Liesel Pritzker’s straightforward answer to the question of what giving done right looks like to her when my colleague Grace Nicolette asked — as she does all our guests — at the end of an interview for our Giving Done Right...
This post originally appeared in November in The Nonprofit Times and has been lightly edited for re-publication here. Nonprofits continued to be under enormous stress in 2021 as the pandemic continued and national and global crises — from attacks on democracy to...
Weeping may last for the night but rejoicing comes in the morning....
I became CEO of Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC) in June 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise in xenophobia and anti-Asian hate, and two weeks after George Floyd was murdered. Within 48 hours of starting my role, I worked with others to...
“That’s so nice.” When I tell people about our work at Einhorn Collaborative — a foundation dedicated to addressing America’s growing crisis of connection — I often receive this response. The implied subtext is, “That’s all well and good, but how are you actually...
If we started this year with optimism, sure that stability was within grasp, that sense of confidence and security was swiftly snatched away. From an attack on the Capitol to the pandemic’s resurgence to continued polarization within and outside of our borders, 2021...
In 2017, after joining my family’s foundation as the Director of Programs, I had the opportunity to participate in a “Meet the Funders'' event hosted by the Asian Pacific Community Fund. At the time, I wasn’t the most seasoned grantmaker, but it had long been a desire...
The Overlooked: Foundation Support for AAPI/Native American Leaders and Communities project and its findings must serve as an abrupt wake-up call for foundations and the philanthropic industry as a whole. While we are not entirely surprised by the findings and...
Racial equity has been a more explicit consideration for foundations, as CEP documented in a report released last month, but our data suggests that some communities continue to be overlooked. Across four research studies that CEP has conducted in the past two years,...
This interview originally appeared on Philanthropy New York, News. It is reposted here with permission. Criticism of philanthropy is not new and, of course, thoughtful critique is essential to improvement. In my own career, I have focused for 20 years, as...
As we confront the many inequities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, The New Deal, the Roosevelt administration’s sweeping policy response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, should be an inspiration. Its policies demonstrate that in mending the economy — the work...
Change is borne of experience. Lasting change is borne of enlightenment. The divide between the two is often quite significant. Change is the subject of the recent report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) (Foundations Respond to Crisis: Lasting Change?)...
Foundation and nonprofit leaders came together to discuss changes made to philanthropic practice in response to the crises of the last two years at CEP’s third 2021 Virtual Learning Session. In this excerpt, the panelists respond to one of the findings of CEP’s new...