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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.
This is the third post in “Complicating the Narrative on Bridging and Division,” a six-part blog series from CEP and PACE (Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement). This series seeks to highlight community-informed perspectives from five leaders in the build-up to...
Philanthropy is not like investing. Nonprofits are not like business. Even the most casual reader of this blog or occasional follower of CEP’s work has heard me make this argument many times (too many, you might be thinking). But repeating this message matters. And...
A version of this post was originally published by Oxford HR. It is posted here with permission of the author. The best thing about becoming a funder is that people have started laughing at my jokes… The relationship between funders and grantees is asymmetrical. One...
“An old friend of Robert Frost’s was driving him home on a moonlit August night, with huge stars in the sky. The friend mused, ‘On a night like this, I keep thinking that life is so short, and there is so little time.’ Frost put a hand on his arm and said, ‘It’s the...
Funders have been pushed over the past year to make big changes to how they approach their work. They’ve been called on to provide long-term flexible funding, to shift power, to trust and listen to nonprofits, to increase payout, to fund more organizations led by...
This is the second post in “Complicating the Narrative on Bridging and Division,” a six-part blog series from CEP and PACE (Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement). This series seeks to highlight community-informed perspectives from five leaders in the build-up to...
It goes without saying that the coronavirus pandemic has had huge ramifications for civil society across the globe. From our perspective in the U.K., our side of the Atlantic has certainly seen its fair share of disruption. Almost overnight (in some cases quite...
I’ve been in and around the “bridging and civility” space for several years. For better or worse, these terms haven’t always been clearly defined and can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. As such, they have become somewhat of a colloquial catch all for “how we...
The term “nonprofit starvation cycle” describes the experience of many nonprofit organizations that struggle financially because most of their funding comes from project grants with strict limits on paying for indirect costs (or overhead). The cycle has plagued the...
This past week, many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders welcomed the Lunar New Year under the dark shadow of spiking horrific violence targeting Asian elders, particularly in the Bay Area and in New York City. During the biggest holiday season for many AAPI...
As the country endures a period of division in which both elected leaders and regular citizens traffic in lies and conspiracy theories and seek to undermine democracy, the question of philanthropy’s role in charting a better future is crucial. The need for...
Within my role as senior adviser for Organisational Development and Capacity Building at Oak Foundation, I support the organizational strengthening of our grantee partners. At Oak, we give grants in a variety of ways that generally can be categorized as either 1)...
HOLD THE LINE! This rally call is used when a beleaguered force, sure in its moral authority but overwhelmed by opposing forces, is determined not to lose the ground it has gained. When PEAK Grantmaking’s President and CEO Satonya Fair calls for all of us in the...
Although many foundations continuously seek to expand both the impact and sustainability of the initiatives they sponsor and/or support, limitations in foundations’ financial, intellectual, and relational capital can thwart their ability to realize such objectives....
The crises this country has endured for nearly a year now have underscored the desperate need for donors to provide the kind of flexible funding and trust that nonprofits require to be effective. Nonprofits have been on the front lines of responding to community needs...
Amid the dual crises of a global pandemic and a national reckoning with systemic racism, the U.S. philanthropic sector faces tremendous challenges and opportunities. CEP’s Foundations Respond to Crisis study found that many foundations are making new efforts to...
Last year, one of my clients, a family foundation, realized that one of the biggest barriers to further improving their grantmaking process was their lack of a formal system for evaluating the effectiveness of the foundation as a whole. Until recently, the foundation...
Brooklyn is home to the largest Black community in North America. Nearly 70 percent of the borough’s residents are non-white. For our staff at the Brooklyn Community Foundation, the events of the past year have revealed in the starkest terms that systemic racism is...
In the scheme of the foundation world, the Langeloth Foundation is tiny. Years ago, at a cocktail party, I met someone on the investment side of a large New York-based foundation who asked me what one foundation staffer inevitably asks of another: “How big is your...
This post originally appeared on the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) website. More than a decade ago, I was summoned to a meeting to provide advice to the board members and CEO of a new, very large foundation. I remember thinking I didn’t really belong...