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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 post explores aspects of CEP’s latest research findings, weaves in data from five other new research reports, and concludes with suggested — and urgent — action steps. Spoiler Alert: Those steps entail mitigating the challenges to foundations and nonprofits alike...
Uncertainty is a natural response to change. As such, I am not alarmed that a majority of nonprofit and foundation leaders alike are concerned that changes to the federal tax code precipitated by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will depress charitable giving and hinder...
Last year, United Philanthropy Forum and our members across the country fought to prevent federal tax reform from causing harm to the charitable sector. Unfortunately, the final tax bill passed by Congress significantly reduces charitable giving incentives, which many...
There are many reasons why an individual might choose to make a donation. An old fundraising adage says that one of the top reasons why people give to charity is that they were asked. More recently, neuroscience has shown that being generous produces positive brain...
Data and measurement sometimes get a bad rap in philanthropy. Here at CEP, one useful role we try to play is to balance information about timeless topics, like how to build strong funder-grantee relationships, with data that is crucial for smart decision-making on...
I grew up in a small Midwestern farm town and have always had a passion for animals. I moved to Seattle in the 1970s and fell in love with the outdoors. These interests led me to volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation center, where I faced the devastating truth that...
For the past decade-plus, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) has been an important colleague of CEP’s as we both work toward strengthening the philanthropic sector. The GEO community brings together more than 5,000 grantmakers around the world so they can...
I remember in elementary school counting 100 cheerios on the 100th day of school. Though I no longer use my breakfast as an opportunity to mark an occasion (or practice my arithmetic), this month at CEP I find myself again appreciating an important hundredth...
I don’t recall ever reading a nonfiction book as quickly as I’ve just read Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms’s new book, New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World — and How to Make It Work for You. It helps that Phil Buchanan, CEP’s president, reviewed the...
After the positive response to our digest on feedback we assembled last month, we’ve decided to make digests a recurring series on the CEP blog. In this series, we’ll periodically compile a smattering of blog posts on a particular topic that is crucial to foundation...
This post was originally written for the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy’s "Field Focus: Data and the Sector" campaign. The original post can be viewed here. A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a vice president of a foundation that my organization, the...
This post first appeared on the Africa Grantmakers’ Affinity Group website. It was published following the release of the CEP report, Relationships Matter: Program Officers, Grantees, and the Keys to Success. Let me begin by stating the obvious. I love being a...
As a reader of this blog, you probably have one or more philanthropic focus areas about which you are most passionate — education, healthcare, the arts, human trafficking, or another pressing social or environmental issue. You may not realize, though, that disability...
For multiple reasons, everyone in America needs to read the powerful op-ed that Tamara Copeland, President of the Washington [D.C.] Regional Association of Grantmakers, recently wrote in The Chronicle of Philanthropy: “How Philanthropy Can Work to Give All Black Men...
I might be going out on a limb. Hanging by a thread. Treading on thin ice. But that’s how I feel poking a bit of fun at Vu Le and Nonprofit AF, whose Monday morning musings often give me a chuckle while raising important issues about the ways that funders and...
Here at CEP, we’re all about feedback and its capacity to inform funders’ decisions about making meaningful changes and improvements to their work. That’s why we analyze feedback data in our research reports and work with funders to help them hear from the candid...
This post from historian Lars Trägårdh originally appeared on HistPhil as part of its ongoing forum on philanthropy in Sweden. It is re-posted here as part of CEP’s blog series on international perspectives on philanthropy. Compared with most other Western...
This interview with John Esterle, co-director of The Whitman Institute (TWI), conducted by Jessica Bearman and Elizabeth Myrick, originally appeared in the PEAK Insight Journal. The interview focuses on TWI’s reporting practices, which are informed by and aligned with...
A version of this blog post from CEP Associate Manager, Research, Matthew Leiwant originally appeared on the CEP blog in March 2016. It is re-posted here as part of our Rewind series. Sifting through every nook and cranny of 73 foundation websites is not fun. On its...
This post originally appeared on the Glasspockets "Transparency Talk" blog. Philanthropy invests billions of dollars into charitable causes each year. According to Foundation Center, foundations gave an estimated $59.28 billion in 2016. That’s a tremendous amount of...