Funders, make a plan to gather vital feedback on your work in 2026!
Contact Us
Search
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.
The two of us were reminiscing recently about the first time we sat down with the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) team. It was in 2003, just a few years after CEP got its start. We immediately saw CEP’s big datasets and rigorous research as great means for...
It’s time to take back the discussion of effective philanthropy from those who don’t really know what they’re talking about. It needs to happen — and there’s no better day than today to start. I don’t mean to be harsh. But the fact is that, in recent decades, those...
This year marks the Helmsley Charitable Trust’s tenth year as an active grantmaker. During these last 10 years, we have discovered that when it comes to ramping up a new foundation or grantmaking organization, there is no single “how-to guide” or step-by-step plan to...
Philanthropy alone cannot solve the problems our society faces, but it has a vital role to play. We know this because it has historically played such a role, even as we can all agree that we wish it had achieved more. Over the past many years, philanthropy has...
The affordable housing crisis isn’t new. It isn’t even an “emerging” crisis. Our country has been in the midst of it for decades and neighbors in our communities who are living in poverty are suffering the most from its effects, putting them at risk of experiencing...
In a way, we did things in reverse. Compared with how funders usually enter into policy work, our order of operations was the opposite. In the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s work on substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery, we did not start by funding...
Education-focused foundations exist to address deep societal inequities. Their goals — ensuring quality K-12 education for all students, improving student access to post-secondary opportunities, expanding formal learning experiences for children prior to kindergarten...
In 2014, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation assembled 12 of the country’s leading funders focused on early childhood development into a new collaborative. We set sail on our journey with a lofty goal: to move...
This post, which originally appeared on Giving Compass, is excerpted and adapted from Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count, the forthcoming book from CEP President Phil Buchanan, to be published April 16 by Public...
There is a vast chasm between the perspectives of foundation and nonprofit leaders when it comes to the state of investing in the people who make up grantee organizations. The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Strengthening Grantees study compares how foundation and...
This post by Kate Frykberg originally appeared on GlassPockets as part of its "Road to 100 & Beyond" series. It is re-posted here as part of CEP’s blog series on international perspectives on philanthropy. I’ve been thinking about funder relationships with...
This is the final post in a six-part series on what nonprofit leaders think foundation funders could improve upon in their work. Findings are based on survey responses from 244 nonprofit leaders who have agreed to be a part of CEP’s Grantee Voice Panel — a nationally...
This is the fifth post in a six-part series on what nonprofit leaders think foundation funders could improve upon in their work. Findings are based on survey responses from 244 nonprofit leaders who have agreed to be a part of CEP’s Grantee Voice Panel — a nationally...
I love working in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, and what is sometimes affectionately called the "Land of 10,000 Nonprofits.” We’re an increasingly diverse state with more than 100 languages spoken and home to 11 Native Nations. In Minnesota, we take pride (in our modest...
This is the fourth post in a six-part series on what nonprofit leaders think foundation funders could improve upon in their work. Findings are based on survey responses from 244 nonprofit leaders who have agreed to be a part of CEP’s Grantee Voice Panel — a nationally...
This is the third post in a six-part series on what nonprofit leaders think foundation funders could improve upon in their work. Findings are based on survey responses from 244 nonprofit leaders who have agreed to be a part of CEP’s Grantee Voice Panel — a nationally...
At the Equitable Evaluation Initiative, we believe that evaluators in the philanthropic sector have a moral imperative to design and implement evaluations that contribute to equity. This can happen by: Answering critical questions about the effect of a strategy on...
Complex change strategies can benefit from the expertise of funders, intermediaries, and evaluators, in addition to community partners. This collective expertise is even more essential today — as more funders acknowledge the complexity of social problems and target...
This is the second post in a six-part series on what nonprofit leaders think foundation funders could improve upon in their work. Findings are based on survey responses from 244 nonprofit leaders who have agreed to be a part of CEP’s Grantee Voice Panel — a nationally...
At CEP, we adhere to the core principle that grantees are a crucial link between funders and their ability to have impact. This shouldn’t be surprising nor controversial. After all, grantee organizations and the individuals who make them up are the ones doing the hard...