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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.
If you are ever looking for a way to produce groans and hisses from your board of directors, tell them that it’s time to update your strategic plan. There are only a few special souls in this world who stand at the front end of a strategic plan and are excited about...
Recently, a grantee sent us an email to request an early disbursement of their organization’s multiyear grant installment. The executive director explained the organization had a one-month gap in covering operational expenses. By moving our annual disbursement up a...
Gluttons for punishment or navel gazers? Who would have thought that the fourth time our foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, completed the Grantee Perception Report (GPR) would be every bit as valuable as the initial one. Each time we have worked...
CEP’s latest report, Nonprofit Diversity Efforts: Current Practices and the Role of Foundations, comes during a time where the foundation sector at large is reflecting on its levels of inclusion and diversity. The case for diversity has been made time and time again....
PEAK Grantmaking’s recent survey of the field reveals that too few of the funders who collect demographic data on their grantees can articulate how they plan to use the information. This is confirmed in CEP’s new report, Nonprofit Diversity Efforts, which shows that...
The recent CEP report Nonprofit Diversity Efforts provides critical insight into the current efforts of more than 200 nonprofit organizations, while also describing how foundation funders support these initiatives. As such, it provides a baseline from which we as a...
I never studied “whole child” education in a classroom, nor did I learn about it in my broad foundation training to be an urban superintendent. Instead, I learned about whole child from children: my own kids, and the 47,000 public school students in Sacramento (a.k.a....
A few days ago, a colleague and I had an amazing site visit at a regional organization where staffers — among other things — oozed excitement about their recently implemented case management system. While we were there, the staff also lamented about being...
CEP‘s new research report released today, titled Nonprofit Diversity Efforts: Current Practices and the Role of Foundations, shares nonprofits’ perspectives on diversity in their work and what their needs are. Initially, we set out to conduct a study on diversity,...
The core idea of emergence is that it is nonlinear; it should create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts — a compelling idea to funders who are striving to create a sustainable impact on complex problems with relatively modest investments. As we...
In its recent report, Bracing for a Downturn: Nonprofits, Charitable Deduction Worries, and How Foundations Can Help, the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) uncovers nonprofit and foundation leaders’ thoughts about the potential impact of new tax legislation on...
How does today’s current environment impact how we fund social change? Even before the 2016 U.S. elections, globalization, technology, and growing inequality have been disrupting the social sector. And now, the current U.S. administration and Congress is in the...
The answers you’re given depend on the questions you ask. Though it may seem obvious, understanding this simple truth will dramatically improve the effectiveness of your philanthropy. The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) recently released a new...
Over the better part of the last decade, CEP has worked with Learning for Action (LFA) to regularly survey both CEP’s broad philanthropic stakeholders and users of CEP’s assessment and advisory services to learn more about our impact and how our audience...
We are in the midst of one of the most contentious and divisive moments in U.S. history, and Muslim communities are feeling the pressure. From hate violence to racial profiling to outright Muslim bans, physical and political threats against our communities have been...
We are confronted daily with numbers and statements, often conflicting. Take two recent headlines about a daily habit many of us enjoy: one headline from CNN proclaims, "Coffee may come with a cancer warning in California," while another from The Seattle Times says,...
Feedback is important for every funder — and so is closing the loop to share what you learn and how you plan to respond. Funders of every type and size work with CEP to listen to and learn from grantee feedback through the Grantee Perception Report (GPR)....
Reading the recent CEP resource about the five things nonprofits want donors to know, there was one thing in particular that most struck a chord with me as a nonprofit executive: flexible funding. Over the past 14 years, I've run Rising Tide Capital, a nonprofit...
I recently enjoyed a keynote speech by Ann Christiano and subsequently read a piece co-authored by her and Annie Neimand in the Stanford Social Innovation Review last year titled, “Stop Raising Awareness Already.” In it, the authors suggest...
Before I began my current role as a program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, I was the executive director (ED) of a nonprofit, where one of my main jobs was to fundraise. I found being an ED one of the most rewarding and most challenging jobs I’ve...