Blog
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.
A Foundation Website for Sore Eyes
Sifting through every nook and cranny of 73 foundation websites is not fun. On its face, that statement does not seem revelatory, but I really would not have thought about it much until the CEP research team started collecting data for our latest research report on...
Transparency for Impact
This post originally appeared on The McKnight Foundation blog. If my email inbox had a theme in the past few weeks, it’s been transparency. The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) just released a report called Sharing What Matters: Foundation Transparency....
What Donors Value from their Community Foundation: Communication
This post from former CEP Senior Research Analyst Mark Chaffin originally appeared on the blog in May 2014. It is reposted here as part of our Rewind blog series. In our research report What Donors Value: How Community Foundations Can Increase...
Assessing the Assessment: The Donor Perception Report
I’m pleased to share results of our latest third-party-collected feedback about CEP’s Donor Perception Report (DPR), an assessment used by many community foundations to better understand their donors’ perspectives, experiences, and future giving. As we always have and...
Foundations that live in glass houses shouldn’t…
…throw stones? Wait, that doesn’t make sense for a blog post about CEP’s new research report, Sharing What Matters: Foundation Transparency. Shouldn’t get changed without the blinds drawn? Shouldn’t skimp on the Windex? Shouldn’t...
Getting More Transparent about Foundation Results
The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s latest research report, Sharing What Matters: Perspectives on Foundation Transparency, released last week, provides some startling data about the state of transparency in the foundation world. While for the most part,...
Funding Documentaries to Drive Policy Change
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]If you watched the Oscars on Sunday night — or if you have been on the internet since — you’ve likely by now seen or heard about Lady Gaga’s striking performance of “Til It Happens to You,” her...
Transparency Outside Starts Inside
Openness with a Purpose
Expectations for sharing information in today’s society are high. Before Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest (the list goes on), we didn’t know what our distant relatives were eating for breakfast or have instant access to pictures of a friend’s vacation...
Transparency For Those That Need It Most
Supporting a Foundation’s Move towards Unrestricted Support
Providing general operating support can be challenging for grantmakers. From our perspective at CEP, we know funders can sometimes wonder: Is our grant being used to further our mission? Without tying a grant to outcomes, how can we measure our impact? Nonprofit...
I Spent a Week in the Future, and There Weren’t Any Foundations There.
I saw drones create 3D scans of buildings, was hugged by a robot that will make human labor on the assembly line irrelevant, and heard that nanotechnology will defeat cancer by 2033. I learned that 3D printers are printing human organs, which is great since deaths in...
Philanthropy in a Post-Communist Country: The Case of Slovakia
What Makes a Helpful Reporting & Evaluation System? Learning from an Outlier
Funders’ reporting and evaluation systems are rarely loved — they are more often regarded as compliance or “policing.” But not so for the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), an organization that funds grassroots development through community-based...
Unpacking Foundation Effectiveness: What Does It Take?
One of the most common questions we’re asked at CEP is what it takes for a foundation to be as effective as possible. Over the years, through our assessments and research on foundation best practices, we have created a working definition of foundation effectiveness,...
Suddenly Mainstream: Philanthropy for Refugees in Germany
When Am I Ready to Fund?
What’s the Value Proposition of Emergence?
“Bottom-Up” Approach to Strategic Planning
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This post originally appeared on the Associated Grantmakers Blog. Take a moment to imagine yourself as the executive of a small nonprofit attending an information session with a major funder who has recently launched a new...