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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.
It’s that time of year again. That special time for performance reviews, grant reports, and setting annual goals. It’s also the moment to set aside all illusions of what I still have time to accomplish, and take a hard look back at what really happened during the last...
As the holidays approach, many of you may have lengthy road trips and plane rides ahead of you. After wrapping up all your work on a busy year, maybe you’ll want to sack out and catch up on those six months of lost sleep. Or maybe you’re searching for a great listen...
This post delves into findings from CEP’s report, Lessons from the Field: From Understanding to Impact, a series of case studies that provides an in-depth look at how three foundations work to cultivate an understanding of the fields in which they work — and then turn...
There’s lots of talk about effectiveness in philanthropy, but defining it isn’t necessarily easy. Our Board of Directors took a stab at it a few years back, and we put out what we called our “working definition of foundation effectiveness.” We got a lot of feedback on...
Charitable giving and philanthropy in Russia is only slightly more than 20 years old. The first steps came in corporate philanthropy when in the early 1990s, a number of newly-established companies began giving to all sorts of causes on an ad hoc basis. A few years...
Last month, CEP staff were joined by Baptist Healing Trust President and CEO Cathy Self and Program and Communications Officer Jennifer Oldham for an insightful webinar discussing the Trust’s experience surveying grantees through the Grantee Perception Report® (GPR)....
This post originally appeared on “Fred’s Blog” on The Gathering’s website. One of my treasures is a framed picture of Peter Drucker, Bob Buford, Tom Luce and myself outside Peter’s house in Estes Park in the early 1990s. Underneath it Bob wrote, “The Beginning of the...
Arab philanthropy is not a unified ecosystem of coordinated parts; it is a diverse and complex combination of sources of funding, intermediaries, and beneficiaries, which varies greatly depending on which part of the Arab world we are talking about — the Gulf...
This post, delving into data from the 2013 CEP report, Nonprofit Challenges: What Foundations Can Do, originally appeared on the blog in October 2013. It is reposted here as part of our Rewind blog series. Nonprofits want more than just money from foundations....
If the job of the foundation board is to oversee strategy and determine the effectiveness of the organization in achieving its goals, isn’t it also the board's job to pick the right grantees? Probably not. For large foundations that want to achieve big audacious...
Earlier this year, CEP spoke with Ronit Amit, researcher in philanthropy and CEO of Gandyr Foundation in Herzliya, Israel, just north of Tel Aviv. A family foundation founded in 2004, Gandyr strives to create an Israeli society based on equal opportunities...
This post originally appeared on HuffPost Impact. This week, the Center for Effective Philanthropy released a new study on the practices of foundation boards — a project on which BoardSource had the opportunity to collaborate. The report is a straightforward...
This post originally appeared on LinkedIn. I just returned to the U.S. after five years of living in Singapore and working with philanthropists and NGOs across Asia. As I resettle and reconnect, friends ask how I’ve changed since I left. While there are many...
It’s often frustratingly difficult to find basic information on foundation boards: their size, their structure, and their composition, for example. At CEP, we’re frequently asked by foundation CEOs and board members for help finding this kind of benchmarking data. So...
Just as we at CEP encourage funders to continually advance their effectiveness, we too constantly strive to improve our own work through feedback, iteration, and experimentation. Back in 2012, we embarked on an experiment to transform the way that we share assessment...
Struck by duck (W61.62) Sucked into jet engine, subsequent encounter (V97.33XD) Pedestrian on foot injured in collision with roller-skater (V00.01) Bitten by pig, initial encounter (W55.41XA) If you’re Facebook friends with any physicians, your newsfeed probably...
Two weeks ago at the Communications Network conference in San Diego, I attended an informative breakout session about the tension that can exist between foundations’ evaluations and communications teams. The session delved into the pitfalls of having one...
In our staff surveys at CEP, year after year, we receive great marks on most dimensions. But if there is one consistent critical theme over the years, it is a real concern about workload. And if I am to be brutally honest, I think I have sometimes trivialized that...
This 2012 post on foundation governance was for a long time the most widely read on the CEP blog. We are re-posting it here today as part of our "Blog Rewind" series for those who didn’t see it back then — or for those who want a refresher on what habits boards...
In the third post of our series of profiles of funders that are exemplary in their provision of non-monetary support to grantees, as assessed by the Grantee Perception Report, we take a look at the William Casper Graustein Memorial Fund. Based in Hamden, CT, The...