Ellie Buteau presents a data point that refutes the notion that CEOs believe that philanthropic decision-making should place greater emphasis on intuition.
![Data Point: What are Foundation CEOs’ Attitudes Toward Assessment?](https://cep.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/dog-digging-feature-1.png)
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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.
Ellie Buteau presents a data point that refutes the notion that CEOs believe that philanthropic decision-making should place greater emphasis on intuition.
Phil Buchanan asks the philanthropic community not to lose sight of the essentials of goals and strategy.
Grace Nicolette shares the results of an independent survey of CEP’s Donor Percetion Report.
Phil Buchanan lists the bad habits that hinder the effectivness of foundation governance.
Ellie Buteau is back with a data point on how frequently foundations follow up with their grantees after providing them with assistance beyond the grant to understand its effects.
Kevin Bolduc discusses why the Charting Impact project is an important step toward transparency and performance measurement in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors.
Phil Buchanan argues that we can find plenty of leadership on data utilization within the nonprofit sector, where exemplars abound.
Phil Buchanan reflects on the limits of brainstorming after having his assumptions challenged by a recent article from the New Yorker by Jonah Lehrer.
Ellie Buteau, PhD., presents a data point on the challenge funders face in having evaulations result in meaningful insight.
After reading Olivier Zunz’s new book Philanthropy in America, Phil Buchanan reflects on the often overlooked history of the sector in the United States.
The following blog post is adapted from a talk presented at a meeting of the Grantmakers of Oregon and Southwest Washington. As Suk Rhee mentioned in her introduction, I am a native Oregonian, so I know that there is no better place than the Pacific Northwest. And I...
In a recent data point post, we shared that the most significant factor program staff consider when determining what type of assistance beyond the grant to provide is specific requests from grantees. In our research, program staff also told us that the most frequent...
For our recent State of Foundation Performance Assessment report, we gathered data from 173 CEOs of U.S. foundations with annual grantmaking of at least $5 million on what types of information they use to assess the effectiveness of their foundations’ work –...
There has been lots of talk lately about foundations and “transparency.” Perhaps the most prominent foundation transparency initiative is a website called Glass Pockets, launched about a year ago by Foundation Center. Its tagline? “Bringing transparency to the world...
Ellie Buteau offers foundation staff a helpful data point as they prepare materials for their board of directors.
One of the key findings from our recent performance assessment study, titled The State of Foundation Performance Assessment: A Survey of Foundation CEOs, is that 70 percent of CEOs want their board members to be more involved in assessment. This finding is consistent...
CEOs and program staff believe that providing assistance beyond the grant is important both for the achievement of their goals and those of their grantees. Yet few know whether the assistance they provide to those grantees is proving helpful. In that...
Much of the talk about strategy in philanthropy focuses on its development. Less frequently discussed is implementation. But, as former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation President Steven A. Schroeder contends, good strategy is useless if it isn’t implemented well. ...
Being “strategic” in philanthropy is sometimes equated with being isolated, arrogant, or top-down, with foundation leaders asserting detailed theories of change to rigidly guide grantmaking. But CEP’s research suggests that the opposite is the case. Those who are...
Ellie Buteau, PhD., presents a Data Point about the use of information drawn from programmatic experience and insight by foundation CEOs.