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Phil Buchanan

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On a Unique Board Member’s Lasting Legacy
On a Unique Board Member’s Lasting Legacy

During his seven years on the CEP Board, Ricardo Millett would ask the same question at some point in almost every meeting: “Effectiveness for what?” His refrain was so common we used to joke about making it a drinking game. We joked, but we knew it was a serious —...

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Who Is Threatening ‘Philanthropic Freedom?’
Who Is Threatening ‘Philanthropic Freedom?’

In college, I had a journalism professor who taught us never to start a piece with a question. But I can’t help myself. I want to know: Who is threatening "philanthropic freedom?” And I want to know what pluralism really looks like — and who defines it? OK, that was...

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Rethinking What Constitutes Impact
Rethinking What Constitutes Impact

This post was originally posted on the CEP blog in March 2021.  Foundations and individual donors need to reconceive impact in a way that puts hearing firsthand the experiences of those they seek to help front and center. If any area illustrates this point, it is...

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Philanthropy’s Role in a Better Future
Philanthropy’s Role in a Better Future

This piece was originally posted on January 8, 2021, two days after violent attacks on the Capitol. Today, with the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack hearings underway, we revisit that moment, and what philanthropy can do to strengthen democracy. The...

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Re-Purposing Foundation Boards
Re-Purposing Foundation Boards

This piece was originally posted in March 2021. Philanthropy is not like investing. Nonprofits are not like business. Even the most casual reader of this blog or occasional follower of CEP’s work has heard me make this argument many times (too many, you...

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Elevating the Conversation
Elevating the Conversation

“Nuance.” That was investor and donor Liesel Pritzker’s straightforward answer to the question of what giving done right looks like to her when my colleague Grace Nicolette asked — as she does all our guests — at the end of an interview for our Giving Done Right...

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5 Hopes for Philanthropy and Nonprofits
5 Hopes for Philanthropy and Nonprofits

This post originally appeared in November in The Nonprofit Times and has been lightly edited for re-publication here. Nonprofits continued to be under enormous stress in 2021 as the pandemic continued and national and global crises — from attacks on democracy to...

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