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When I first met Michael Bailin in the office of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF) in New York in 2001, he described a new effort the Foundation was undertaking: to identify organizations with proven strategies to help young people living in poverty and fund...
Trust-based philanthropy is the phrase of the moment, and all those associated with the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project deserve tremendous credit for the way they have influenced grantmakers. As we at CEP have documented in a series of research reports, foundations’...
This is the third and final post in a series in which I revisit some of the big questions for philanthropy I discussed in a post published in the fall of 2022. The first dealt with whether changes in philanthropic practice made in the wake of the pandemic would be...
Joel Fleishman, who died September 30 at the age of 90, is rightly being remembered as a man who was, in the words of the New York Times, “an unparalleled influencer among the nation’s wealthy and powerful.” Many of the beautiful obituaries and reflections on Joel’s...
If one thing is clear to me about philanthropy, it’s that there is no single right model or approach that makes sense in every context. We at the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) have developed a working definition of philanthropic effectiveness that lays out...
This is second in a series of posts in which I revisit some of the big questions for philanthropy discussed in a post published in the fall of 2022. I hear more talk about the state of philanthropy’s commitment to racial equity than perhaps any other issue when I...
This is first in a series of posts in which I will revisit some of the big questions for philanthropy discussed in a post published in the fall of 2022. The four years since the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill have seen unprecedented change in...
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 —...
It has become trendy, for some reason, to argue that we’re paying too much attention to numbers, such as those tracked by Giving USA, that gauge contributions to nonprofit organizations. Generosity, the thinking goes, is about so much more than this, and, therefore,...
There is increasing evidence that the shifts in funder practices that began in 2020 are continuing in the years since. In a new CEP research study, released today, we have documented changes in the past year in how both individual and institutional donors work with...
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...
This post originally appeared on the blog in February 2022. We’ve spent a ton of time in foundation board rooms, for better and for worse. We’ve also been board members and guest speakers at operating nonprofits and one of us staffed two college boards decades...
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...
Discussions of MacKenzie Scott’s unconventional approach to giving tend to devolve into binaries. Scott’s doling out of massive, unrestricted gifts — some $14 billion to 1,600 nonprofits so far — is presented by some as the philanthropic holy grail, to be emulated by...
We’ve been researching foundations and donors, and the way they interact with the nonprofits they fund, for two decades. We have heard many funders announce their arrival by declaring they’re taking a new, innovative approach to philanthropy: charting a new path and...
It’s remarkable to reflect on how much has changed since 2019, when big philanthropy was wrapped up in self-critique prompted by a range of high-profile critics. But the pandemic and the racial justice reckoning of 2020, and the sense of urgency they created, rendered...
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...
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...
I’ve been thinking recently about what’s changed since March 2020 when it comes to the nonprofit sector; foundation and individual giving; and my take on leadership. In this final post of a three-part series, I reflect on what I have learned — or re-learned — about...
I’ve been thinking recently about what’s changed since March 2020 when it comes to the nonprofit sector; foundation and individual giving; and my take on leadership. This is the second post in a three-part series. While the general public’s trust in nonprofits has...