Funders, make a plan to gather vital feedback on your work in 2026!
Contact Us
Search
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...