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The American tradition of philanthropic giving should not be taken for granted, in part because it may well be in real jeopardy. “What’s the problem?,” you might ask. After all, charitable giving reached an all-time high in 2020 – some $471.4 billion given, according...
This post, which originally appeared on Giving Compass, is excerpted and adapted from Phil’s book, Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count. I remember sitting in a second-year elective course as an MBA student at Harvard Business...
Individual donors and foundations alike seek to be effective in their giving. But what does that actually mean? The Center for Effective Philanthropy – an organization that has effectiveness as its middle name – has grappled with this question since we...
It’s entirely predictable, I suppose, but the backlash to last year’s reckoning on racism is definitely here, a year after George Floyd’s horrific murder–and now it’s visible within the little world of institutional philanthropy. We are seeing, for example, both the...
If you’ve read and appreciated a post from the CEP Blog over the past nearly seven years, then you have benefited from the thoughtful and skilled work of Ethan McCoy, CEP’s senior writer. Ethan joined CEP right out of Brown University, where he had been sports editor...
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 education. After all, listening to students should not be a radical...
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 might be thinking). But repeating this message matters. And...
As the country endures a period of division in which both elected leaders and regular citizens traffic in lies and conspiracy theories and seek to undermine democracy, the question of philanthropy’s role in charting a better future is crucial. The need for...
The crises this country has endured for nearly a year now have underscored the desperate need for donors to provide the kind of flexible funding and trust that nonprofits require to be effective. Nonprofits have been on the front lines of responding to community needs...
This post originally appeared on the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) website. More than a decade ago, I was summoned to a meeting to provide advice to the board members and CEO of a new, very large foundation. I remember thinking I didn’t really belong...