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Funder exits are inevitable – whether as a result of a foundation’s strategic realignment, shift in priority countries, budget cuts, poor portfolio performance, or, in the worst case scenario, opaque top-down decisions. No surprise then that funders, and especially...
In a post on the CEP blog last week about measuring foundation progress, Mark Zezza and Maureen Cozine of the New York State Health Foundation write, “As stewards of resources to advance the public interest, it is incumbent upon us to be transparent about our...
As stakeholders in the social sector, we all care deeply about impact. We are driven to move the needle on the systemic and social conditions that will improve individual and community outcomes in the fields in which our sector works — education, health, community...
We’re reviving our Q&A series on the blog, in which readers can submit questions to be answered by CEP’s experts. We’d love to hear from you with questions related to relationship-building with grantees, grantmaking patterns, assistance beyond the grant, or any...
The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Benchmarking Program Officer Roles and Responsibilities report provides useful insights into an often unexplored and relatively unknown area — the foundation program officer’s perspective on their role and profession. I found...
This blog post from CEP’s Vice President, Assessment and Advisory Services, Kevin Bolduc originally appeared on the CEP blog in October 2015. It is reposted here as part of our Rewind series. Struck by duck (W61.62) Sucked into jet engine, subsequent encounter...
When foundation evaluation trailblazer Patti Patrizi conducted the first benchmarking survey of the philanthropic sector’s evaluation practices in 2009, the field was already several years into its embrace of strategic grantmaking and its call for rigorous attention...
So you want to become a more intentional learning organization? For those who are building out a new learning and evaluation function at their foundation, Benchmarking Foundation Evaluation Practices, the new research report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy...
Just because everyone else is doing something does not make it right. We’ve heard this refrain from a young age. But sometimes it makes good sense to follow conventional wisdom or “best practice.” In shaping a foundation’s grantmaking or evaluation approaches, the...
I find it surprising that we are still talking about the role of evaluation at foundations. A quick Google search on “evaluation in foundations” brings up more than 125 million hits — numerous benchmarking reports, articles in scholarly and gray literature, links to...
The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) and the Center for Evaluation Innovation (CEI) have been partnering for the past year to create a comprehensive benchmarking dataset on evaluation practices at large foundations — specifically, U.S. and Canadian foundations...
This post originally appeared on the blog in January 2015, and is re-posted here as part of our Rewind series. This post was part of a Q&A series on the blog, in which readers can submit questions about foundation effectiveness to be answered by CEP staff. We’d...
Feedback really does fuel change. That’s why we created the Grantee Perception Report (GPR) – to allow funders to hear from grantees and continually improve based on their unbiased, comparative feedback. And that’s why it’s important that funders actually can, and do,...
In reflecting on a year almost (but not quite) yet done, it can often be difficult to fit into a small space all the important things that happen in the span of 365 days, whether it’s in a family holiday card or in a year-end blog post. On the assessment and advisory...
Last month, CEP staff were joined by Baptist Healing Trust President and CEO Cathy Self and Program and Communications Officer Jennifer Oldham for an insightful webinar discussing the Trust’s experience surveying grantees through the Grantee Perception Report® (GPR)....
Struck by duck (W61.62) Sucked into jet engine, subsequent encounter (V97.33XD) Pedestrian on foot injured in collision with roller-skater (V00.01) Bitten by pig, initial encounter (W55.41XA) If you’re Facebook friends with any physicians, your newsfeed probably...
This post originally appeared on the blog of Giving Evidence, which encourages and enables charitable giving based on sound evidence. Most charities hate the reporting which funders make them do. Notionally a learning process, it’s often just compliance,...
On June 2, Don Matteson, chief program officer at The Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Foundation, joined CEP’s Naomi Orensten for an informative and lively webinar about the Grantee Perception Report® (GPR). In the conversation, Don discussed what The Foundation has...
Last week my organization, the Social Innovation Research Center, released a report on the progress of the Social Innovation Fund (SIF), the Obama administration initiative that funds community-based programs in low-income areas and provides the necessary evaluation...
Nonprofit, mission-driven organizations overwhelmingly want to assess their impact — and, generally, they put effort into doing so. The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s recent report, Assessing to Achieve High Performance, underscores the importance nonprofits...