Funders, make a plan to gather vital feedback on your work in 2026!
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Foundation effectiveness requires clear goals, coherent strategies, disciplined implementation, and relevant performance indicators. “They may seem obvious but they are actually really hard to do,” CEP President Phil Buchanan told Minnesota Council on Foundations...
Times are changing for foundations and donors.The launch by NCRP of Philamplify, an initiative to publicly assess foundations, along with the introduction late last year of the website Inside Philanthropy, got me thinking about the shift in the past decade when it...
When we developed the Opportunity Index in 2011 with our social science research partner, Measure of America, we asked ourselves a lot of questions. As a data-driven organization, we understand the power – and limitations – of research. So we weren’t surprised when...
The cover story of the March 2014 Harvard Business Review (HBR) on work-life balance was of interest to me because, like most of us, I struggle with getting this right. I worry about it for myself, of course, and also for the staff of CEP. So I cracked open...
In the past decade, foundations have become more deeply engaged in assessing their performance. But performance assessment is only a means to an end. The real question is – do foundations feel like they now have a better understanding of their impact? To find this...
In the coming days, CEP’s new website will be live (and it may even be by the time you read this), along with a new logo, brand identity, and tag line: Improving foundation performance through data + insight. The launch of this new site comes on the heels of...
Diversity—in particular, racial diversity—has become an increasingly discussed issue in the context of foundation effectiveness. Much of the data fueling these discussions has been about the demographics of foundation staff, leaders, and boards and the policies that...
How can funders better inform their own assessment of progress and earn their – and others’ - confidence in any impact achieved? That’s the question that jumped out at us here at the Center for High Impact Philanthropy after reviewing...
At CEP, we strive to make our assessment tools as accessible as possible to as many funders as possible. Since our inception, assessment tools such as our flagship Grantee Perception Report have primarily been used by larger foundations with annual giving of over $5...
One theme that has come up again and again in CEP’s research on foundation effectiveness is the importance of foundations communicating their goals clearly. Our past research has shown that how clearly a foundation communicates its goals and strategies to grantees is...