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Within my first couple weeks of starting college, my Junior Advisor (Williams College’s student equivalent of a dorm parent) gathered a dozen of my “entry” mates for our Welcoming Williams session, which I now recognize was my first ever formal diversity, equity, and...
A decade ago I was managing grants for a nonprofit in Swaziland when the representative of a large funder arrived in my office. Without talking to any of the beneficiaries at the core of the project, he immediately began going through the 500-page grant agreement with...
I often find myself facing a series of pretty consistent questions when I begin a conversation with one of the 47 percent of funders that a recent Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) survey found are not soliciting feedback from grantees....
I’m pleased to share results of our latest third-party-collected feedback about CEP’s Donor Perception Report (DPR), an assessment used by many community foundations to better understand their donors’ perspectives, experiences, and future giving. As we always have and...
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)....
Just as we at CEP encourage funders to continually advance their effectiveness, we too constantly strive to improve our own work through feedback, iteration, and experimentation. Back in 2012, we embarked on an experiment to transform the way that we share assessment...
Two weeks ago at the Communications Network conference in San Diego, I attended an informative breakout session about the tension that can exist between foundations’ evaluations and communications teams. The session delved into the pitfalls of having one...
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...
Gathering feedback and data and helping foundations act on that information is at the heart of what we do here at CEP. But we need feedback to improve, as well. To that end, in 2015 CEP commissioned Harder+Company Community Research to conduct an independent...
During our annual all-staff week at the end of the year, our assessment tools team has a tradition of sitting down together, grabbing some snacks, and listening as each of us shares an anecdote about how we’ve contributed to CEP’s impact for the year. 2014 has been a...
Gathering, analyzing, and acting upon feedback are key priorities here at CEP. These are the values that have driven us to develop our assessment tools, publish research reports that draw on the voices of key foundation stakeholders, and devote our energy to helping...
In a recent blog post from my colleague Kevin Bolduc, he shared inspiring examples of two funders trying something a bit different: sharing the results of their Grantee Perception Reports (GPR) in-person with their grantees. While we often see foundations sharing...
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...
Kevin Bolduc, CEP’s Vice President – Assessment Tools, reflects on the challenges and accomplishments of the assessment tools team in 2013, and provides a glimpse of the ever-growing community of tool users coming on board in 2014.
Kevin Bolduc shares an important piece of qualitative data on how nonprofits view their funders.
Kevin Bolduc and Mark Chaffin present data about the changes in ratings seen by funders who have used the GPR survey three times.
Guest author Carol Ting advises funders to recognize that relationships with their grantees are symbiotic and suggests making an effort to rebalance the inherent power dynamics to make those partnerships more effective.
Manager Grace Nicolette reports out on the lessons learned from a recent survey of our Donor Perecption Report subscribers.
Ellie Buteau and Phil Buchanan introduce CEP’s newest research report that lays out practical advice for foundation program staff to strengthen relationships with their grantees.