America’s public schools were founded with a clear mission: to prepare each generation anew for the responsibilities of citizenship. Over the last year, YouthTruth, an initiative of the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), set out to evaluate how well schools are...
CEP Author
What Do Grantees Think of Intermediary Funders?
Over the past decade, there has been a significant rise in both the interest in and number of intermediary organizations — those that primarily regrant funds from institutional sources on their behalf, including nonprofits that act as regrantors, collaborative or...
The Giving Done Right Podcast is Back for Season Four
Listen to the trailer here. I’m thrilled to announce that the Giving Done Right podcast is returning for another season! This summer, CEP’s president Phil Buchanan and I have been busy in the recording studio, and we’ll be bringing you 16 new episodes...
Keeping the Spark Alive: How One Funder Invests in Grantee Well-Being
Burnout within nonprofit organization staff is a growing concern within the sector, as seen in the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s new research, State of Nonprofits 2024: What Funders Need to Know. The research shows that 95 percent of nonprofit leaders expressed...
A Pride Month Call to Action: Highlighting the Less Positive Experiences of LGBTQ+ Grantees
Part protest, part commemoration, and part celebration, Pride Month joyfully invites us all to see the rich and diverse lives of queer folks — and to recognize that as far as we’ve come (at least here in the U.S.), we still have a long way to go to achieve a world in...
Foundations Are Concerned About Nonprofit Staff Burnout, Too
“We are in what feels like daily crisis mode. Our staff is small and overtaxed. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to run the organization, and we haven’t had the luxury of much down time.” The sentiment above was shared by a respondent to a CEP survey of nonprofit...
This Year’s State of Nonprofits Highlights Mounting Concern About Burnout
Burnout is top of mind for nonprofit leaders in 2024, despite relative consistency in nonprofit organizations’ finances and relationships with funders. This is one of the key insights in a new CEP report, State of Nonprofits 2024: What Funders Need to Know, released...
Prioritizing Grants Management: An Unsung Key to Effective Funding
Often, when I hear talk about funders and the ways they can achieve impact, the conversations tend to revolve around the same few groups: program staff, senior leadership, and boards. No doubt, these roles are essential for driving impact in philanthropy. But, in my...
Closing the Feedback Loop with Grantees: A Conversation with the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation
One of the most frequently asked questions I receive from grantmakers after they complete a Grantee Perception Report (GPR) with CEP is, “How would you recommend sharing these findings back to our grantees?” While we encourage all funders to, at the minimum, thank...
How Listening Helped One Funder Set Strategic Direction
[vc_row el_class="sixtysix-thirtythree"][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]In my many years working with funders at the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), one of the most common phrases that comes up in discussions of results is “we’re different” — and there...
What the Music of Taylor Swift Can Teach Us About Great Philanthropy
Great music is more than the sum of its parts. A certain combination of notes, chords, and lyrics may create an exquisite gem of a song — or a barnburner of a jam — but what’s required to elevate music to the level of greatness is something else: an artist’s specific...
Your Questions About Demographic Data Collection, Answered
In recent years, CEP’s analysis of demographic data from its Grantee Perception Report and research datasets found that both Native American nonprofit leaders and Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) nonprofit leaders were having less positive experiences with...
Silently Shrinking Grants: Is Inflation Reducing the Value of Your Grant?
In philanthropy, we have been talking a lot about the crucial need for funders to provide more multiyear, general operating support. That’s important, and I also think we need to talk more about the size of grants. Why? At least from what I can see in CEP’s Grantee...