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This piece was originally posted in January 2020. The past two decades have seen a shift in the conversation about philanthropy. We entered the 2000s being told that what philanthropy needed was a “business” or “investor” mindset, with less clarity of course about...
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...
When CEP released a report last June about the state of nonprofits during the COVID-19 pandemic, prospects looked bleak. Nonprofit leaders from our Grantee Voice panel revealed that the pandemic was devastating their organizations as well as the people and communities...
This is the first in a series of four blog posts reflecting on philanthropy’s first two decades in the 21st Century and hopes for the next one. The first post discusses the public conversation about philanthropy during 2000-2010; the second focuses on 2010-2019; the...
This is the third post in a series on “The Art of Philanthropy,” a high-altitude look at the power foundations hold, related issues, and potential solutions. Conversations within and between foundations used to be centered largely around just what was funded and why....
This is the second post in a series on “The Art of Philanthropy,” a high-altitude look at the power foundations hold, related issues, and potential solutions. In my last post on the “art of philanthropy,” I discussed how the funder-grantee power dynamic continues to...
This is the first post in a series on “The Art of Philanthropy,” a high-altitude look at the power foundations hold, related issues, and potential solutions. The art of philanthropy begins with balance and ends without it. Of course, any attempt for balance runs head...
Recently, a grantee sent us an email to request an early disbursement of their organization’s multiyear grant installment. The executive director explained the organization had a one-month gap in covering operational expenses. By moving our annual disbursement up a...
Over the better part of the last decade, CEP has worked with Learning for Action (LFA) to regularly survey both CEP’s broad philanthropic stakeholders and users of CEP’s assessment and advisory services to learn more about our impact and how our audience...
At CEP, we are always eager to learn how the recommendations we provide through our assessments and advisory services affect not just the funders we partner with, but also — and most importantly — the work of their grantees toward improving lives and tackling complex...
This article was originally published on India Development Review. You can read the original here. Strategic philanthropy was born a generation ago to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies of philanthropy over the past century. Moving beyond traditional...
Twenty years ago, before I worked in philanthropy, if you had asked me to explain the fundamental purpose of a foundation, I would have given a simple answer: to give money to nonprofits. That was naive. After joining the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation in 2003,...
At the Johnson Scholarship Foundation, where I serve as president, we decided to get into the social media business three years ago. Prior to that, the foundation’s only communication interest was transparency. We maintained a website and published an annual report....
Over the years, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation has formulated a number of grantmaking strategies that seek to improve the lives of children and families. In 2009, the Foundation set out to create a strategy to promote and expand high-quality summer...
At effective foundations, the how of grantmaking is everyone’s business. When grantmakers think about their funding strategy, we often focus on where we will give, to what, and to whom. We think about the results we want our funding to spark or enable. But strategy is...
Our tagline at Fund for Shared Insight is “Philanthropy. Open for improvement.”* Founded in July 2014, Fund for Shared Insight (“Shared Insight”) is a funder collaborative working to improve philanthropy by increasing foundation openness. We are betting that if...
Providing general operating support can be challenging for grantmakers. From our perspective at CEP, we know funders can sometimes wonder: Is our grant being used to further our mission? Without tying a grant to outcomes, how can we measure our impact? Nonprofit...
This post originally appeared on the Associated Grantmakers Blog. Take a moment to imagine yourself as the executive of a small nonprofit attending an information session with a major funder who has recently launched a new strategic plan. You’re anxiously awaiting...
It’s that time of year again. That special time for performance reviews, grant reports, and setting annual goals. It’s also the moment to set aside all illusions of what I still have time to accomplish, and take a hard look back at what really happened during the last...
This post delves into findings from CEP’s report, Lessons from the Field: From Understanding to Impact, a series of case studies that provides an in-depth look at how three foundations work to cultivate an understanding of the fields in which they work — and then turn...