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There’s essentially nothing a foundation must do when it comes to asking most nonprofits to provide reports on the grants they’ve received. In fact, there’s no regulation that requires a funder to have a reporting process at all. (Expenditure responsibility grants are...
This year-end season, let’s pause and consider how we can put the “Philo” (love in Greek) at the center of our philanthropy. Instead of our usual approach to philanthropy as the love of humanity, the end beneficiaries of our grants, I encourage funders and others in...
Program officers have a tremendous influence on their grantee’s happiness. CEP’s seminal report on the importance of relationships between program officers and grantees documents that program officers can be a more important determinant of a grantee's experience than...
Two years ago, in September 2019, the World Education Services (WES) Mariam Assefa Fund awarded its first grants to organizations working to build more inclusive economies for immigrants and refugees in the United States and Canada. We were excited to begin our...
This piece was originally posted in February 2018. Transparency — being open, honest, and clear — is a key driver of strong relationships between funders and grantees. It’s valued by foundation and grantee CEOs alike, and grantees think foundations are doing a decent...
“Conflict is the midwife of consciousness.” - Paulo Freire In my lifetime, I have never felt more hopeful. The cacophony of unlikely factors that focused our vast nation (and much of the world) on the tragic murder of George Floyd ignited our generation’s...
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 post originally appeared on the Hewlett Foundation blog. It is reposted here with permission. The Hewlett Foundation began collecting information about the demographic makeup of its grantees in 2018 as part of our ongoing commitment to diversity, equity, and...
Among its many effects, the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the experiences of many college students, preventing them from attending on-campus classes or experiencing traditional internships. At Oberlin College, third-year students had the opportunity to complete...
Prior to completing its spend down in 2020, the San Diego-based Legler Benbough Foundation worked with grantees in trusting relationships, built over time, for 20 years. Now that our doors are closed, our colleagues at the Foundation have had the chance to...
As president and CEO of The Wright Center for Community Health and its affiliated entity, The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education, I’ve had the great privilege of voluntarily serving alongside 600 peer nonprofit CEOs on the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s...
A Conversation with Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies In CEP’s recent publication, New Attitudes, Old Practices: The Provision of Multiyear General Operating Support, nearly all interviewed foundation leaders emphasized the importance of trust between funders and...
Nonprofits and funders alike have long called on foundations to be more flexible and responsive; to provide more unrestricted funding; to reduce what they ask of grantees; and to build stronger, more trusting relationships with grantees. These calls for change have...
This post originally appeared on the Einhorn Collaborative blog. Philanthropic organizations need to change course all the time, but the speed and scale of the change required in 2020 is profound. In all organizational change, there are real challenges felt during the...
Decision-makers such as elected officials and institutional funders have historically ignored and underinvested in BIPOC communities. Fed up, those communities are calling on grantmakers to address the disproportionate impacts they are enduring from the COVID-19...
For years, every time I’ve traveled outside of Boston, I took a picture and turned it into a postcard to send to my now 97-year-old grandmother, who lives on her own in rural Maine. She replies with a card. We write about things little and big — our shared love of...
“It was so important just to be treated like a human being.” “As a woman of color, I can’t tell you what it meant to be approached by a funder I didn’t know who saw me and trusted me.” “DO SOMETHING!” These comments from nonprofit leaders at three different funder...
In the past year, CEP has deepened its focus on partnering with funders across the world, including through establishing a presence in Amsterdam. We recently analyzed our comparative Grantee Perception Report (GPR) dataset and have identified four...
Under pressure to reimagine philanthropic practice, private foundations are increasingly attentive to the quality of their relationships with grantees. They’re asking important questions of themselves with greater frequency: Are we listening? Are we providing adequate...
One of the primary ways the staff at the Jacob & Valeria Langeloth Foundation would describe ourselves and how we work is that we “follow the field.” We pride ourselves on the fact that we are non-directive funders — we would never dictate to a grantee what they...