Funders, make a plan to gather vital feedback on your work in 2026!
Contact Us
Search
In this new series, we’ll be sharing case studies of foundations that exemplify the ways in which funders can provide their grantees with support that goes beyond just the check. In 2008, CEP published a research report, More than Money: Making a Difference with...
Starting this month, we are kicking off a Q&A series on the blog, in which readers can submit questions to be answered by CEP’s experts. We’d love to hear from you with questions related to relationship-building with grantees, grantmaking patterns, assistance...
Foundation effectiveness, as CEP’s own Phil Buchanan has helpfully summarized, is about four things: clear goals, coherent strategies, disciplined implementation, and relevant performance indicators. As the field has sought how to achieve greater effectiveness, “one...
Every September and October, I spend a lot of time in synagogue. The Jewish holidays Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a time of intense reflection for Jews about where we’ve fallen short as human beings, and how we can lead more ethical, fulfilling lives in the next...
Throughout the philanthropic sector, there’s recently been a lot of attention paid to ideas about how increased openness and feedback channels can help foundations improve their effectiveness. More and more people are starting to look at how foundations can best work...
Nonprofit and foundation leaders have starkly different views about the importance of foundations being transparent. That’s what we learned when we surveyed nonprofit and foundation CEOs about their attitudes on this issue. Nonprofit CEOs value foundation transparency...
As I’m sure is the case for many of you, this first week back after the “unofficial” end of summer has been busy. While resuming my regular workflow after the long weekend, I noticed several important pieces of news to emerge from CEP staff, board members and other...
For foundations and nonprofits to work effectively together, they need to understand each other’s perspectives. But do they? Drawing on data from CEP surveys, Ellie Buteau, Mark Chaffin and I compared foundation and nonprofit perspectives on four aspects of foundation...
It is no secret that nonprofit organizations are facing increasing pressure to measure and assess their progress toward their goals. In our 2012 report on nonprofit performance assessment, CEP found that 81 percent of nonprofits say that understanding the progress...
With so much to read, emails on top of new reports on top of blog posts, it feels like a luxury to re-read…anything. When I have a few free minutes, there are a few pieces I try to return to, particularly an essay by Alan Pifer that serves as a regular reminder to me...