Funders, make a plan to gather vital feedback on your work in 2026!
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A little more than a year ago, Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina. Thirty-one inches of rain, tornados, and mudslides washed out roads and bridges, flooded towns and farms, destroyed homes and businesses, and took the lives of deeply loved community...
Natural disasters such as the devastating fires that ignited in the Los Angeles area on January 7, 2025 do not intend to discriminate on the basis of race or class. Their impacts, however, are revealing about systemic inequities. In the months since the fires were...
Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) have demonstrated promise for addressing some of society’s most complex challenges, ranging from enabling early diagnosis and treatment of cancer and forecasting wildfire paths to reducing carbon emissions through...
The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s new report reveals both bright spots and a warning for philanthropy: while first movers in the social sector have begun funding and building powerful AI tools to advance opportunity and equity, adoption in these early days is...
Recently, I used AI to review a contract for a new client engagement. What started as a "quick" review turned into a 10-plus hour project. Instead of asking AI to just "review this contract," I developed a comprehensive legal analysis prompt to explain each section in...
To accompany CEP’s new report on AI, Cascade Philanthropy Advisors President Lowell Weiss interviewed 15 leaders from foundations, nonprofits, and affinity groups. In the first post in this two-part series, Weiss shared his conversation with Chris Lehane, head of...
To accompany CEP’s new report on AI, Cascade Philanthropy Advisors President Lowell Weiss interviewed 15 leaders from foundations, nonprofits, and affinity groups. In this post, Weiss shares his conversation, edited for clarity and length, with Chris Lehane, head of...
We are in a volatile, uncertain, and complex time. In philanthropy, our response is often to have a meeting about holding more meetings, at which we’ll discuss the next meetings we need. This is understandable — we hold a lot of responsibility, we want to make...
Over the last few years, I’ve had hundreds of conversations with nonprofit leaders and funders about artificial intelligence. One theme keeps coming up: most funders don’t know how to evaluate AI projects. This isn’t a controversial statement, but it’s one of the...
Every year, like many peers at other foundations, I partner with grantmaking teams to draft learning plans. We revisit assumptions, reflect on lessons, identify questions for the year ahead, and map out data sources — like PRAMS and ACS — that will help us answer...