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Last week my organization, the Social Innovation Research Center, released a report on the progress of the Social Innovation Fund (SIF), the Obama administration initiative that funds community-based programs in low-income areas and provides the necessary evaluation...
Nonprofit, mission-driven organizations overwhelmingly want to assess their impact — and, generally, they put effort into doing so. The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s recent report, Assessing to Achieve High Performance, underscores the importance nonprofits...
This post originally appeared on the President’s Blog on the Philanthropic Foundations Canada website. At a recent conference of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, Phil Buchanan, the president of CEP, posed a pointed question to the assembled foundation...
Foundations are in the business of making the world a better place. Preserving the environment, reducing violence, and improving education are a few examples among the many philanthropic objectives that foundations may pursue. But are we applying ourselves as...
Sometimes even the hottest technologies can move slowly. Big Data is a prime example. Consider the case of Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), the main utility provider in Northern California. As of 2011, PG&E had equipped 80% of the homes it serves with...
I started my career in the nonprofit field nearly 20 years ago. I worked in the basement of our founder’s house doing everything from leading programs, writing curriculum, hiring staff, applying for grants, and collecting and analyzing data. I had trays and trays of...
I recently wrote a post for the CEP blog about the power of the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers — the Forum Network — to advance philanthropy across the field. That power of the Forum Network, the largest network serving philanthropy in America, was on...
Nonprofit organizations — and foundations — talk a lot about accountability. And one of the best ways to be accountable is to demonstrate impact. While you or I would be hard pressed to think of a nonprofit organization that does not want to demonstrate impact, the...
Perhaps your reaction after reading the latest CEP report, Assessing to Achieve High Performance: What Nonprofits are Doing and How Foundations Can Help, was similar to mine — skepticism. Perhaps you read “almost all nonprofits report collecting performance assessment...