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This post originally appeared on the blog in February 2022. We’ve spent a ton of time in foundation board rooms, for better and for worse. We’ve also been board members and guest speakers at operating nonprofits and one of us staffed two college boards decades...
We’ve spent a ton of time in foundation board rooms, for better and for worse. We’ve also been board members and guest speakers at operating nonprofits and one of us staffed two college boards decades ago. Many of those experiences have been engaging and positive....
Philanthropy is not like investing. Nonprofits are not like business. Even the most casual reader of this blog or occasional follower of CEP’s work has heard me make this argument many times (too many, you might be thinking). But repeating this message matters. And...
This post originally appeared on the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) website. More than a decade ago, I was summoned to a meeting to provide advice to the board members and CEO of a new, very large foundation. I remember thinking I didn’t really belong...
Earlier this month, BoardSource joined with CEP and seven other colleague organizations to call on foundation leaders to acknowledge and respond to the devastating and unprecedented realities of the COVID-19 pandemic by increasing grant support beyond their normal...
[vc_row el_class="sixtysix-thirtythree"][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]My CEP colleagues and I have seen the inside of more foundation boardrooms than just about anyone. It is, perhaps, a dubious distinction – though some boardrooms have amazing views...
[vc_row el_class="sixtysix-thirtythree"][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]The BoardSource report I blogged about last week includes shocking data about a lack of racial diversity in the foundation boardroom. Forty percent of foundation boards for which...
If the job of the foundation board is to oversee strategy and determine the effectiveness of the organization in achieving its goals, isn’t it also the board's job to pick the right grantees? Probably not. For large foundations that want to achieve big...
This post originally appeared on HuffPost Impact. This week, the Center for Effective Philanthropy released a new study on the practices of foundation boards — a project on which BoardSource had the opportunity to collaborate. The report is a straightforward...
It’s often frustratingly difficult to find basic information on foundation boards: their size, their structure, and their composition, for example. At CEP, we’re frequently asked by foundation CEOs and board members for help finding this kind of...
This 2012 post on foundation governance was for a long time the most widely read on the CEP blog. We are re-posting it here today as part of our "Blog Rewind" series for those who didn’t see it back then — or for those who want a refresher on what...
Guest author Jim Canales dicusses the role transparency plays in getting the most from foundation boards.