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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...
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 that are definitely worth seeing. But it does give us a little insight into what is,...
Last week, I had the pleasure of helping to lead a discussion at CEP’s biennial national conference about the critical partnership between foundation CEOs and boards. I was joined by two fantastic leaders from the Northwest Area Foundation (NWAF):...
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 BoardSource gathered data reported they are all white. Excluding family foundations, 35...
Governance matters across sectors, of course. But within the nonprofit sector, foundation governance is especially crucial. After all, foundations have a significant impact on nonprofits, fields, and communities. But, unlike for an operating nonprofit, there...
As the Surdna Foundation marks its centennial year, we’re reflecting on the many lessons we’ve learned, how those lessons have guided our foundation’s journey to a social justice-focused mission, and how those lessons can inform our work — and that of our...
CEP’s Benchmarking Foundation Governance report is an important step forward in transparency, as already noted by Anne Wallestad, president and CEO of BoardSource. Having worked in and around foundations for almost 30 years, I believe governance matters uniquely for...
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 audacious...
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 benchmarking data. So...
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 habits boards...
If philanthropy is going to be successful in tackling the great challenges in society, we need to start by changing the culture within our organizations. As philanthropists, we work to promote the common good. And as the face of America continues to change, embracing...
Good foundation governance is a subject of much discussion and debate. Recently, one of our board members, Crystal Hayling, suggested to us that foundation boards would function better if more of their members were CEOs of other foundations. Her argument made sense to...
Every New Year, we tend to dream of what the next year might bring. In that spirit, here are my wishes for what we’d see in foundationland in my imagined 2014. Let me emphasize that these are not predictions (I am a bit of a cynic about predictions). These are instead...
Guest author Jim Canales dicusses the role transparency plays in getting the most from foundation boards.
Phil Buchanan lists the bad habits that hinder the effectivness of foundation governance.