Funders, make a plan to gather vital feedback on your work in 2026!
Contact Us
Search
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.