Over the past decade, there has been a significant rise in both the interest in and number of intermediary organizations — those that primarily regrant funds from institutional sources on their behalf, including nonprofits that act as regrantors, collaborative or...
Research
Foundations Are Concerned About Nonprofit Staff Burnout, Too
“We are in what feels like daily crisis mode. Our staff is small and overtaxed. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to run the organization, and we haven’t had the luxury of much down time.” The sentiment above was shared by a respondent to a CEP survey of nonprofit...
This Year’s State of Nonprofits Highlights Mounting Concern About Burnout
Burnout is top of mind for nonprofit leaders in 2024, despite relative consistency in nonprofit organizations’ finances and relationships with funders. This is one of the key insights in a new CEP report, State of Nonprofits 2024: What Funders Need to Know, released...
Foundation Approaches to Endowments and Equity
As a concept, endowments — defined as funds to be kept permanently and invested to provide sustained support — have existed for more than a thousand years. Supporters of endowments note that they can present an opportunity to shift power and promote nonprofit...
Foundations Are Mostly Staying the Course in Response to U.S. Supreme Court Affirmative Action Rulings
To better understand how foundations broadly were responding to the Court’s rulings, the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) conducted a survey of 280 foundation leaders in September through November 2023. We sought to determine: were foundations abandoning...
Emerging Impacts: Going Deeper on the Effects of MacKenzie Scott’s Large, Unrestricted Gifts
The positive effects of MacKenzie Scott’s massive, unrestricted gifts are increasingly apparent and, to date, the experiences of recipient organizations belie widespread concerns about negative unintended consequences from her approach. These are among the key...
Foundation Changes in Response to Pandemic Corroborated in CEP’s Grantee Perception Report
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, CEP has set out to document the needs of nonprofits and the response of funders. Today, we released new research that corroborates many of the changes that foundations reported making to their processes in response to...
New Evidence of Growing Funder Trust as Nonprofits Confront Continued Challenges
There is increasing evidence that the shifts in funder practices that began in 2020 are continuing in the years since. In a new CEP research study, released today, we have documented changes in the past year in how both individual and institutional donors work with...
How Gender Differences Show Up (and Don’t) in CEP’s Grantee Perception Report
Philanthropy and foundations exist and work for change within systems pervaded with racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism, among other harmful “-isms.” In fact, some foundations have amassed their wealth precisely because of these inequitable systems. These forces...
4 Lessons from MacKenzie Scott’s Unconventional Approach
Discussions of MacKenzie Scott’s unconventional approach to giving tend to devolve into binaries. Scott’s doling out of massive, unrestricted gifts — some $14 billion to 1,600 nonprofits so far — is presented by some as the philanthropic holy grail, to be emulated by...
The Effects of Big Gifts: New CEP Research Report on MacKenzie Scott’s Giving
We’ve been researching foundations and donors, and the way they interact with the nonprofits they fund, for two decades. We have heard many funders announce their arrival by declaring they’re taking a new, innovative approach to philanthropy: charting a new path and...
A Narrowing Window for Foundation Action on Climate Change
As a kid growing up in Louisiana, one of the first times I ever learned about climate change was in science class, when we were taught that we were slowly sinking into the sea. Our teachers explained this coastal land loss to us in maybe the most American unit...
When it Comes to Foundation Leaders, Prior Nonprofit Experience Matters
In its recently released report, Foundations Respond to Crisis: Lasting Change?, the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) shared new research in which foundations reported working differently now than in early 2020 — and indicated plans to sustain most of these...
The Miracle is You: An Argument for Continuing to Reimagine the Reporting Process
In its recently released report, Foundations Respond to Crisis: Lasting Change?, the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) shared new research in which foundations reported working differently now than in early 2020 — and indicated plans to sustain most of these...
Advancing Equity with Better Demographic Data Collection Practices
In its recently released report, Foundations Respond to Crisis: Lasting Change?, the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) shared new research in which foundations reported working differently now than in early 2020 — and indicated plans to sustain most of these...
What’s Not Changing (Much) in Funder Practice: Multiyear GOS
In its recently released report, “Foundations Respond to Crisis: Lasting Change?,” the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) shared new research in which foundations reported working differently now than in early 2020 — and indicated plans to sustain most of these...
AAPI and Native American Communities Overlooked by Foundations
Racial equity has been a more explicit consideration for foundations, as CEP documented in a report released last month, but our data suggests that some communities continue to be overlooked. Across four research studies that CEP has conducted in the past two years,...
Foundations Respond to Crisis but Continue to Ignore Disability
In its recently released report, “Foundations Respond to Crisis: Lasting Change?,” the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) shared new research in which foundations reported working differently now than in early 2020 — and indicated plans to sustain most of these...
Harnessing Momentum for Change
Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest, or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, will stay that way unless acted upon by a force. Staying at rest and moving at a constant speed in a straight line aren’t all that different in Newtonian...
Individual Donors Respond to Crisis Part 2: Unrestricted Support
As nonprofits, and the people and communities they serve, faced compounding challenges over the past year plus, individual donors have provided crucial support. In fact, increased financial support from individual donors — in addition to foundations and the government...