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There are many reasons why an individual might choose to make a donation. An old fundraising adage says that one of the top reasons why people give to charity is that they were asked. More recently, neuroscience has shown that being generous produces positive brain...
Data and measurement sometimes get a bad rap in philanthropy. Here at CEP, one useful role we try to play is to balance information about timeless topics, like how to build strong funder-grantee relationships, with data that is crucial for smart decision-making on...
A version of this blog post from CEP Associate Manager, Research, Matthew Leiwant originally appeared on the CEP blog in March 2016. It is re-posted here as part of our Rewind series. Sifting through every nook and cranny of 73 foundation websites is not fun. On its...
This post is adapted from the CEP report, Staying Connected: How Five Foundations Understand Those They Seek to Help. The five foundations highlighted in Staying Connected all view grantees as being a crucial resource to help them develop and maintain an understanding...
Last fall, CEP released Relationships Matter: Program Officers, Grantees, and the Keys to Success, a report that takes an in-depth and data-driven look at what it takes for funders to build and maintain strong relationships with grantees. Our analysis of grantee...
What do people want that can make their lives better? Are we helping them get it? If not, what should we do differently? Those three questions increasingly drive the work of the most effective organizations, and CEP’s new report, Staying Connected: How Five...
“We have too many people trying to problem-solve from a distance,” says Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). “And when you try to problem-solve from a distance you miss the details and the nuances of the problems and your solutions don’t work very...
It’s no secret that working in the nonprofit sector is a challenge. Many organizations are strapped for resources, and staff are often overworked and working for less money than they could get at a for-profit company. So why do people do it? Many who choose the...
As a foundation that sees relationships as a key component of philanthropy and social change, The Whitman Institute (TWI) applauds CEP’s recent report, Relationships Matter: Program Officers, Grantees, and the Keys to Success. It may seem like common sense that...
At CEP we are always thinking about the ways that strong funder-grantee relationships affect the success of foundations’ efforts. This topic has been a major emphasis in our research agenda for more than a decade, as we have continually investigated the questions,...