This piece was originally posted in February 2018. Transparency — being open, honest, and clear — is a key driver of strong relationships between funders and grantees. It’s valued by foundation and grantee CEOs alike, and grantees think foundations are doing a decent...
Transparency
Philanthropy, Transparency, and Indigenous Relationships
This post by Kate Frykberg originally appeared on GlassPockets as part of its "Road to 100 & Beyond" series. It is re-posted here as part of CEP’s blog series on international perspectives on philanthropy. I’ve been thinking about funder relationships with...
Exploring Openness through Listening and Learning
When I decided to make a career pivot from journalism to philanthropy, one nonprofit leader remarked to me that I was “going to the dark side.” In the newsroom, the dark side always meant a public relations gig. But in this case, it was a commentary on working with...
From Keeping Score to Measuring Progress: One Foundation’s Approach to Self-Assessment
As the calendar year comes to an end, it’s performance assessment time for employees at many organizations. Did I meet my goals for the year? Where did I do well? Where might I have fallen short? What could I do differently to improve my performance next year? Many...
A CEP Blog Digest: Transparency
After the positive response to our digest on feedback we assembled last month, we’ve decided to make digests a recurring series on the CEP blog. In this series, we’ll periodically compile a smattering of blog posts on a particular topic that is crucial to foundation...
A Foundation Website for Sore Eyes
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...
How Foundation Transparency Sets the Stage for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice
This post originally appeared on the Glasspockets "Transparency Talk" blog. Philanthropy invests billions of dollars into charitable causes each year. According to Foundation Center, foundations gave an estimated $59.28 billion in 2016. That’s a tremendous amount of...
“OpenNotes” for Funders: A Radical Idea for More Transparency and Better Relationships
Transparency — being open, honest, and clear — is a key driver of strong relationships between funders and grantees. It’s valued by foundation and grantee CEOs alike, and grantees think foundations are doing a decent job of being transparent (though more so in sharing...
We Need to Talk about Failure
This article by Anand Sinha, country advisor for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in India, was originally published on India Development Review. You can read the original here. “Failure is not an option” read the bumper sticker on the rear window of...
How Improved Evaluation Sharing Has the Potential to Strengthen a Foundation’s Work
This post originally appeared as part of the #OpenForGood series on Glasspockets' "Transparency Talk" blog, in partnership with the Fund for Shared Insight. The series explores new research and tools, promising practices, and inspiring examples showing how some...
Through A Glass Darkly: How Transparent Should Foundations Be?
The tides have turned in education philanthropy, as the last decade has seen public opinion shift from indifferent acceptance to critical inquiry. How did this wave come about, and why? This story is told in my new book, Policy Patrons: Philanthropy, Education Reform,...
MacArthur’s 100&Change: The Importance of Transparency
In writing about the ways in which philanthropy can give voice to our communal optimism, I recently shared my belief that the wide array of goals across funders is not only inevitable; it’s also important. The problems on which foundations focus are interconnected....
Transactional vs. Transformative Transparency
CEP’s new report on transparency is a very valuable tool for introspection for individual foundations — and the wider field of philanthropy — to think about how we define and deliver on our pledges to become more transparent. As many other writers on this blog have...
Foundations for Openness
Our tagline at Fund for Shared Insight is “Philanthropy. Open for improvement.”* Founded in July 2014, Fund for Shared Insight (“Shared Insight”) is a funder collaborative working to improve philanthropy by increasing foundation openness. We are betting that if...
A Foundation Website for Sore Eyes
Sifting through every nook and cranny of 73 foundation websites is not fun. On its face, that statement does not seem revelatory, but I really would not have thought about it much until the CEP research team started collecting data for our latest research report on...
Transparency for Impact
This post originally appeared on The McKnight Foundation blog. If my email inbox had a theme in the past few weeks, it’s been transparency. The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) just released a report called Sharing What Matters: Foundation Transparency. In a...
Foundations that live in glass houses shouldn’t…
…throw stones? Wait, that doesn’t make sense for a blog post about CEP’s new research report, Sharing What Matters: Foundation Transparency. Shouldn’t get changed without the blinds drawn? Shouldn’t skimp on the Windex? Shouldn’t what? That’s what I love about an...
Getting More Transparent about Foundation Results
The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s latest research report, Sharing What Matters: Perspectives on Foundation Transparency, released last week, provides some startling data about the state of transparency in the foundation world. While for the most part, foundation...
Transparency Outside Starts Inside
When I read CEP’s new report, Sharing What Matters: Perspectives on Foundation Transparency, I immediately focused on the areas in which foundations are doing well and where we need to improve. I was thrilled to learn from the research that foundation CEOs’ views on...
Openness with a Purpose
Expectations for sharing information in today’s society are high. Before Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest (the list goes on), we didn’t know what our distant relatives were eating for breakfast or have instant access to pictures of a friend’s vacation...