FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Grace Nicolette – Director, Marketing and Programming: 617-492-0800 x236
Cambridge, MA – The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) has become the first research organization focused on the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors to join the Transparency Initiative, a program developed by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) to encourage organizations that conduct surveys to more broadly and effectively disclose research methods. CEP officially joined the Initiative as its 31st charter member last month.
AAPOR is the leading organization of public opinion and survey research professionals in the U.S., with members from across academia, media, government, and the non-profit and private sectors. Launched in 2014, the Transparency Initiative is designed to make it easier for organizations that conduct surveys to be transparent about their research methods and to encourage the disclosure of methodological information from polls and surveys.
“The values of transparency and open communication are the very basis of the tools we provide to foundations and the research we conduct,” said Ellie Buteau, Ph.D., vice president, research at CEP. “The Transparency Initiative’s values about openness fit strongly with our own approach to our work, and because conducting surveys is a core element of what we do at CEP, we applied to become a charter member of this initiative.”
By joining the Transparency Initiative, CEP pledges to abide by AAPOR’s disclosure standards, to train its employees with responsibilities involving survey data disclosure in AAPOR’s standards, and to document the proper disclosure information of the surveys it conducts.
CEP now joins more than 30 other charter members of the Initiative that AAPOR recognizes for their pledge to practice transparency in their reporting of survey-based findings. Members consist of a wide range of both public and private organizations, including Gallup, Pew Research Center, The Washington Post, and the University of Michigan Center for Political Studies.
AAPOR announced the Transparency Initiative in 2009 as a program to place the value of openness at the center of survey research. From 2010-2013, a steering committee created the operational framework for the Initiative and ran several pilot tests, which led to its official launch in October 2014.
About the Center for Effective Philanthropy
The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to provide data and create insight so philanthropic funders can better define, assess, and improve their effectiveness and impact. CEP received initial funding in 2001 and has offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts and San Francisco, California. For more information on CEP’s work, including its research, publications, and assessment tools, see www.cep.org.
The Center for Effective Philanthropy – Improving foundation performance through data and insight.
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