Media Contact: Grace Nicolette, Vice President, Programming and External Relations: 617-492-0800 x236
Cambridge, MA — The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) has elected Wilburforce Foundation Executive Director Paul Beaudet to join its Board of Directors.
Beaudet has been with Wilburforce Foundation, a Seattle, WA-based foundation that supports land, water, and wildlife conservation efforts in western North America, since 1999. He originally joined the Foundation as program officer for evaluation and served as its associate director from 2002 to 2016. He assumed the office of executive director on January 1, 2017, where he leads the Foundation’s program teams that invest in science, conservation policy, and community engagement, as well as manages the Foundation’s capacity-building program and invests in grantee organizations and leaders to better plan, manage, and sustain their work. He has served on CEP’s Advisory Board since 2008.
“I am thrilled that Paul Beaudet is joining the CEP Board of Directors after years of thoughtful service on our Advisory Board,” said CEP President Phil Buchanan. “Wilburforce has been an exemplar in its approach to strategy as well as in its relationships with its grantees, as measured by CEP’s Grantee Perception Report (GPR), which the Foundation has consistently made public. We have consistently pointed to the Foundation as an example from which others can learn.”
Prior to his work at Wilburforce, Beaudet was associate director of the Pride Foundation, where he worked to strengthen the LGBT community in the Pacific Northwest. He also worked in fundraising and programmatic roles at the League of Conservation Voters, the Music Center of Los Angeles, Pacific Science Center, and the University of Washington.
In addition to his role on CEP’s Advisory Board, Beaudet recently completed seven years of service as chair of the Program Strategies Committee and vice chair of the Board of the Environmental Grantmakers Association. He holds a B.A. in English from the University of Washington and a Masters in nonprofit leadership from Seattle University, where he later served as an adjunct faculty member.
“Wilburforce Foundation began its relationship with CEP in 2004 when we received our first Grantee Perception Report, which we have undertaken four additional times, and which has provided the most useful evaluation data we have received from grantees on functions of our work that matter to us, and to them,” said Beaudet. “CEP’s work has informed improvements we’ve made to our approach over the years, and allowed us to track whether those changes have made a difference. I have been continually impressed by the quality of CEP’s data-driven reports and research, and by the amazing team that does the work. It is an honor to step into a new role with CEP as it helps shape our sector’s thinking about how we can do our work more effectively.”
Beaudet was elected to a three-year term on CEP’s Board of Directors. He joins a Board that includes: Chair Grant Oliphant (president of The Heinz Endowments), Phil Buchanan (ex officio, president of CEP), Tiffany Cooper Gueye (CEO of BELL, Building Educated Leaders for Life), Crystal Hayling (managing director for the Environmental Leaders Fellowship and senior advisor to the Aspen Philanthropy and Society Program at The Aspen Institute), Richard Ober (president and CEO of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation), Hilary Pennington (vice president, Education, Free Expression, and Creativity at the Ford Foundation), Christy Pichel (former president of the Stuart Foundation), Lynn Perry Wooten (professor of strategy and management & operations at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business), Nadya K. Shmavonian (director of Nonprofit Repositioning Fund), Vince Stehle (executive director of Media Impact Funders), and Fay Twersky (director of the Effective Philanthropy Group at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation).
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, programming, and assessment and advisory services, see www.cep.org.
