The Hidden Power of Measurement
Referencing the themes of Bill Gates’ latest Annual Letter, Mark Russell argues that measurement alone will never ensure that “progress becomes commonplace.”
Search
More Than Just a Paper: Building Team Culture Through Strategy Design
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Or so we’ve been told. But what happens when you try building culture through strategy? This is what we attempted to do in the Open...
Read More
Setting up a Giving Plan that Centers Dignity
Many of us want to help those in need, but often, we are overwhelmed and do not know where to start. This year offers a new opportunity to begin crafting...
Read More
Beyond “Dumbed-Down Metrics”: Grantee-led Evaluation for Better Learning
In Phil Buchanan’s recent post on his hopes for philanthropy in the 2020s, he issues a call to “embrace measurement as the crucial and important challenge that it is and...
Read More
Is MacKenzie Scott Going to Fix Strategic Philanthropy?
Since mid-2020, MacKenzie Scott has made charitable donations totaling close to $8.6 billion across more than 780 nonprofit organizations and universities — a philanthropic tsunami announced not with launch events...
Read More
Building Equitable Evidence: It’s Time to Look to Participants as Experts in Their Own Experience
Today, nonprofits and funders alike increasingly use equity-serving and participant-centered approaches in their program design, and it’s time to sharpen the equity lens on building evidence of a program’s impact....
Read More
The Impact of Large, Unrestricted Grants on Nonprofits: A Five-Year View
It is one of the ideas with the greatest currency in philanthropy right now: More funders need to make large, unrestricted grants, and then trust nonprofits to use them well....
Read More
Field Catalysts: The Versatile, Essential Tool Missing from Philanthropy’s Systems Change Toolbox
Philanthropists aspire to major progress on big, systemic issues like education or public health and most fund individual interventions in the hope that one will break through and scale. But...
Read More
The Trust Gap: What Funders Can Learn from MacKenzie Scott’s Giving
“We don’t want to hire someone and then we have to fire them because the money runs out, right? We want to create something that’s meaningful and potentially self-sustaining.” “Sometimes...
Read More
Big Issue 3: Evolving Notions of Strategy and Measurement
This post is the fourth in a series of seven excerpting CEP President Phil Buchanan’s new essay, Big Issues, Many Questions, which explores five pressing issues facing U.S. foundation leaders and boards…