January 10, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) today announced a new initiative to bring the voice of nonprofits to foundation funders.  The initiative, The Grantee Voice: Feedback for Foundations, will be a panel of nonprofit leaders from across the country who will share their perspectives about their experiences working with foundations, through a series of short surveys.

This effort is distinct from CEP’s surveys of grantees on specific foundations, which inform the Grantee Perception Reports (GPRs) delivered to more than 200 foundations over the past decade. The Grantee Voice builds on this experience but seeks nonprofit perspectives on working with foundations broadly.  The surveys will be issue-specific, timely, and short.  The panel will include several hundred nonprofits that receive funding from larger foundations.

From the surveys completed by members of the panel, CEP will publish short pieces on the findings in order to provide foundation leaders with data to inform attitudes and practices.  Like all of CEP’s research, the reports will be free for download at www.cep.org.

“We are very excited about this new effort to hear from grantees about their experiences working with funders,” said Ellie Buteau, Ph.D. Vice President – Research at CEP.  “Foundations are notoriously isolated from feedback. Establishing a panel will allow us to collect data on a more continuous basis and to rapidly disseminate findings of relevance to foundation leaders.”

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.