Resource Library
Browse helpful resources for funders, including evidence-based reports, profiles of funders making change, case studies, and blog series.
Greater Good: Lessons from Those Who Have Started Major Grantmaking Organizations
With more than 30,000 new private foundations established in the U.S. in the past 20 years, it is vital that early-stage grantmakers learn from the wisdom of those who have gone before them so they can avoid common mistakes and position their grantmaking organizations...
Understanding & Sharing What Works: The State of Foundation Practice
How well do foundation leaders believe they understand what is and isn’t working in their foundation’s programmatic efforts? How are they building that understanding? What information are they choosing to share with others? To answer these questions, CEP surveyed and...
Strengthening Grantees: Foundation and Nonprofit Perspectives
Strong organizations, leaders, and networks are crucial to foundations’ and nonprofits’ ability to achieve shared goals. What support are foundations seeking to provide to help grantees strengthen their organizations? Is that support in line with what grantees really...
Nonprofit Diversity Efforts: Current Practices and the Role of Foundations
How do nonprofits see diversity as relevant to their goals? How do they want their foundation funders to be involved in their diversity efforts? In discussions about diversity at foundations, it’s essential that the perspectives of grantees be included in the...
Donors: 5 Things Nonprofits Want You to Know
Nonprofit leaders have specific ideas for how donors can best support them to do their most effective work, but the power imbalance means important things are often left unsaid. What do nonprofits want their donors to know that they may not be telling them directly?...
Bracing for a Downturn: Nonprofits, Charitable Deduction Worries, and How Foundations Can Help
On January 1, 2018, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect, providing significant tax reductions for both individuals and corporations and doubling the amount of the standard deduction that individuals can claim in their tax returns. How are nonprofit and...
Staying Connected: How Five Foundations Understand Those They Seek to Help
CEP’s 2016 report, The Future of Foundation Philanthropy, finds that foundation leaders believe learning from the experiences of those they are ultimately trying to help holds a great deal of promise for increasing foundation impact in the coming decades. But...
Relationships Matter: Program Officers, Grantees, and the Keys to Success
Relationships between funders and their grantees are crucial because the two must work well together if they are to achieve shared goals. But funder–grantee relationships can be fraught due to the inherent power imbalance between those who have resources and those who...
Family Ties: Multigenerational Family Foundation Board Engagement
Based on interviews with CEOs and family board chairs at seven large, multigenerational family foundations, this publication spotlights the governance practices and structures that these family foundations have created to maintain family involvement; select, orient,...
A Date Certain: Lessons from Limited Life Foundations
The limited life approach in philanthropy has received increased attention in recent years. But across foundations, perpetuity is often still seen to be the default, and there is considerable uncertainty about the practice of spending down. To learn more about limited...
The Future of Foundation Philanthropy: The CEO Perspective
At a time of growing concern over issues like inequality and access to education, increasing anxiety about climate change, and rising levels of distrust in institutions, foundation leaders are considering their role in addressing society’s challenges. When they look...
Sharing What Matters: Foundation Transparency
On a typical foundation board, what are its members’ most common areas of expertise? How common is it for an original donor — or a family member — to sit on a board? To what extent are board members involved in grantmaking?
Investing and Social Impact: Practices of Private Foundations
There’s been a lot of discussion about aligning investment practices and mission at foundations, but to what extent are foundations engaging in practices like impact investing and negative screening? To dig beneath the talk and better understand the current state of practice at large private foundations, CEP surveyed CEOs at those foundations to learn more. Analysis of responses from 64 chief executives suggests that the rhetoric seems to be outpacing the reality.
Assessing to Achieve High Performance: What Nonprofits Are Doing and How Foundations Can Help
For foundation leaders to most effectively support grantees, more needs to be understood about the extent to which nonprofits are assessing performance, how they are approaching this work, and what they are looking for from their funders to support it.
Hearing from Those We Seek to Help: Nonprofit Practices and Perspectives in Beneficiary Feedback
For nonprofit organizations, hearing from the beneficiaries they seek to serve is an important practice for planning, implementing, and evaluating their programs and services. But does this feedback and an understanding of intended beneficiaries’ needs reach foundation funders and influence their funding and strategic decision-making?
What Donors Value: How Community Foundations Can Increase Donor Satisfaction, Referrals, and Future Giving
To better understand how community foundations can best respond to the current environment, CEP asked donors about how satisfied they are with the community foundations with which they work. What matters most to them? What do these donors want from their community...
How Far Have We Come? Foundation CEOs on Progress and Impact
Few foundation CEOs believe that a lot of progress has been made overall toward the goal receiving the greatest proportion of their organization’s resources.
Nonprofit Challenges: What Foundations Can Do
Our research shows that only 52 percent of nonprofit leaders believe that their foundation funders are aware of the challenges their organizations are facing.
Foundation Transparency: What Nonprofits Want
Well-intentioned talk about foundation transparency is a good start, but according to new CEP research, nonprofit leaders want more.
Employee Empowerment: The Key to Foundation Staff Satisfaction
This report is based on survey responses from 1,168 staff members at 31 foundations. The surveys were conducted from 2007 to 2011 as part of CEP’s Staff Perception Report (SPR), which analyzes feedback from foundation staff about their work experiences and views of the foundation’s overall operations.