Resource Library
Browse helpful resources for funders, including evidence-based reports, profiles of funders making change, case studies, and blog series.
New Attitudes, Old Practices: The Provision of Multiyear General Operating Support
Multiyear general operating support (GOS) provides nonprofits with the flexibility to use funds to fulfill their missions and the ability to plan for the long-term sustainability of their organizations, programs, and services. Nonprofit leaders have long called for...
Blog Series: Foundations and Policy Engagement: Insights in Their Own Words
In a series of posts on the CEP blog in summer 2020, leaders from more than a dozen policy-oriented foundations responded to five key questions that arose from the CEP research report, Policy Influence: What Foundations are Doing and Why. This series, packaged here in...
Funder Support During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Based on a nationally representative survey of nonprofit leaders in May 2020, Funder Support During the COVID-19 Pandemic sheds light on which organizations face the toughest challenges, what is most needed from funders, and what differences in experience are emerging...
Policy Influence: What Foundations are Doing and Why
Foundations’ engagement in public policy has contributed to advances in society in areas from civil rights to consumer protections to public health. At the same time, and with greater intensity in recent years, the role of philanthropy in influencing policy has been...
The Funding Landscape: Nonprofit Perspectives on Current Issues in Philanthropy
The nonprofit perspective is an essential one for philanthropic funders to consider when it comes to any number of issues. After all, nonprofit staff and volunteers are the ones doing the critical work on the front lines, providing support and creating the change that...
Crucial Donors: How Major Individual Givers Can Best Support Nonprofits
Of the total charitable giving in 2018, individual donors contributed 68 percent. However, the recent decline in giving among small- and medium-gift givers means that major donors are becoming critically important to nonprofits. Based on survey responses from 198...
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...
Working Well With Grantees: A Guide for Foundation Program Staff
CEP’s research shows that program officers can be the distinguishing factor between a foundation that makes a difference—and one that simply makes grants. Working Well With Grantees: A Guide for Foundation Program Staff offers program staff critical guidelines for...
Grantee Voice Blog Series
In a series of six posts on the CEP blog in winter 2019, Naomi Orensten shared the candid perspectives of what nonprofit leaders want from their foundation funders. This blog series highlights a number of important practices which foundations can improve — regardless...
Understanding & Sharing What Works: Profiles of Four Funders Propelling Philanthropic Practice
This piece is a companion to Understanding & Sharing What Works: The State of Foundation Practice. Authored by Lowell Weiss of Cascade Philanthropy Advisors, these four profiles seek to bring the data from that report to life through stories of foundations whose...
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...
Benchmarking Program Officer Roles and Responsibilities
The role of program officer at foundations is an important one — especially to the grantees whose experiences with funders are greatly shaped by their interactions and relationships with their program officers. Yet, relatively little is known about the intricacies of...
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: Case Studies of Three Limited Life Foundations
Accompanying A Date Certain: Lessons from Limited Life Foundations, this companion publication includes case studies of three of the spend-down foundations featured in the report: S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the Lenfest Foundation, and the Brainerd Foundation. March...