Resource Library
Browse helpful resources for funders, including evidence-based reports, profiles of funders making change, case studies, and blog series.
Giving Big: The Impact of Large, Unrestricted Gifts on Nonprofits
In late July 2020, MacKenzie Scott shocked the philanthropic and nonprofit worlds with the announcement that she had given $1.7 billion to 116 nonprofit organizations. The gifts came in the form of massive, unrestricted grants, with a significant proportion targeted to organizations focused on issues of equity, and were made with no restrictions – only an expectation of an annual three-page letter back to the donor for the three years following their receipt.
Much Alarm, Less Action: Foundations & Climate Change
Despite the urgency of climate change and the narrowing window for action, philanthropic funding to address climate change remains very limited. Total philanthropic giving by foundations and individuals focused on climate change mitigation represents less than two percent of total global philanthropic giving, according to the ClimateWorks Foundation. While there is some evidence of increased momentum in recent years, more action will be needed to match the scale of the climate crisis.
In Their Own Words – Funders Share Stories of Change – A Companion Piece to Foundations Respond to Crisis: Lasting Change?
These funders’ stories, which serve as a companion to CEP’s report Foundations Respond to Crisis: Lasting Change?, explore the many changes that funders have made, across numerous aspects of their work, as well as how they made those changes and why. It is our hope...
Overlooked (Part One) – Foundation Support for Asian American and Pacific Islander Leaders and Communities
Across four research studies the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) has conducted in the past two years, we’ve noticed two concerning trends emerge for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Native American nonprofit leaders and communities (trends that...
Overlooked (Part Two) – Foundation Support for Native American Leaders and Communities
Across four research studies the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) has conducted in the past two years, we’ve noticed two concerning trends emerge for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Native American nonprofit leaders and communities (trends that...
Foundations Respond to Crisis Series
This series of reports examines the extent to which staffed foundations have changed their practices to meet the compounded crises of 2020.
FOUNDATIONS RESPOND TO CRISIS: Lasting Change?
Calls for changes in foundation practice have come for decades from philanthropic and nonprofit leaders and others in the sector. The ways in which foundations responded to these calls at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 have been well-documented and...
Persevering Through Crisis: The State of Nonprofits
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread in the United States in 2020, many nonprofit organizations grappled with its devastating impacts on public health and the global economy—and the ways in which it deepened longstanding disparities along racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and...
FOUNDATIONS RESPOND TO CRISIS: Towards Greater Flexibility and Responsiveness? – The Final in a Series of Three Reports
Nonprofits and funders alike have long called on foundations to be more flexible and responsive, to provide more unrestricted funding, to reduce what they ask of grantees, and to build more trusting relationships. In 2020, these calls for change only intensified in a...
FOUNDATIONS RESPOND TO CRISIS: Toward Equity? – The Second in a Series of Three Reports
The disproportionate public health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on certain communities, along with nationwide protests against police violence and racial injustice, have intensified the calls for foundations to focus on equity and reckon with...
FOUNDATIONS RESPOND TO CRISIS: A Moment of Transformation? – The First in a Series of Three Reports
How are foundations responding to 2020’s unprecedented challenges? What high-level changes in practice are they making — and will these changes be for the long term? CEP turned to foundation leaders for answers to these pressing questions. As Foundations Respond to...
Making it Happen: A Conversation Guide
This companion piece to New Attitudes, Old Practices: The Provision of Multiyear General Operating Support provides resources for foundation leaders and boards seeking to start providing, or provide more, multiyear general operating support (GOS) grants. It shares...
Making the Case: Foundation Leaders on the Importance of Multiyear General Operating Support
This companion piece to New Attitudes, Old Practices: The Provision of Multiyear General Operating Support features profiles of the California Wellness Foundation, the Claneil Foundation, Foundation for a Just Society, the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, and the...
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...