Resource Library
Browse helpful resources for funders, including evidence-based reports, profiles of funders making change, case studies, and blog series.
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...
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...
CEO Reflections on the Future of Foundation Philanthropy
This collection of essays shares reflections from eight foundation CEOs in response to the findings of CEP’s 2016 research report, The Future of Foundation Philanthropy. These thoughtful reflections are from leaders of foundations ranging in size, scope, and mission,...
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...
Benchmarking Foundation Evaluation Practices
For foundations, there are lots of questions to reflect on when thinking about which evaluation practices best align with their strategy, culture, and mission. How much should a foundation invest in evaluation? What can they do to ensure that the information they receive from evaluation is useful to them? With whom should they share what they have learned?
Big Issues, Many Questions
Big Issues, Many Questions What it takes for a foundation to be effective is difficult to master, yet timeless. At the same time, however, there are current trends that foundation leaders and boards must pay attention to if they want to be as effective as possible. In...
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?
Benchmarking Foundation Governance
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.