Articles about CEP

Foundations may think they are meeting charities’ information needs when they put their financial data on their Web sites. But a new study says nonprofit leaders want to know more about why some charities get support and some don’t—and how grant makers assess which grantees are performing well and which aren’t.

Eighty percent of the 138 nonprofit leaders surveyed by the Center for Effective Philanthropy said they want to hear more from grant makers about how they decided what to support. Such information, survey participants said...

Huge quantities of data are a blessing and a curse for many industries these days. Philanthropy is no exception. In a recent industry forecast “Philanthropy and the Social Economy: Blueprint 2013,” written by self-described “philanthropy wonk” Lucy Bernholz, all the big shifts she identifies in philanthropy are data-related. The way she sees it, “foundations, donors, and nonprofits are soon to be drinking from the ‘data firehose.’”

Most of the nation’s largest foundations have followed through on a commitment they made six months ago to report to the public at least quarterly every grant they make.

A Chronicle review of the 15 foundations that made the pledge in October has found that 11 are making information available to the Foundation Center, an organization that helps grant seekers and that ageed to post the...

The stock market may be roaring to new highs, but the nation’s biggest foundations expect to be cautious with their grant making for the rest of the year, according to a new Chronicle survey based on data from 192 funds.

Only 28 of the 81 foundations that provided The Chronicle with grant-making estimates plan to lift their spending during 2013...

Feedback is critically important in philanthropy. If you look at foundation initiatives that have failed — and I would include some of our own — one common theme is that feedback loops were not sufficiently robust. Grantees often are reluctant to come forward with bad news or criticism. And our sector doesn’t have a strong track record of consistently gathering candid feedback from our various constituents, whether that’s grantees or other stakeholders.

Phil Buchanan and his colleagues...

Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy and a Chroniclecolumnist, agrees: Nonprofit leaders tend to be too timid about shaping the public debate on what they do.

“The debate over the charitable deduction shows the price of the nonprofit sector’s tendency not to be assertive and forceful enough about...

LearnPhilanthropy's Content Partner the Center for Effective Philanthropy has released a new report entitled, "Employee Empowerment: The Key to Foundation Staff Satisfaction."  The report analyzes data from the 31 mostly US-based foundations that commissioned CEP Staff Perception Reports between 2007 and 2011.

As CEP's Ellie Buteau notes in her recent blog (the first in a series on this theme):

"We wanted to understand how satisfied foundation employees are with their jobs and what best predicts how satisfied they are...

When the W. K. Kellogg Foundation set aside $100 million in 2007 to invest in companies that could produce both social and financial benefits, it was considered revolutionary. Historically, major foundations had used mainly stocks, bonds, real estate and other traditional asset classes to build their endowments.

Now, such investments are increasingly common — and profitable.

In 2010, the Kellogg Foundation invested $5 million in Wireless Generation, a tiny educational software maker working to improve public education in New York City. Just 219 days later, it made a 25.9 percent return after Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought Wireless Generation for $360 million.

“The customer and market insights that the private companies we’ve invested...

And the fund may not be rubbing off on foundations. The Center for Effective Philanthropy found in a survey of foundation leaders that 38 percent were not familiar enough with the Social Innovation Fund to say whether it has “the potential to have an important positive influence on foundation practices.”

“If one of the objectives of the Social Innovation Fund was to influence philanthropy more broadly, we don’t see evidence of... 

Few nonprofits pay much attention to the videos, Facebook pages, and tweets of their foundation backers, according to a new study by the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

The study surveyed more than 6,000 grantees that receive money from a set of 34 large foundations. Social-media use among those grant makers was widespread: About 68 percent post videos, 59 percent use Facebook, 56 percent are registered on Twitter, and 29 percent write blogs.

But only 16 percent of nonprofits surveyed said they use social media created by their foundation supporters. 

Foundations that post information on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter got some disappointing news this month. A new survey found that few nonprofits are listening.

The Center for Effective Philanthropy surveyed more than 6,000 nonprofits that receive funding from 34 major foundations. Those foundations have warmly embraced social media, with 68 percent posting videos online and nearly 60 percent using Facebook and Twitter.

But just 16 percent of the nonprofits said they followed their foundation funders on Facebook or Twitter, watched their videos or received any information from their social media outreach.

The job of chief evaluator is one of the most challenging in philanthropy, according to foundation officials and experts. Foundation leaders sometimes lack a true commitment to the work, program officers may view evaluators with discomfort, and money for evaluation seems to be relatively scarce, according to interviews and studies.

“It’s a brutally tough job,” says Phil Buchanan...

Concern about turnover expressed by grantees recently helped prompt two of the nation’s biggest foundations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, to create positions to improve relations with grantees.

“Transitions are inevitable,” says Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy. “The question really becomes, does the foundation handle with sensitivity the fact that grantees rely on that relationship with the program officer? Some foundations manage to do that much better than others.”

The financial crisis three years ago led to mass layoffs at a number of foundations, exacerbating the problem of program-officer turnover...

The foundation does not compete with other organisations and enterprises for resources. It does not compete for market share. It does not seek to make a profit.

As Dr Ellie Buteau, vice-president for research at the Center, contends: “Philanthropic funders are seeking to maximise their social impact – not to beat the competition in a defined market. In fact, for philanthropists and private foundations, it might sometimes be that replicating the activities of others, or collaborating with them, is the very best way to maximise impact on organisations, communities or fields.”

The definitions of a foundation apply almost equally for...

This is according to the newly published Philanthropy in America by historian Olivier Zunz, which was recently reviewed by Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy. Buchanan notes that “much of what we talk about as if it’s new—or not happening at all—has been going on in the U.S. for 100 years or more.” He highlights seven specific examples of our amnesia...

Teacher-training group TNTP plans to incorporate a student-feedback measure into the system it's developing to evaluate its teachers, becoming one of the first organizations in the nation to use such measures formally.

Though the conversation about teacher evaluation has been dominated by talk of "value added" measures and systems for observing classroom practice, student surveys have also been identified as a promising measure. For instance, preliminary results from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Teaching project have found a positive relationship between teachers who are identified by students as being especially good at conveying and explaining content and teachers' value-added growth measures...

Meanwhile, student opinions were gathered in a Youth Truth survey of 1,126 high-schoolers to find out what they think about their school. Students at Del Norte High School, Castle Rock Charter School, Klamath River Early College of the Redwoods and Sunset High School were surveyed.

Many students said they didn’t feel prepared for life after high school.

Students’ plans for after high school were “telling,” Wiki said. A significant number were not sure what they were going to do.

The survey found students want more rigorous course work and more relevance between their outside interests and their course work, Wiki said.

The two reports provide “real baseline data from an independent source,” Wiki said.

This data “gives us a picture of how we’re doing right now,” said Wiki, who is also the executive director of the Wild Rivers Community Foundation.

Examples of social entrepreneurship are not confined to either the business or the non-profit sectors. Instead, social ventures, including well-known organizations like Grameen Bank in India or Teach for America, often blur traditional organizational lines. And the idea that for-profit companies can generate social good is not new, according to Phil Buchanan, president of the nonprofit Center for Effective Philanthropy.

“For decades, foundations and major individual philanthropists have brought more than just financial resources to bear,” said Buchanan. “So much that gets packaged as innovation is just a surfacing of what’s been going on for a long time. It’s not new, but it’s important. It plays out in very different ways....

In the latest installment of their Talking Philanthropy podcast series, hosts Larry Blumenthal and Bill Silberg talk to Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, about the current state of foundation assessment. A recent survey by CEP, which helps foundations do a better job of evaluating their work, took an in-depth look at the current thinking around assessment of philanthropic work and revealed some interesting trends.

If you’re a nonprofit news junkie, you know it’s nearly impossible to go a day without reading or hearing the words “innovation” and “impact.” Just check out the feeds of the nonprofit Twitteratti, where those complex concepts are distilled to 140 characters or less every day.

But for those of us who care about linking rigor to innovation and impact (especially impact assessment), making them more operational, and integrating them more systematically into nonprofit/philanthropic practice, it’s hard to find serious discussion that is more about practice and less about how savvy some of the folks who opine about these concepts want to appear.

Is innovation really innovative?

Innovation, for example, is hardly a new construct; but it would be easy to forget that, given the level of ink that’s been spilled about the need for it in the nonprofit sector. In fact, there have been a number of people in the nonprofit world who, for some time now, have advocated for the sector to embrace new approaches and shake things up periodically. And that’s exactly what’s happened in recent years—due, in some part, to the influx of people from other sectors who’ve brought a much-needed emphasis...

Foundations are doing more than they did a decade ago to assess their performance but still are not satisfied with their ability to measure their impact and want their boards to be more involved in assessment, a new report says.

Nearly 75 percent of 173 CEOs of U.S. foundations awarding at least $5 million in grants a year who responded to a survey by The Center for Effective Philanthropy say assessing foundation effectiveness is among their top priorities.

Yet over 60 percent say too few foundations understand their overall performance, and 56 percent say nonprofits should be held to higher standards of evidence to show the effectiveness of their work, says The State of Foundation Performance Assessment, a report by The Center for Effective Philanthropy.

Seventy percent believe foundations should place greater emphasis on understanding the effectiveness of grantee programs and organizations they are considering funding.

Foundations also seem to be using a broader range of information to assess their financial, operational and programmatic performance than a decade ago, and many are combining that information to assess their overall performance, the report says.

"Our survey results suggest a shift in foundation assessment practices over the past decade," the report says. "Yet, we still do not understand...

Foundations and nonprofits are constantly looking for the right tools to measure success.

One of the most effective sources of information might come from the people who rely on an organization, suggests The Ultimate Question 2.0, by the veteran management consultant Fred Reichheld with Rob Markey. This new book follows up on Mr. Reichheld’s previous one in which he demonstrates that asking one simple question of a business’s customers can often reveal more about the company’s performance than more traditional financial or product analyses.

The question: “How likely is it that you would recommend Company X to a friend or colleague?”

Since charities and foundations are created to serve the public at large, and most beneficiaries don’t pay directly for services, this approach to measuring results cannot be applied directly in the world of philanthropy.

But a number of organizations are working on ways to get feedback from the public and from beneficiaries. In so doing they may find the same connection Mr. Reichheld did.

The Center for Effective Philanthropy is one of the pioneers of this work....

Although community foundation leaders agree on the importance of strategy, few actually are strategic in their work, a new report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy finds.

The report, Rhetoric Versus Reality: A Strategic Disconnect at Community Foundations (32 pages, PDF), offers a definition of "strategy" that includes two critical pieces: a focus on the context in which a specific community foundation operates, and a theory of change or clear logical connection between the use of foundation resources and the achievement of the organization's goals. Based on interviews with a select group of chief executive officers, the report's authors found a gap between those who value the concept of strategy and those who use it in their programmatic and donor-related work.

The report also found that executives who are strategic in their grantmaking tend to focus explicitly on how their foundation's contributions benefit the community while non-strategic leaders focus on how to maintain a flow of contributions to the foundation, and that nonprofit executives who are strategic in their programmatic work draw on research data and input from stakeholders to develop...

As schools look to improve everything from teaching to counseling to college and career readiness, students have a unique perspective—yet they are not always asked for their opinion.

A national survey project called YouthTruth is trying to address that often-missing piece in the reform puzzle by asking high school students for their feedback. Started in 2008 with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation...

The Center for Effective Philanthropy released a survey at its conference in Boston today that injects some new data into the debate about whether foundations are doing enough—or too much, in the eyes of some—to measure their performance.

Seventy-two percent of the 537 foundation chief executives surveyed said that assessing their organization’s performance is a high priority...

A group of five other blogs each reached about 20 to 30 percent of foundation leaders during the past six months. These included the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog...

Mr. Raikes—a former Microsoft employee who celebrates his two-year anniversary as president of the Gates foundation this month—has gotten kudos for discussing what he calls the “sobering” findings of an anonymous survey of grantees, conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, that the foundation released in June.

Nonprofits believe foundations have failed to communicate clearly, if at all, their responses to the economic downturn, and have offered nonprofits little useful help in their developing their own response, a new report says.

In a survey by the Center for Effective Philanthropy of over 6,000 grantees of 37 U.S. foundations, 30 percent indicate no such communication occurred...

The potential for philanthropy is huge -- the United States alone has at least 400 billionaires with a net worth Forbes estimates at $1.2 trillion. If those billionaires gave the minimum pledge of half of their fortunes to charity, that would triple the current amount of charitable giving in the U.S.

"That could be transformational," said Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy. "It could have a dramatic effect on some of the toughest social challenges that we face. But people have to do it first."

The Gates Foundation received lower than average ratings in many aspects of its relations with grantees, CEO Jeff Raikes disclosed in a letter today. The results were disclosed following a survey of more than 1,500 non-profits who received grants from the Gates Foundation over the last year. Raikes said the foundation worked with the Center for Effective Philanthropy to measure the perceptions of its grantees.

The students have spoken. Now, four Ohio STEM Learning Network (OSLN) schools that participated in a survey of student attitudes earlier this year will use that feedback for continuous improvement.

The online survey, called YouthTruth, was administered by the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (also a major OSLN funder). Rachel Niederman, senior coordinator at CEP, says the survey was conducted in January and February and grouped together 16 STEM schools in Ohio, Colorado, North Carolina and Texas...

Foundations publicly portray their work with grant recepients as one of mutual respect and partnership. But behind the scnes, the relationships are often less wine and roses and more Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf...

I read the post “Why Haven’t Foundations Made More Progress in Becoming Strategic?” by Bob Hughes on the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s (CEP) blog with interest. Hughes reports findings from a recent CEP report on foundation effectiveness that indicate that:

• Only half of the CEO’s report a shared understanding among the Board, CEO, and the staff of the foundation’s goals...

The grant guideline changes are the result of a survey of nonprofits conducted for MaineCF by the Center for Effective Philanthropy. A large percentage of the 240 Maine nonprofits that responded suggested the changes...

While many foundation officials say their grant-making efforts are achieving success, they rely heavily on anecdotal evidence and often fail to gather data about themselves and their work, according to a new report...

"At Microsoft during the early '90s, we didn't really feel like the politics associated with our industry should be on the radar," Raikes says. "I think it's very important to be in tune with what people are thinking about the foundation and make sure that we are viewed as a collaborative partner." Earlier this fall he asked the Center for Effective Philanthropy to conduct a survey of the foundation's current grantees to learn what it can do better...

But getting donors involved is not automatically a panacea. According to "More Than Money," a report by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, most foundations that provide assistance beyond a grant provide only limited support...

Wendy Kaufman: Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, says the Gates Foundation learned that when it ramped up its spending after receiving a gift totaling tens of billions of dollars from Warren Buffett. The problem?

Phil Buchanan: Simply staffing up. I think that's been a challenge for the Gates Foundation...