Center for Effective Philantropy
Blog
Founded in 2001, CEP is a nonprofit organization focused on the development of data and insight to enable higher-performing funders. CEP’s mission is to provide data and create insight so philanthropic funders can better define, assess, and improve their effectiveness — and as a result, their intended impact. This mission is driven by the belief that more effective philanthropic funders can have a profoundly positive impact on nonprofit organizations and the people and communities they serve.
Our belief is that when philanthropic funders use CEP’s resources and insights, they can better understand their work and more effectively support the leaders and organizations working toward meaningful change. Source
Actions
Media Outlet details
| Scope | Trade/B2B |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | United States of America |
Similarweb UVM
|
Request pricing |
Comscore UVM
|
Request pricing |
Recent Articles
Search ArticlesRevisiting the DEI Debate: What We Can Learn From Corporate Capitulation Phil Buchanan President, CEP
Seven days into the second Trump administration, after a raft of executive orders including several targeting “DEI programs,” we published a piece I authored on this blog titled “In Defense of DEI.” In it, I lamented, “the remarkable and rapid capitulation of many corporations to the new administration’s anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) crusade.” The post went on to explain what the pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusion actually means — word by word — and why, when done...
Rest Is Infrastructure — It’s Time Foundations Treated It That Way Abby Siegel Hyman Program Partner for External Partnerships, The Healing Trust Josh Feldman CEO and Founder, R&R: The Rest of our Lives Rachel Zieleniec Chief Program Officer, R&R: The Res
“So much of my work life was driven by the feeling that my work is who I am, and all I have. Realizing that isn’t actually true was huge for me.” – Sabbatical Grantee For decades, funders have invested in sabbaticals for nonprofit leaders — one grant, one leader, one organization at a time. Now, as part of The Rest Roundtable’s work, for the first time we can start to see the full national picture.
Is the Call to Give More Distracting Foundations From Giving Better? Neel Hajra CEO, Michigan Health Endowment Fund
I’ve appreciated seeing CEP’s leaders contribute thoughtful viewpoints in recent weeks on some of the burning topics facing our field. I’m thinking specifically about Phil Buchanan’s column about smart approaches to perpetual funding and Kevin Bolduc’s recent article on increasing foundation payouts. Both pieces added some needed nuance to debates in philanthropy that are at risk of being overrun by black-and-white thinking.
The Sector Is Still Burning – Here’s What We Know Now Carolina García Jayaram CEO, Elevate Prize Foundation
Two years ago, burnout in the nonprofit sector was a five-alarm fire — and it’s only spread and raged further since then. At the time, I wrote “A Call for Self-Care in Social Impact” for this publication where I pointed to troubling statistics about the rate and intensity of burnout among social impact leaders and their teams and shared how Elevate Prize is resourcing leaders to combat the root causes of burnout. I hoped to return with better news, but, sadly, the opposite is true.
What it Takes to Build Locally-Grounded Systems Change Camilo Andrés Morales Country Director for Colombia, Jacobs Foundation Ana Cubillo Global Program Director, Jacobs Foundation
When it comes to effecting tangible improvements in local or regional systems, collaborations across the public, private, and philanthropic sectors are of paramount importance. That said, many in philanthropy will recognize a familiar challenge: those vital collaborations can too often become unwieldy, slowing down progress and blurring the sightlines to lasting change. In Colombia, for example, we have the opportunity to redress learning outcomes for children across the country.
Learning Is Not a Luxury: Bringing Learning Closer to Decisions and Communities Clare Nolan Co-Executive Director, Engage R+D Yvonne Belanger Director of Learning and Evaluation, Barr Foundation Sarah Stachowiak CEO and Owner, ORS Impact
In our previous post, we shared findings from Let’s Keep Learning, a research initiative led by Engage R+D and ORS Impact, with support from the Barr Foundation and others. In that post, we suggested, based on what we learned, that the challenge facing evaluation and learning in philanthropy is not primarily a value proposition problem, but a conditional, structural, and capacity problem. Across interviews with a range of stakeholders, we heard real belief in the value of learning and evaluation.
Funders Just Don’t Understand … Or Do They? Sarah Stachowiak CEO and Owner, ORS Impact Clare Nolan Co-Executive Director, Engage R+D Yvonne Belanger Director of Learning and Evaluation, Barr Foundation
When we started the Let’s Keep Learning initiative in the spring of 2025, we had an initial hypothesis: philanthropic learning seemed to be declining during a volatile time when learning and evaluation could be providing key insights to inform shifts in strategy and approaches. What we found through a pulse survey of internal foundation evaluation staff and evaluation consultants working in philanthropy surprised us — and we think it’s important for the field to understand.
To Strengthen Nonprofits, Fund Cost Clarity First Thaddaeus Hubbard Principal, BSEG Advisory
CEP’s “State of Nonprofits 2026” confirms what many funders already sense: The sector is under severe strain. Burnout among nonprofit CEOs jumped to 46% this year, up from just under 30% in 2025. Fifty-seven percent of leaders say foundation grants are harder to get than before. And 39% of organizations ran a deficit in their last fiscal year, nearly double the 22% who did in 2022. The easy reading of that data is a revenue story. Money got tighter, so deficits grew.
Despite What You May Have Heard, Foundations Are More Relevant Than Ever Phil Buchanan President, CEP
More than a few philanthropy observers have suggested that foundations are now (or will soon become) a less significant segment of the landscape of U.S. philanthropy than they once were. In a much discussed post more than a decade ago, journalist David Callahan compared big foundations to dinosaurs and celebrated their projected demise, which he called “a very good thing.” (In fairness, a decade later he acknowledged in another post that “the age of big foundations lives on.
The Debate That Belongs in Every Foundation Boardroom Right Now Kevin Bolduc Vice President, Assessment and Advisory Services, CEP
The challenges created by a capricious and morally untethered federal government haven’t abated, and every day nonprofits are adapting to step into the breach. They’re redesigning food distribution networks, organizing responses to new immigration policies and actions, sustaining crisis services despite funding cuts, and finding new ways to make public media resilient.