philanthropy
Move the money: Practices and values for funding social movements
A set of resources geared towards grantmaking institutions eager to expand and deepen their support of organisations, networks, and leaders involved with social change movements. Move The Money consists of four videos and accompanying discussion guides with reflection...
Telling the truth about philanthropy is the first step to transforming it for generations to come
Michael Johnson and Angie Chen write: A Call-In to Grow Indigenous Power: What would it mean to “decolonize” philanthropy? “Language matters. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang have powerfully argued, “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” and shouldn’t be used to...
Measuring People Power in 2020+ (report)
How do you measure gifts of time, expertise and leadership? What indicators can you use to assess grassroots power building, organising and volunteer initiatives? To answer these questions, MobLab and 13 other organisations embarked on research, consultations and a...
The 5 Big Mistakes That Doom Most Crowdfunding Campaigns
[Tom Dawkins blog] If crowdfunding is so great, why do the vast majority of crowdfunding campaigns fail? They mostly fail because of a set of common misunderstanding about how crowdfunding works, which leads to a failure to invest your efforts and energy in the right...
Benchmarking Foundation Evaluation Practices 2020 (report)
Philanthropy is grappling with core questions about its very purpose and nature: What does it mean to support equity and to act equitably? What do the exploitative roots at the source of many philanthropic institutions mean for their missions and approach? Does the...
Weaving Successful Partnerships: When Funders, Evaluators, and Intermediaries Work Together
Funders who have ambitious goals to change large systems often create partnerships with intermediaries and evaluators to help realize their visions. But what does it take to effectively weave these partners together and position them for shared success? This new...
Diversity, equity and inclusion | CEP Report
Diversity data will only tell you so much about an organization’s commitment and approach to DEI; a conversation beyond the data is essential to building a true understanding. What efforts do you currently take to promote DEI within your organization, particularly for...
The Support Report: An In Depth Analysis of the Changing Face of Giving in Australia
The Support Report: An In Depth Analysis of the Changing Face of Giving in Australia, soon to be released by JBWere, explores how philanthropy is evolving in Australia, looking at each of the different giving areas and the types of givers who support each cause. It...
Funding advocacy and policy change | Atlas learning project
Over the course of two years and hundreds of interviews with foundations, advocates, evaluators, and other experts, a consistent theme emerged around the need for foundations to be more aggressive and adaptive in their support for advocacy and policy change. This...
State of Evaluation 2016: Evaluation Capacity and Practice in the Nonprofit Sector
Recent findings (from 2016) about how nonprofits engage in evaluation, and the capacities and characteristics of their organizations. “Funding for evaluation is also moving in the right direction, with more nonprofits receiving funding for evaluation from at...
Legal advocacy as a strategy
TCC Group has been examining how advocacy organizations use legal advocacy as a strategy and how funders can best support that work. Here, they share the results of their work to help inform funders, legal advocates, non-legal advocates, and evaluators about the field...
Oh for the love of sticky notes: The Changing Role of Evaluators Who Work with Foundations
Julia Coffman (Director and founder of the Center for Evaluation Innovation) writes: “I’ve been an evaluator for 25 years now, and I love it. I love the opportunity to apply research skills to important questions. I love helping people to think about their...
evaluation capacity building: Funder Initiatives to Strengthen Grantee Evaluation Capacity and Practice (report)
Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB) is the process of improving an organization’s ability to use evaluation to learn from its work and improve results. Organizational learning is incredibly important. Organizations that are adept at learning from mistakes and adapting...
Why the environmental movement is not winning
This searing 2012 report says the environmental movement is not winning and lays the blame squarely on the failed policies of environmental funders. The movement hasn’t won any “significant policy changes at the federal level in the United States since the 1980s”...
The elusive craft of evaluating advocacy
Advocacy evaluation is a craft, one in which tacit knowledge, skill and networks are more useful than the application of a rigid methodology. It is an exercise in trained judgment. The evaluator, rather than the formal qualities of the evaluation, is what...
Assessing advocacy
This new framework provides a methodical and organised approach to managing some of philanthropy’s most complicated endeavours. The framework evaluates projects for nine conditions, from the presence of effective champions to favourable timing. It complements and...
Transformative Scale: The future of growing what works
Jeffrey Bradach and Abe Grindle describe nine strategies to deliver impact at a scale that truly meets needs… nine approaches that hold real promise for addressing at a transformative scale a number of major social problems: 1. Distribute through existing...
Using evaluation to become an effective learning organization
More and more grant makers are looking at evaluation in a new light. They are redefining its role in philanthropy in five ways: It’s about improvement, not just proof; It’s about contribution, not attribution; It’s about learning with others, not alone; It’s about...