Posts Tagged: philanthropy - (27 found)

Across-the-Board Contradictions: Re-aligning foundation trustees to incentivize learning

advocacy evaluation learning organisations philanthropy theories of change

Tanya Beer writes: “One of the things that routinely gets in the way of foundations having a learning culture is what happens when staff and boards engage. The problem is that most of the routines in the board room are actually based on the mental model that social change is a technocratic problem-solving endeavor. So what happens—in the ways that artefacts get exchanged with boards, and in the ways that board conversations get set up—is that we incentivize and reward staff who project a degree of certainty about how social change happens that’s just not real because the change process is much more complex…”

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Measuring People Power in 2020+ (report)

advocacy evaluation philanthropy

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 global survey to learn how social change practitioners and leaders across the globe currently grapple with these questions. In this report, we have surfaced the key trends and learnings emerging from our scan of existing research and the inputs of 500 respondents from around the world.

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The 5 Big Mistakes That Doom Most Crowdfunding Campaigns

philanthropy

[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 way to succeed.

 

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Benchmarking Foundation Evaluation Practices 2020 (report)

evaluation philanthropy

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 current philanthropic conception of “strategy” support the kind of thinking about systems and complexity that is needed to achieve foundation goals?

The most comprehensive review of evaluation and learning practices at foundations, this report offers benchmarking data on foundation evaluation practice.

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Weaving Successful Partnerships: When Funders, Evaluators, and Intermediaries Work Together

learning organisations philanthropy

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 report from Equal Measure is informed by a literature review on partnership structures, trust building, and developing a learning culture – and case studies of three different partnerships involving this triad.

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Diversity, equity and inclusion | CEP Report

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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 your board and staff? How do you proactively consider such factors as, for example, gender, race/ethnicity, and religious affiliation? In Nonprofit Diversity Efforts, 42 percent of nonprofit CEOs disclose that funders have not discussed diversity issues with them.

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The Support Report: An In Depth Analysis of the Changing Face of Giving in Australia

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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 found that there is a dramatic difference in who, why, where and the way support is provided across donor segments and highlighted a need for not for profits, particularly in certain cause areas, to evolve rapidly to continue to attract support.

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Funding advocacy and policy change | Atlas learning project

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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 theme runs through more than 20 different reports, publications, and other resources. In each case, what arises from all this research is a clear sense that grantmakers should better understand their roles in the broader advocacy ecosystem, and foundations that do engage in supporting advocacy should consider a wider range of bolder and more effective approaches. 

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State of Evaluation 2016: Evaluation Capacity and Practice in the Nonprofit Sector

advocacy evaluation philanthropy research

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 least one source than in the past”… but…  “In most organizations, pivotal resources of money and staff time for evaluation are severely limited or nonexistent.”

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Legal advocacy as a strategy

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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 of legal advocacy.

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