NCFP Blog

From the Archive

From the Archive: Things We Wish Our Founders Had Told Us

Posted on April 11, 2024

NCFP’s From the Archive series highlights resources from our Knowledge Center that have stood the test of time and continue to provide valuable guidance for the field.  In 2016, 20 years after the death of her father, Susan Packard Orr reflected on the challenges of interpreting donor legacy. Susan wrote that, after asking her father to share what he wanted… Read More
From NCFP, Effective Family Philanthropy in Action

Know Your Neighbors: Building Trusting Relationships in Family Philanthropy

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Erin Borla, Sokol Shtylla

Collaboration and partnership are the cornerstones to accomplishing meaningful impact on pressing social issues. But both are difficult to come by due to the inherent power imbalance that exists in philanthropy, where funders control resources needed to support the wellbeing of communities. Trust is required to foster collaborative partnerships between funders and grantees. But how can trust occur if you… Read More
From NCFP

Navigating Philanthropy and its Shifts: Insights from Philanthropic Advisors

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Shannon Jeffries

In recent years, the philanthropic landscape has evolved in response to issues of equity and justice. Consequently, many donor families seek guidance and support from philanthropic advisors to help them navigate the complexities of these shifts, ensuring that philanthropic efforts align with and are informed by the communities they serve.  As families work to translate their philanthropic purpose to impact… Read More
Network News

March 2024: News and Notes from NCFP’s Members and Partners

Posted on March 14, 2024

Beautiful red spring tulips flowers growing in garden
NCFP strives to connect its members to resources, best practices, and to peer funders. Network News highlights updates from our members and partners, showcacsing accomplishments, new approaches or giving areas, innovative ideas, and staff and board transitions, and more.  We encourage our members and parters to email us with news that you would like to be shared. In Memoriam: Celebrating… Read More
Effective Family Philanthropy in Action

Declining Applications and Inquiries: How Funders Can Do Better

Posted on March 6, 2024

Peter Marks, executive director of The L.B. Research and Education Foundation, received positive feedback from grant seekers who were not selected to move forward in the foundation’s application process. The feedback affirmed Peter’s own experience as a nonprofit grantseeker: funders often fail to provide helpful information in their declination letters. Here, Peter shares a template for other funders to employ… Read More
From NCFP, Effective Family Philanthropy in Action

Improving Philanthropic Practice by Prioritizing Reflection & Learning

Posted on February 6, 2024 by Emerald Adeyemi, Don Chen

Family philanthropy done well can achieve lasting and meaningful change in the world and within the families themselves. To be effective, NCFP believes funders must employ four principles: accountability, equity, relationships, and reflection and learning. Despite being essential to impactful funding, a commitment to reflection and learning is often the first practice to be left behind when the day-to-day is… Read More
From NCFP

Preparing for Bold Leadership

Posted on January 26, 2024 by Nicholas A. Tedesco

watercolor pine trees
As I look back at the past few years, it’s clear that the challenges we faced as a society and as a sector have been unrelenting. It’s also been a time of great promise. Many families have shifted their philanthropic practices to respond to urgent and entrenched problems. They have taken bigger risks, leaned into trust, listened to communities, and… Read More
From NCFP

Beyond the Family: An Ecosystem Approach to Family Philanthropy

Posted on December 12, 2023 by Nicholas A. Tedesco

The success of family philanthropy is dependent on the willingness of the family to embrace an ecosystem of partners. In fact, the most effective philanthropic leaders recognize that the family operates in relationship to many others—most importantly community and staff members. Embracing an ecosystem approach to philanthropy, which focuses on building and respecting relationships to others in the system, is… Read More
Effective Family Philanthropy in Action

How PRIs Can Help Maximize Impact and Approaches for Getting Started

Posted on December 5, 2023 by Mary Ann Weiss

In 2018, Mary Ann Weiss wrote a post for NCFP about program-related investments (PRIs), their advantages, and the barriers to using them. Since then, the philanthropic landscape has shifted and Mary Ann has built her own experience with PRIs. Learn more about use cases for PRIs and how to get started using the tool to amplify your impact. In the… Read More
Effective Family Philanthropy in Action

Collectively Reducing Nonprofit Burden through Data Standards

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Aleda Gagarin

As more and more funders request demographic data from their nonprofit partners to ensure that they are funding equitably, grantee burden to provide the data has increased. In an effort to centralize data and mitigate grantee burden, Candid’s data1x initiative has introduced Demographics via Candid. To understand the makeup of the nonprofits they support, individual funders increasingly request demographic information… Read More

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