NCFP Blog

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 by Peter Marks

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
Effective Family Philanthropy in Action

How to Interrupt the “Vicious Cycle of Inherited Wealth:” A Conversation with Iris Brilliant

Posted on October 17, 2023 by Britt Benavidez, Iris Brilliant

Vicious cycle of arrows in a circle
For wealth inheritors, having access to a large sum of money they did not earn is a privilege, but often comes with mixed emotions and a deep sense of responsibility. Acknowledging and building a healthy and transparent relationship to wealth can help improve personal and family relationships, deepen connections in community, and ultimately promote greater, and more equitable redistribution of… Read More
From NCFP, Effective Family Philanthropy in Action

The Benefits—and Challenges—of Adding an Equity Lens to Philanthropy Practices

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Diana Tyler Heath, June L. Wilson

Philanthropy is rooted in and continues to operate within inequitable systems and structures. Philanthropists have long sought to address these inequities in their grantmaking, and in recent years many have begun to examine how they can further address inequities in their practices. At NCFP, we see equity as a core principle of effective family philanthropy. We believe that equity begins… Read More
Effective Family Philanthropy in Action

Fostering Connection for More Effective Philanthropy

Posted on October 2, 2023 by David Weitnauer

Colleagues collaborating and laughing around a table
NCFP Distinguished Fellow David Weitnauer notes the importance of personal connection among family, board, and staff members in the context of their philanthropy and introduces his research on the concept of giving related. In the drive to improve our philanthropy practices and contribute to greater impact, we often overlook the very characteristic that sets our field apart: family ties. Cultivating… Read More

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