Grantmaking Strategy and Evaluation

Finding the Right Advisor to Help Align Your Investments With Your Values

Posted on January 13, 2023 by Kate Simpson

Addressing the world’s most pressing issues will require harnessing the power of all investment capital—including the corpus of foundations. While allocating 5% (the minimum required by law) of your foundation’s resources to support its mission can result in powerful solutions and social change, imagine if the remaining 95% were invested to further your goals and objectives? Values-aligned investing, an umbrella… Read More

Your Impact Strategy Doesn’t Stop at Your Grantmaking

Posted on December 15, 2022 by Dr. LaTonya Penny, Meg Baesmith, Tony Macklin

Your Impact Strategy Doesn’t Stop at Your Grantmaking
While grantmaking is often the main tool funders think about in terms of impact, there are many other innovative ways to use your time, relationships, and resources to support your nonprofit partners and the communities you serve. Funders can leverage their established platform to spread the word about needed support and convene important partners, or can provide additional capacity to… Read More

Internal Evaluation and Learning

Posted on December 15, 2022 by Brittany Green Daniels, Arturo Garcia, Bruce Karmazin, Prentice Zinn

A family philanthropy has a much better chance of success if there is an intentional culture that values continuous improvement, feedback and professional development, and an integrated approach of learning and assessment across governance, philanthropic strategy, succession, and more. The assessment process asks organizations to evaluate their philanthropic purpose, governance, team, accountability, finances, and family—to answer how you can continually… Read More

Listening and Feedback: Tools to Assess Your Philanthropy

Posted on December 15, 2022 by C. Davis Parchment, Yvonne Belanger, Brenda Solorzano

Listening and Feedback: In Family Philanthropy
How can you elicit and act on feedback from your grantees and other external stakeholders? For all funders, gathering feedback is a helpful practice to understand how your work is impacting your grantees—and how you can more deeply incorporate the perspectives and experience of your partners and communities you serve. There are a number of tools available to facilitate this… Read More

Demystifying Trust-based Practices: Trust in Action

Posted on December 7, 2022 by Kavi Waddell, Mark Rodriguez, Laura Jansen

Trust based philanthropy
The philanthropic sector continues to evolve, and many giving families are embracing a trust-based approach to their philanthropy—not only as a mindset, but as a guiding principle across their grantmaking, relationships, and operations. While many families are interested in and willing to adopt trust-based practices, it isn’t always clear how and when to utilize specific trust-based approaches and what they… Read More

Community Foundations Topical Call: Trust-Based Philanthropy Practices for DAFs

Posted on November 16, 2022 by Molly Shaw, M.Ed., Abbe Temkin

Trust-based philanthropy “is rooted in a set of values that help advance equity, shift power, and build mutually accountable relationships,” per the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project. While many community foundations are working to embrace these practices, how are donors or families giving through and in collaboration with the community foundation learning and adapting to using these practices? Join peers who have… Read More

Community Foundations Network Topical Call: National Study on Donor Advised Funds

Posted on November 16, 2022 by Jeff Williams, Dr. Brittany Kienker

The National Study on Donor Advised Funds, launching in early 2023, will gather the most comprehensive data on DAFs in the United States. Join Jeff Williams and Brittany Kienker for this interactive topical call to learn more about how your community foundation can participate in this study, along with other community foundations, religiously-affiliated charities, and national DAF organizations from across… Read More

Effective Family Philanthropy: Tegan and Brian Acton

Posted on July 14, 2022 by Ade Adeniji, Inside Philanthropy

Brian and Tegan Acton
How Billionaire Couple Tegan and Brian Acton Are Giving in the Bay Area and Beyond Brian and Tegan Acton, in their 40s and worth some $3 billion, are among a new cohort of Silicon Valley donors engaging in major philanthropy. Stanford computer science graduate Brian Acton worked at Yahoo! with Jan Koum, where the two would link up for ultimate… Read More

Sixteen Grantmaking Characteristics to Effectively Support Public Policy Advocacy

Posted on July 6, 2022 by Sara Watson, Alliance for Justice

illustrated image of US Capitol building in red on a blue background; Bolder Advocacy report cover
Created by Bolder Advocacy in partnership with Dr. Sara Watson, this resource outlines the sixteen characteristics of grantmaking that best supports effective policy education and advocacy.  Grantmaking that effectively supports the difficult task of informing and advancing policy change has specific characteristics. Learn about the 1) technical funding structures, 2) the content of what gets funded, and 3) considerations across… Read More

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