What's New at Candid (April 2019)

As Foundation Center and GuideStar enter their third month as a single organization, staff are forging ahead with the work of integrating workflows, sharing ideas, and developing solutions. It's exciting! And like many other nonprofits at this time of year, we're out and about at conferences and events and knee-deep in projects scheduled to launch later this year.

Here are some of the highlights from March:

Projects Launched

• In partnership with Sustain Arts and See Chicago Dance, we published a new report, Mapping the Dance Landscape in Chicagoland. The Chicago region is a hub for arts and culture and boasts a thriving dance community, and the report can be used to identify trends, opportunities, and challenges facing dancers, dance organizations, and the field as a whole.
• On CF Insights, our annual Columbus Survey is now open. The U.S. community foundation data collected by the survey provides a snapshot of the field and can be used to inform the financial and operational decisions made by community foundation staff. You can learn more about last year's survey results here — and be sure to check back for the results of this year's survey later this spring.
• Glasspockets reached a milestone when the Walton Family Foundation became the one hundredth foundation to commit to sharing its transparency self-assessment profile on the Glasspockets website. Janet Camarena and her team also debuted new Transparency Levels (Core, Advanced, & Champion) designed in partnership with active Glasspockets foundations and sponsored by, yes, the Walton Family Foundation.

Data Spotlight

• As the 2020 U.S. presidential election begins to take shape, we continue to track how foundations are supporting implementation, research, reform, and or/mobilization efforts related to campaigns, elections, and voting on our Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy. According to Candid data, more than $555 million has been granted by 845 funders in support of campaigns, elections, and voting since 2011. Of that total, $136 million has taken the form of general/unrestricted support, while $69.2 million has targeted racial and ethnic minorities.
• To date in 2019, we've recorded over 5,000 registrations for our webinars and self-paced elearning courses and have handled more than 18,000 questions through our knowledge base.
• We completed custom data searches for the DeVos Institute of Arts Management, Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania, Humboldt University of Berlin, Philanthropy Ohio, the Philanthropy Roundtable, and the Walton Family Foundation.

In the News

• "Torch: Behind a Business Intelligence Platform for Philanthropy and the Social Sector," Philip Rojc, Inside Philanthropy
• "Tech Titans' Philanthropy Puts Oceans Front and Center," Mareesa Nicosi, Penta
• "When Eagles Hatch: Native Americans in Philanthropy and Native Youth Activism," Julia Travers, Inside Philanthropy
• New study on philanthropy’s role in producing safe, healthy and just societies, Alliance magazine

What We're Excited About

• We’re partnering with the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy (SIP) to incorporate its content as part of our core training offerings. SIP is a fundraising management education program for nonprofit professionals based out of National University, and its content will allow Candid to exponentially increase the number of courses related to individual giving we are able to offer. The partnership also will support SIP content training for Candid staff and Funding Information Network partners and will enable us to adapt SIP content for in-person delivery as well as through our self-paced eLearning platform.

Upcoming Conferences and Events

It's conference season! Candid staff will be attending these upcoming events:

• 2019 CASE/AADO Conference on Diverse Philanthropy and Leadership, April 15-17, Indianapolis, IN
• Data Days, April 15, Cleveland, OH
• Jamaica Association Meeting, Driving Philanthropy for the Future: Creating the Networks We Need, April 24-26, Jamaica
• Council on Foundations Annual Conference ("Leading Together,") April 29-May 1, Miami, FL
• ECDC Refugee Resettlement Conference, May 1-2, Alexandria, VA
• United Way Community Leadership and Impact Conference, May 1-3, Toronto, Canada
• Arc of Innovation conference, May 2, Chicago, IL
• IRE Watchdog Workshop, May 4, New York, NY
• Center for Effective Philanthropy Annual Conference, May 7-9, Minneapolis, MN
• PEFG Annual Meeting, May 7-9, Washington, DC
• New York State Network for Youth Success Annual Conference, May 10-11, Saratoga Springs, NY
• Mid-Atlantic Grants Conference, May 20, Atlantic City, NJ
• Good Tech Fest, May 21-24, Chicago, IL
• European Foundation Centre's Annual General Assembly and Conference, May 21-24, Paris, France
• CASE Annual Conference for Corporate and Foundation Relations Officers, May 22-24, Washington, DC

Services Spotlight

• A total of 231,299 new grants added to Foundation Maps in March, of which 2,665 were made to 1,920 organizations outside the U.S.
• Foundation Directory Online continues to support everything needed in a fundraising tool. Now you can build more robust prospect lists and see how much funders are giving based on your mission.
• Candid’s webinar participants continue to gain practical skills and report an increase in confidence after taking one of our webinars. In a recent survey, 88 percent reported that they had gained a specific skill, tool, or strategy that enabled them to advance their work, while 95 percent said they expected to apply what they had learned in the webinar within the year.
• Twenty-two participants from Northeast Ohio participated in a three-day Proposal Writing Boot Camp. Check out all 2019 boot camp dates here.
• The Funding Information Network now boasts thirteen training partners. FINs are locations around the country where you can access Candid resources for free and take a scheduled class. Learn more about the Funding Information Network program here.
• New data sharing partners: Barr Family Foundation, Better Way Foundation, Callison Foundation, District of Columbia Bar Foundation, Hamer D. & Phyllis C. Shafer Foundation Charitable Trust, and Victorian Women's Benevolent Trust. Tell your story through data so we can communicate philanthropy's contribution to making a better world — learn more about our eReporting program.
• New customers: Purposeful is using our data and APIs, the Barr Foundation is using our Premier API, and a UK site called Social Bite is licensing our data to help with their cause (homelessness). We also added North Carolina State, George Washington University, and the University of Richmond to our roster of Library services clients.

Content Published

• New posts on the GuideStar blog, including one on best practices for requesting corporate funding, one on what organizations need to know about managing leadership transitions, and one on the launch of 2019 GuideStar Seals of Transparency.
• New posts on WASHfunders.org, including a piece questioning whether selling water and sanitation services to people in poverty is equitable and a post on market shaping opportunities in Africa.
• New posts on PhilanTopic, including "7 Things One Family Foundation Is Doing to End Poverty," "5 Tips to Make the Most Out of Your Donor Data," and "3 Ways to Educate Donors About Movement Building." (And don't forget to check out the most popular posts on PhilanTopic in March here.)
• New posts on GrantSpace, including one on how DEI work supports the social sector and one on using storytelling to get more grants.
• New posts on Glasspockets, including an announcement about Glasspockets’ new transparency levels, a conversation with the Walton Family Foundation, and an interview with the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation.
• New posts on GrantCraft, including one on reflective practices that can help #ShiftThePower in philanthropy and one on creating impact at scale through partnerships.
• We added 110 new resources to IssueLab in March, including The Gender Disadvantage: Why Inequity Persists, Environmental Funding by European Foundations: Volume 4 and a report on the potential role of CDFIs in newly designated Opportunity Zones.

If you found this update helpful, feel free to share it or shoot us an email. I'll be back next month with another update.

Jen Bokoff is director of stakeholder engagement at Foundation Center.