What's New at Candid (August 2019)

Although it’s still officially summer, we've been busy here at Candid, releasing new research, continuing the consolidation of our regional offices, expanding our Funding Information Network, and more. If there's anything you'd like me to cover in these monthly updates, shoot me an email. My colleagues and I are anxious to hear your thoughts!

Project Highlights

• In the wake of tragic mass shootings in California, Texas, and Ohio and newly urgent conversations about gun control and the Second Amendment, understanding the full impact of gun violence in America is imperative. Our IssueLab colleagues have created a Gun Violence Special Collection that brings together evidence and insights from nonprofits, foundations, and research organizations working to understand that impact. In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed an amendment to a spending bill that banned the Center for Disease Control (CDC) from using any of its budget for gun violence research, leading to a dearth of data that could help inform the gun control debate. In the more than twenty years since, the social sector has produced over two hundred reports that explore policy models, provide data and statistics, and examine a range of sub-topics. Feel free to reach out to the IssueLab team if you have questions about the resources in the collection.
• The surge in fires in the Amazon basin is a fresh reminder of the destructive impact that humans can have on ecosystems that are critical to life on the planet. Philanthropy continues to support efforts to ensure the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, including the rights of Indigenous, marginalized, or other communities to the unspoiled natural resources that enable their survival; the right of Indigenous and marginalized communities to share in and determine the distribution of lands, territories, and resources; and the protection of these natural resources from destruction, overdevelopment, and/or pollution. To learn more about what funders are doing to support the environmental and resource rights of Indigenous and marginalized communities, check out this dashboard courtesy of the Advancing Human Rights initiative, a collaboration between Candid and the Human Rights Funders Network, in partnership with Ariadne: European Funders for Social Change and Human Rights and Prospera: International Network of Women's Funds.
• Candid and the Human Rights Funders Network also have released a report that details foundation grantmaking for human rights globally. Conducted in partnership with Ariadne and Prospera, Advancing Human Rights: 2016 Key Findings highlights the scale and scope of funding for human rights, and sheds light on tough questions such as: Where is the money going? What are the gaps? And who is doing what?
• CF Insights, a service of Candid, has launched the 2018 Columbus Survey Results Dashboard — the most up-to-date, comprehensive data set focused on financial trends and operational activity among community foundations in the United States. The data and findings provided in the dashboard are based on FY2018 survey responses provided by 251 community foundations and are supplemented by publicly available data.
• Be sure to check out the new infographic on Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy that looks what foundations to combat the decline in local journalism.

You can learn more about other projects we’ve been working on in the Gain Knowledge section of our website.

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.

What's New at Candid (formerly Foundation Center and GuideStar) (March 2019)

March brings the first days of Spring and the beginning of new things. At Candid, we've been marking new beginnings with game-changing training programs and convenings, attendance at great conferences, and valuable research. Here are some of the recent highlights:

Projects Launched

• There is no one-size-fits-all solution to capacity building, but a new series of GrantCraft case studies provides funders with networking and collaboration insights that can empower their grantees to invest in capacity building. Each case study has been developed in partnership with Community Wealth Partners and draws on that organization's capacity-building work with funders and grantees. Together, the studies showcase varied approaches to addressing the long-term capacity needs of grantees and provide valuable insights for foundations, consultants, and practitioners. The series also pilots a new approach for GrantCraft in which we tap the wisdom of technical assistance providers in making sure learnings from foundation projects are shared widely.
• Glasspockets recently hit a milestone, publishing its one hundredth profile of a funder that has publicly participated in the "Who Has Glass Pockets?" self-assessment. To celebrate, Glasspockets has launched a blog series, the "Road to 100 & Beyond," featuring foundations that have played a part in the site reaching this milestone. In addition to helpful examples, the series highlights reflections on why transparency is important, how openness inside foundations evolves over time, and lessons learned.
• We added a new infographic to the Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy portal which shows the U.S. dropping to #71 on the 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index — the first time since 2011 the U.S. has fallen out of the top 20. According to the infographic, about 3 percent of overall funding for democracy work goes to open government and transparency efforts. You can check it out and more at foundationcenter.org/infographics.
• Grantmakers in the Arts published its annual Arts Funding Snapshot in the Winter 2019 edition of the GIA Reader. The snapshot looks at foundation giving for arts and culture for 2016, based on the most recent complete year of data for a set of the largest U.S.-based private and community foundations (by total giving). A webinar that explores the findings is available on the GIA website.
• GuideStar launched updated APIs with new data and filters, as well as new internal administrative functions, meaning you can now get more data through GuideStar's Premier API that you can't find anywhere else, including nonprofit logos, demographic information, and due-diligence information. You can also search for organizations in new ways, thanks to new filters that enable users to sort by organizations that are in good standing with the IRS and by cause area.

Content Published

• New blog posts on WASHfunders.org on topics such as disability-inclusive WASH programs, providing safe access to water during disasters, and moving beyond just building toilets.
• New blog posts on PhilanTopic, including "Board Diversity: Moving from Awareness to Action," "Five Elements of Success in Capacity Building," and an update from Candid (Foundation Center+GuideStar).
• New blog posts on GrantSpace, including how to build and sustain fundraising talent, how to use data to measure your impact, and how Candid is moving toward a regional, community-based approach to services
• New blog posts on Glasspockets as part the #RoadTo100 series, including a piece on funder relationships with indigenous communities and an interview with Maya Winkelstein, executive director of the Open Road Alliance.
• New blog posts on GrantCraft, including a piece on how one funder is working to support youth mental health and another on why this work is personal.
• Eighty-eight resources added to IssueLab, including Race to Lead: Women of Color in the Nonprofit Sector and a piece on paid leave laws from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

In the News

• Interview with Brad Smith, president, Candid, Denver Fredericks, Business of Giving
• New study on philanthropy’s role in producing safe, healthy and just societies, Alliance magazine
• The Mechanics Behind Re-Branding in Philanthropy, Richard Marker, Wise Philanthropy blog
• "Win Big With Big Data: A Nonprofit’s Guide to Data Analytics," Sandra Cyr, Philanthropy Journal News - NC State University
• "Honest Money: How a Powerful Non-Profit Aims to Promote Transparency," Becca Leviss, Tufts Observer
• Fresh Research Podcast: "Anatomy of a Mega Merger," Mark Hrywna, The NonProfit Times
• "Notes on Candid: The Merger of Foundation Center and GuideStar," Teri Behrens, PhD, Johnson Center at Grand Valley State University
• "Transparency Boosts Donations, Even for Struggling Charities, Study Finds," Alex Daniels, The Chronicle of Philanthropy

What We're Excited About

• Out in the community! On March 13, our San Francisco office kicked off a new series of monthly orientations at our nearby Funding Information Network partner location. The staff presentation at the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library featured forty minutes of training, twenty minutes of Q&A, and an hour of one-on-one support for those who needed it, drawing a great crowd and generating rave reviews. Candid staff in San Francisco is excited to pilot this new program model, which among other things addresses how we can best partner with our Funding Information Network (FIN) partners in San Francisco (and beyond) in anticipation of our San Francisco library closing for good on June 30.
• What's that, you say? In 2019, Candid will start shifting its efforts from maintaining regional direct-service locations to focusing more on our 400+ FIN partner sites, which are located in communities across the U.S.as well as several countries. Through deeper and closer collaboration with our FIN partners, we hope to make our Social Sector Outreach services available far and wide — services that include the same great programming and access to tools and expertise you’ve come to expect at our regional locations. Please check out this interactive map to find a FIN location near you. And read the full announcement from VP of Social Sector Outreach Zohra Zori.
• We are working with Sustain Arts and See Chicago Dance on the first data-driven analysis of the Chicagoland dance sector since 2002.

Upcoming Conferences and Events

Our staff will be attending these upcoming events:

• AFP DC, March 20, Washington, DC
• netFWD's annual meeting, March 21-22, Paris, France
• AFP International Conference on Fundraising, March 31-April 2, San Antonio, Texas
• What Works Summit, April 1-3, Reykjavik, Iceland
• 2019 Global Philanthropy Forum, April 1-3, Redwood City, California
• Association of Black Foundation Executives conference, April 4-6, Detroit, Michigan
• Skoll World Forum, April 9-12, London, England
• International Civil Society Week, April 8-12, Belgrade, Serbia
• Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), April 10-12, Cleveland, Ohio
• Data Days, April 15, Cleveland, Ohio

Services Spotlight

• 252,817 new grants added to Foundation Maps in February, of which 5,762 were made to 4,251 organizations outside the U.S.
• Leverage insights from Foundation Directory Online to connect to funders: Connect Guide.
• 12 participants from the Bay Area and beyond participated in a three-day Proposal Writing Boot Camp. Check out all 2019 boot camp dates here.
• New data sharing partners: Aesop Foundation Australia, Colorado Plateau Foundation, Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, InFaith Community Foundation, Kalliopeia Foundation, Klein Family Foundation, Massachusetts Medical Society and Alliance Charitable Foundation, St Mary's Medical Center,Notah Begay III Foundation, Scriven Foundation, and the Steele-Reese Foundation. 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: RoundUp APP, Tides Foundation, University of California, Santa Barbara, California State University, Los Angeles,F.B. Heron Foundation, Barr Foundation, Elevation Web, Nathan Cummings Foundation.

Data Spotlight

• In honor of Women's History Month, we are highlighting data centered around support for women and girls across our research:
  • Funding directed for women and girls made up 23 percent of all foundation funding for human rights, some $2.1 billion, between 2011-15. Over the course of those five years, funding for women and girls increased by 43 percent, representing the greatest share of funding targeted to a particular population group.
  • Of all international giving by U.S. foundations between 2011-15, 13.8 percent, or $4.8 billion, was targeted to women and girls. And while overall giving increased by 36 percent over the five-year period, funding targeted to women and girls increased 77 percent.
  • Between 2014-15, 13 percent of all funding from U.S. foundations directed to Latin America targeted women and girls, including a grant of $1.3 million over three years from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to Mexico's National Institute of Public Health in support of research on the promotion of professional midwifery.

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.

What's New at Candid (formerly Foundation Center and GuideStar) — February 2019

Have you heard? Foundation Center and GuideStar have joined forces to become a single nonprofit organization, Candid. Together, we are dedicated to sharing information and insights that can fuel deeper impact. Candid will allow us to combine our knowledge and passions, and to do more than we could ever do apart. And the work continues! Here are some highlights of what we have been working on to start the new year.

Projects/Training Launched

• New research supports: (1) donors give more to transparent nonprofits, and (2) transparent organizations tend to be stronger organizations. The research, recently published in the Journal of Accounting, Auditing & Finance, analyzed more than 6,300 nonprofits in the GuideStar database. They found that, as a group, nonprofits that earned a GuideStar Seal of Transparency averaged 53 percent more in contributions the following year compared to organizations that didn’t earn a Seal.
• In partnership with the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, we've officially launched Funding for Early Childhood Care and Education, a joint effort to map the last ten years of philanthropic giving around family engagement and professional development. Foundation Center Midwest is partnering with the United Black Fund and the Cleveland History Center at the Western Reserve Historical Society to present The Soul of Philanthropy: Reframed & Exhibited.
• We launched a new CF Insights research brief that looks at which community foundations are accepting donations of cryptocurrency, the challenges they've faced, and the platforms they use.
• Glasspockets has unveiled a new transparency indicator that highlights whether foundations are publicly sharing their values or have policies that commit them to working transparently. The new "Transparency Values/Policy" indicator can be found on the Who Has Glass Pockets? page.
• We've added a new infographic to the Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy site. Learn more on voting districts and the bipartisan divide on immigration issues.
• In January, Foundation Center Midwest hosted an event in partnership with local arts stakeholders at which Foundation Center Midwest director Teleangé Thomas presented to a soldout room of young and emerging creative professionals on how Foundation Center can help them find funding with Foundation Directory Online and Foundation Grants to Individuals Online.
• Also in January, Foundation Center Midwest hosted the Neighborhood Leadership Development Program's fundraising workshop, a full-day contract training for twenty-five "dreamers" working in the social justice and entrepreneurship space.
• Foundation Center West successfully completed its contract training with the Creative Work Fund (CWF), a program of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund that is generously supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The training included a series of informational webinars and a convening around Mastering Collaboration featuring successful past CWF grantees and their grant award-winning artist + nonprofit collaborations.
• Foundation Center West also completed two fund development workshop series for the San Francisco City and County Department of Children, Youth and their Families (DCYF). The series consists of three workshops each: fundraising planning; crafting a competitive letter of intent; and project budgets.

Content Published

• New posts on the GuideStar blog, including "New Research Shows Nonprofit Transparency Matters," "Has the Flow of Nonprofit Data Been Affected by the Government Shutdown?," "Do Capital Campaigns Hurt or Strengthen Major Gifts?," and "Why Nonprofit Staff Should Not Be Asked to Donate to the Organizations They Work For."
• New posts on WASHfunders.org as part of a new series focused on sustainable WASH topics such as blended finance, working with the sanitation sector, and UNGA and the SDGs.
• New posts on PhilanTopic, including "Cryptocurrency and the Community Foundation Field"; a review of Edgar Villaneuva's "Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance," by Edgar Villanueva; a Q&A with Cathy Cha, president of the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund; and a New Year’s Eve roundup.
• New posts on GrantSpace including one on high-impact volunteer engagement and another on corporate relationships in action
• New posts on the Glasspockets blog, including a two-part series on family foundations and transparency.
• New posts on GrantCraft, including a piece that questions how funders are defining impact and another offering advice for funders from a former fundraiser.
• A new post on the Center for Disaster Philanthropy (our project partner for the Measuring the State of Disaster Philanthropy) blog on what we can learn from five years of tracking disaster-related giving.
• 327 new resources added to IssueLab in December and January, including Promoting Gender Equity Lessons from the Ford Foundation International Fellowship Program and Aligning Stakeholder Communications for U.S. Marina Aquaculture.

In the News

• So many great articles about our launch of Candid by outlets such as Fast Company, The Nonprofit Times, Alliance magazine, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Nonprofit Quarterly, and more. Check out our press page for a complete rundown.
• "Jockey Club engages local philanthropic foundations in finding better city solutions," by South China Morning Post
• "As America Rapidly Ages, Who's Helping to Find Better Ways to Care for Seniors?," by Alice Dickow, Inside Philanthropy
• "Informal Networks of Generosity Are Supporting Asylum Seekers," by Jamie Lynn Goodwin, Truth Out
• "Participatory Grantmaking," by Sarah Lutman, Twin Cities Business
• "Private School and Why It May Be Best for Your Child," by Nyketa Gaffney, Cincinnati Family Magazine
• "Accountants Prove Transparency Boosts Giving," by Mark Hrywna, The Nonprofit Times

What We're Excited About

• Our offices in DC, Cleveland, New York, and San Francisco will host three-day proposal writing boot camps for the public in March and April. On average, Proposal Writing Boot Camp participants reported a 75 percent increase in their confidence after the session.
• March 26: The "All Together Now: Conversations in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” series continues. During a program titled "Skills for Overcoming Burnout – Refueling the Fire," our partners at Rhiza Collective will share proven methods of self- and collective care. Learn how stress and trauma impact individuals and teams, and get strategies to address conflicts and resolve tensions.
• We will travel to Miami in March to facilitate a funding panel, "Funding Collaborations and Building Ecosystems: A Grantmaker Meets the Changemaker Panel Discussion," in partnership with the Miami Children's Trust and Miami Dade Public Library System.
• We've updated our self-paced e-learning courses, including "How to Cultivate Meaningful Relationships with Funders," "How to Use Data to Raise More Money from Corporations," and "How to Start a Major Gifts Program."
• February 15: Foundation Center Midwest will be moderating a program in partnership with AFP Greater Cleveland, "Donor-Advised Funds: How to Find and Secure Support," featuring representatives from the Cleveland Foundation, Glenmede, and Fidelity. The program is a shared-cost contract program and, with a hundred attendees, is sold out.
• The second webinar and watch party presented as part of Foundation Center West's California Wellness: Strengthening California Nonprofits grant will happen on February 27: 7 Lessons Learned from Nonprofit Leaders with Sean Kosofsky. In addition, five California Funding Information Network partners — Cal State University - Chico; the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy at John F. Kennedy University; Santa Barbara Public Library; Santa Monica Public Library; Pasadena Public Library — and one lapsed FIN, Cal State University - Fresno, have signed up to host watch parties and engage in a facilitated community discussion post-webinar.
• GuideStar is providing nonprofit data to more people than ever before and in the last year recorded its 10 millionth unique visitor at GuideStar.org!
• We're thrilled to announce that more than 66,000 nonprofit organizations have added information to their GuideStar Nonprofit Profiles, thereby earning a Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum GuideStar Seal of Transparency.
• More than 70,000 university students and faculty in California now have access to GuideStar Pro resources for academic purposes thanks to UC Irvine and UC Berkley. Both colleges signed on to become GuideStar Library Services clients, providing institution-wide IP access to the GuideStar database.

Upcoming Conferences and Events

Our staff will be attending these upcoming events:

• Foundant Summit, March 3-5, Tempe, AZ
• PEAK Grantmaking Annual Conference, March 11-13, Denver, CO
• Case District One, March 13-15, Boston, MA
• Nonprofit Technology Conference, March 13-15, Portland, OR
• Association of Black Foundation Executives conference, April 4-6, Detroit, MI

Services Spotlight

• 458,072 new grants added to Foundation Maps in January, of which 2,960 grants were made to 1,836 organizations outside the U.S.
• Foundation Directory Online now includes more than 14 million grants. In the new My FDO, new tools can help you manage your prospects like a pro.
• New data sharing partners: Alaska Children's Trust, Alaska Community Foundation, Apex Foundation, Community Foundation of Snohomish County, Delta Dental Plan of Colorado Foundation, Inc., The Funding Network, George Alexander Foundation, John & Denise Graves Foundation, JRS Biodiversity Foundation, Kitsap Community Foundation, Sheng-Yen Lu Foundation, Melbourne Women's Fund, Montana Healthcare Foundation, Raynier Institute and Foundation, Satterberg Foundation, Thrivent Foundation, United Way of Pierce County, Westpac Foundation, and Sherman and Marjorie Zeigler Foundation. Tell your story through data and help us communicate philanthropy's contribution to creating a better world — learn more about our eReporting program.

Data Spotlight

• Since 2006, private foundations in the U.S. have made grants of more than $7 billion to improve early childhood care and education, reflecting a deep commitment to the importance of supporting children and their families during a critical developmental period in their lives.
• Total GrantSpace sessions for January 2019 exceeded 195,000.
• As of November 2018, our Online Librarian service had reached its 2018 goal of serving more than 130,000 people.
• We recorded nearly 30,000 registrations for our online programming in 2018.
• We exceeded our goal for in-person attendance to our classes, with more than 16,000 attendees in 2018.
• A five-year trends analysis of the largest 1,000 U.S. foundations demonstrates that foundations contributed an average $150.4 million a year specifically for disasters. Funding spiked in 2014 due to large grants for the Ebola outbreak, then declined over the next two years. Learn more about these trends at foundationcenter.org.
• We completed custom data searches for Grantmakers in the Arts, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, McKinsey, the Mississippi Association of Grantmakers, the City of Phoenix,the City and County of San Francisco, Skidmore College, TCC Group, the University of San Diego, and GiveWell.

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 Candid.

What's New at Foundation Center Update (November and December)

Does anyone feel like the end of the year is the busiest time of all? Not only is everyone swamped, but with so much happening in the world and in philanthropy, there's hardly any time to prioritize reflection, learning, and empathy. Here at Foundation Center, we're scrambling to finish this year's projects while also planning some exciting things for 2019.

This is a long update, but I guarantee there's something useful in it for everyone!

Projects Launched

• In partnership with the Early Childhood Funders’ Collaborative and Heising-Simons Foundation, we launched Funding for Early Childhood Care and Education, an interactive mapping tool that provides a valuable starting place for funders and practitioners interested in supporting the learning and development of young children across the country.
• In partnership with the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, we launched the fifth edition of Measuring the State of Disaster Philanthropy, as well as a revamped website with an updated dashboard. The new report includes a five-year (2012-2016) trends analysis, adding to the information available on disaster giving and enabling philanthropists, government agencies, and NGOs to better coordinate their efforts and make better decisions about support for effective disaster response and assistance. You can view all these resources at: disasterphilanthropy.foundationcenter.org.
• We launched the Barr Foundation Knowledge Center, which features key learnings and work from the Barr Foundation and their partners aimed at maximizing impact in their issue areas and the field more generally. Powered by our IssueLab service, the collection includes publications and resources that are free to browse and download.
• In partnership with Hispanics in Philanthropy and Seattle International Foundation, we released a new report, U.S. Foundation Funding for Latin America, 2014–2015. This two-year analysis updates seven years of collaborative research with a multiyear analysis designed to help civil society leaders identify long-term trends in the region and better target their resources. With additional analysis on Central America, the report was highlighted at the 2018 Central America Donors Forum in El Salvador.
• We added a new feature on YouthGiving.org, Causes: Youth In Action! The new pages provide an in-depth look at how youth funders are approaching critical issues in the world today. And while there are lots of causes around which youth are energized, the new feature focuses on three to start — Environment, Immigration, and Mental Health — with each page showcasing current funding data, ways youth can get involved, and stories from youth highlighting their work to effect change.
• We released new research in partnership with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation that maps the composition of and support for the complex ecosystem of nonprofit and philanthropic infrastructure organizations around the world.
• We launched new dashboards on the Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy site, a nonpartisan data visualization platform for anyone interested in understanding philanthropy's role in funding U.S. democracy. With the new dashboards, the site now provides information on more than 57,000 grants awarded by over 6,000 funders totaling $5.1 billion across four major categories: campaigns and elections, civic participation, government strengthening, and media.

Content Published

• New posts on our WASHfunders.org portal from a series on sustainable WASH finance that includes topics such as sanitation, water infrastructure, challenges and opportunities in Central and West Africa, and blended finance.
• New posts on PhilanTopic, including a conversation with Ann Mei Chang, author of Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good; "The Power of Arts to Heal," by John Mullaney, executive director of the Nord Family Foundation; a Q&A with David Egner, president/CEO of the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation; the first installment in a series on current trends in philanthropy by Foundation Center's Larry McGill; a conversation with Barbara Chow, director of the education program at the Heising-Simons Foundation, and Shannon Rudisill, executive director of the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative; "Rooted Communities: Placemaking, Placekeeping," by Andrea Caupain Sanderson, CEO of Byrd Barr Place in Seattle; and "Don't Wait Until 2020 to Invest in Youth Leaders," By Eric Braxton, executive director of the Funders' Collaborative on Youth Organizing.
• New posts on Glasspockets, including a look at how one foundation is gauging their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion; a Q&A with the Barr Foundation's Yvonne Belanger about creating a culture of learning; Foundation Center's Anna Koob on what the data says about foundation support for philanthropy and democracy; insights from a new guide focused on helping human rights funders balance risk and transparency; and thoughts from Foundation Center's Janet Camarena on what we can learn about transparency and philanthropy from the likes of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
• New posts on GrantCraft, including announcements of a new case study series and a new guide on participatory grantmaking, insights on funding for women's rights and government partnerships, a reflection on what it means to give up power as a funder, and a look back at some of the year's successes.
• More than three hundred new resources added to IssueLab in Noevmber, including Understanding & Sharing What Works: The State of Foundation Practice and a report that examines a giving circle network. IssueLab also added more than two hundred and thirty resources in October, including The Philanthropic Closet: LGBTQ People in Philanthropy, a report that considers how universities can confront institutional barriers facing junior researchers of color, and a report focused on improving our understanding of the needs of women and girls who use public and community toilets.
• And new blog posts on GrantSpace, including "Activating the Collective Power of Latinx Engagement and Giving," "Meet Foundation Center's Newest Training Partner: Middle Georgia Regional Library," and "How to Really Succeed at Cause Marketing."

Newsworthy Connections

• In the wake of the midterm elections, we have seen a reinvigorated debate around the role of philanthropy in a democratic society. But what are funders actually doing to support democracy in the United States? At a time of increased scrutiny of foundations, our updated dashboards on Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy provide a measure of transparency and a partial answer to that question and complement the broader discussion about philanthropy's role in a democratic society. Learn more at democracy.foundationcenter.org.
• Teleangé Thomas, director of Foundation Center Midwest, was tapped to moderate a televised interview with Anand Giridharadas, author of Winner Takes All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World at the City Club of Cleveland in October.

In the News

• "Power in Letting Go: How Participatory Grantmakers Are Democratizing Philanthropy," by Tate Williams, Inside Philanthropy
• "Seeking Both Problems and Solutions," by Jeff Ubois, Stanford Social Innovation Review
• "An 'Equi-Center' of Alliances," by Sandra Cyr, North Carolina State University, Philanthropy Journal News
• "U.S. Foundations Are Giving More Abroad," Timothy J. McClimon, Forbes
• "New report on how funders can engage in participatory grantmaking," Alliance magazine
• "New Foundation Center research examines funding for nonprofit and philanthropic infrastructure," William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
• "No Philly foundations cracked the list of top U.S. funders giving globally," Generocity.org

What We're Excited About

• Shifting from presenting data to sharing insights. A great example is this blog post on PhilanTopic written by our own Anna Koob on the intersection of democracy funding and participatory grantmaking — both recent focuses of our work.
• Our GrantCraft guide on participatory grantmaking guide has been downloaded more than 2,000 times since it was launched in October! We've also received a number of inquiries from funders interested in adopting the practice and are continuing to advance the conversation through blogs, conference sessions, and webinars.
• If you haven't already, check out the series in PhilanTopic on current trends in philanthropy by Vice President of Research Larry McGill and our Knowledge Services colleagues Supriya Kumar and Anna Koob. The series touches on big picture trends as well as a few of our recent research projects.
• Foundation Center has officially joined the United Philanthropy Forum, a network of more than seventy-five regional and national philanthropy-serving organizations (PSOs). We’re excited about the exciting joint opportunities that lie ahead!
• Foundation Center's annual Network Days conference for the center's Funding Information Network partners met the expectations of 93 percent of attendees and was attended by representatives of sixty-four of our partners, including a number from outside the U.S.

Services Spotlight

• In October, we added 178,992 new grants to Foundation Maps, of which 4,665 were awarded to 2,269 organizations outside the United States. In November, we added 218,139 grants, of which 12,716 were awarded to 5,912 organizations outside the U.S.
• Foundation Directory Online now includes more than 13 million grants. We've also made improvements to its search functionality and added more robust usage reports.
• New data sharing partners: Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation; Boyd and Evelyn Mullen Charitable Foundation; Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation; C&A Foundation; Delta Air Lines Foundation; Fichtenbaum Charitable Foundation; New York Women's Foundation, Inc.; People's United Community Foundation, Inc.; People's United Community Foundation of Eastern Massachusetts, Inc.; Pohlad Family Foundation; and David And Claudia Reich Family Foundation. Tell your story through data so we can communicate philanthropy's contribution to making a better world — learn more about our eReporting program.
• Thanks to a generous grant from Borealis Philanthropy, we added 97 eBooks to Foundation Center's collection, bringing the total number of eBooks available to the public to 179. Since mid-April, when the collection was first made available online, the most-viewed titles have been The Complete Book of Grant Writing: Learn to Write Grants Like a Professional and Nonprofit Management 101: A Complete and Practical Guide for Leaders and Professionals. Check out our free eBooks today!

Data Spotlight

• Since 2001, youth have made 101 grants totaling more than $475,000 in support of issues related to immigrants and refugees. YouthGiving.org's new cause page focused on immigration aims to help youth (and the adults who support them) to be more strategic in their work by highlighting quick facts and resources from organizations that work on these issues every day.
• In terms of disaster assistance strategies, 42 percent of dollars awarded in 2016 supported response and relief efforts; 17 percent supported reconstruction and recovery efforts, with more than half of that awarded in support of efforts related to the Flint water crisis; 8 percent supported resilience measures; and 5 percent was allocated to disaster preparedness efforts. Learn more about these strategies and trends at disasterphilanthropy.foundationcenter.org.
• Since 2011, Foundation Center has documented 57,000+ democracy-related grants. Of those, 11.5 percent totaling some $583 million were directed in support of campaigns, elections, and voting, including support for campaign finance reform, election administration, voter education, and voting access efforts.
• Did you know funding for nonprofit infrastructure organizations averaged $70.4 million annually between 2004 and 2015? Learn more about the ecosystem of organizations working to support nonprofits, philanthropy, and civil society at infrastructure.foundationcenter.org.
• Thirty-eight percent of the grant dollars awarded by U.S. foundations to Latin America went directly to recipient organizations in the region, while the rest was awarded to organizations located outside the region. Learn more about funding for Latin America here.
• Youth have awarded more than $795,000 in support of the environment, including causes such as climate change, outdoor education, and animal welfare. Explore youthgiving.org/learn/causes/environment to learn more about why young people are taking action around the environment.
• Since January 2018, Foundation Center has hosted more than 15,000 attendees at our in-person events at our five regional offices and registered nearly 30,000 folks for our online classes and self-paced e-learning courses. Check out our ongoing events calendar at GrantSpace. And browse our self-paced e-learning courses and other on-demand courses here.
• Through our Ask Us chat service, Foundation Center staff have assisted with or answered more than 130,000 questions from the public on topics related to finding grants, fundraising, and nonprofit management.
• Lastly, we completed custom data searches for the University of San Diego, Geneva Global, the Center for Evaluation Innovation, and the Educational Foundation of America.

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.

What's New at Foundation Center Update (May)

The flowers are blooming (and allergies raging!), and Foundation Center work is springing ahead through conferences, webinars and trainings, and new data collection efforts. I’m back in NYC for a few days to catch my breath, enjoy the noisy (in a good way) birds, and fill you in on the many exciting things we were up to in April:

Projects Launched

• As part of our ongoing #OpenForGood campaign, we launched a new GrantCraft guide, Open For Good: Knowledge Sharing to Strengthen Grantmaking, which explores how funders can open up and share their knowledge with the rest of the social sector, and beyond. And to recognize funders that are already knowledge sharing champions, we also launched the inaugural #OpenForGood Award at the recent GEO conference. (Congrats, GEO, on twenty years of strengthening the philanthropy field!) To nominate a foundation for our new award, visit: http://foundationcenter.org/openforgood.
• Foundation Center's Knowledge Services staff continue to help the Council on Foundations field its annual Grantmaker Salary & Benefits Survey, which provides the sector with data on staff composition and compensation of U.S. grantmakers. Council members and non-members with paid full-time staff are invited to complete the survey by May 25, so there's still time to participate and receive access to salary benchmarking reports generated from the data collected.
• We released our second Ghana report, which synthesizes the key outcomes from the Ghana Data Strategy and Capacity Building Workshop hosted by Foundation Center and the SDG Philanthropy Forum in November 2017. The meeting was part of our broader agenda to support the Ghanaian philanthropic sector in the areas of data capacity, collaboration, and effective grantmaking.
• We launched two leadership series papers on GrantCraft about where power sits in philanthropic practice — From Words to Action: A Practical Philanthropic Guide to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, by Barbara Chow; and How Community Philanthropy Shifts Power: What Donors Can Do to Help Make That Happen, by Jenny Hodgson and Anna Pond. Both papers encourage funders to rethink their relationships with grantees, partners, and each other and consider what they can do to foster greater inclusivity and give more power to those who lack it.

Content Published

• A handful of new blog posts on our Advancing Human Rights platform, including one that looks at where Brazil sits in the context of global human rights philanthropy, and another on the importance of balancing data transparency in sensitive contexts.
• New posts on PhilanTopic, including Time's Up for Philanthropy, Too by NoVo Foundation executive director Pamela Shifman, and a piece by Philippe G. Hills, president and CEO of Marts & Lundy, that considers three different tax-reform scenarios for nonprofits.
• New posts on Glasspockets on topics such as how transparency contributes to better relationships in the sector and how the Macarthur Foundation is #OpenForGood.
• New posts on GrantSpace, including info on ebooks now available from Foundation Center and 3 easy ways to ID new funding prospects.
• New posts on GrantCraft, including a reflection from the field in response to our latest leadership series paper on community philanthropy and an introduction to impact investing in the arts.
• 365 new resources added to IssueLab, including a timely report titled Protecting the Parkland Generation.

What We're Excited About

• We closed our annual CF Insights Columbus Survey. Look for the report coming this June. Learn more about the survey here.
• We just relaunched our beloved website for the social sector, grantspace.org! The site’s new and improved design makes it easy to navigate to trainings and find Foundation Center locations in your region, and you can also explore hundreds of free topical resources to build your own knowledge and capacity — from anywhere in the world!

Upcoming Conferences and Events

Our staff will be speaking at these upcoming events:

• European Foundation Centre (EFC) AGA & Conference May 29-31, Brussels, Belgium
• American Library Association, June 21-26, New Orleans, LA
• Proposal Writing Boot Camp, our 3-day immersion course for fundraisers, will be hosted June 5 in San Francisco and June 27 in Washington, DC.
• 2018 Excellence in Nonprofit Leadership Awards, June 28, Kansas City, KS

Data Spotlight

• 356,898 new grants added to Foundation Maps in April, of which 14,423 grants were made to 2,444 organizations outside the U.S.
• New data sharing partners: Community Foundation of Sarasota County, Inc.; Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art; Fay Fuller Foundation; Deaconess Foundation; Otto Bremer Foundation; and Stranahan Foundation. Tell your story through data so we can communicate philanthropy's contribution to making a better world — learn more about our eReporting program.
• Year-to-date we’ve answered more than 3,000 questions via our live Online Librarian chat service.
• Foundation Directory Online recently launched new Recipient charts! Quickly gain key insights on more than 500,000 individual Recipient profiles. You can also search 140,000 foundation profiles and over 11 million grants.

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.

Weekend Link Roundup (February 17-18, 2018)

Our weekly roundup of noteworthy items from and about the social sector. For more links to great content, follow us on Twitter at @pndblog....

Education

How can we make strong learning outcomes accessible to every child in public education? Charmaine Jackson Mercer, a new member of the Education team at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, shares her thoughts.

Fundraising

Forbes Nonprofit Council member Austin Gallagher, CEO of environmental nonprofit Beneath the Waves, shares five fundraising tips for new nonprofit leaders.

Gun Control

On her Social Velocity blog, Nell Edgington argues that the pattern of social change in America — from the abolition of slavery, to women's suffrage, to the legalization of interracial marriage — should give us hope that Americans, led by moms, will come together to support commonsense gun legislation.

Health

Th real cause of the opiod epidemic that is devastating America? According to a working paper authored by Christopher Ruhm of the University of Virginia its not what you think it is. Richard Florida reports for CityLab.

Human Trafficking

Here on PhilanTopic, Catherine Chen, director of investments at Humanity United, announces that, through its Pathways to Freedom challenge, Atlanta, Chicago and Minneapolis have been invited to partner with the organization to address the urgent problem of human trafficking.

International Affairs/Development

Hungary's right-wing nationalist government has introduced legislation that would empower the interior minister to ban non-governmental organizations that support migration and pose a "national security risk" — a bill seen by many has targeting the "liberal and open-border values" promoted by U.S.-Hungarian financier/philanthropist George Soros. Reuters'Krisztina Than reports.

What’s New at Foundation Center (February)

Last month, we launched this monthly series as a way to keep you posted on what we at Foundation Center are learning, where we're speaking, what data we're collecting, and how you can contribute to that story. And while athletes from around the world are slipping, sliding, and jumping their way to glory in South Korea, we've been hard at work bringing data and knowledge to the fore for philanthropy globally. Here's the latest:

Projects Launched

• Our Advancing Human Rights platform was updated with new trends data, revealing a 45 percent increase in human rights funding worldwide between 2011 and 2015, from $1.4 billion to more than $2 billion. In partnership with the Human Right Funders Network, we began to map the landscape of human rights grantmaking in 2010, which led to this first-ever five-year analysis. In addition to the site update, we also launched a blog series featuring human rights funders who provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse into key trends related to their areas of focus. And we created an infographic that distills the key findings from the analysis.

• Help us spread the word with a tweet!

Content Published

• New posts on PhilanTopic on the tax bill, creating high-performing teams through community-focused initiatives, and strengthening philanthropy's role in the resistance, as well as Newsmaker interviews with Fred Blackwell, CEO, The San Francisco Foundation, and Kavitha Mediratta, executive director, Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity.
• New posts on Glasspockets on foundation transparency highlights from 2017 and, as part of the ongoing #OpenForGood series, about how foundations are sharing their knowledge for the benefit of the philanthropic sector.
• New posts on GrantSpace on leveraging donor motivation and articulating impact for your arts program.
• New posts on GrantCraft about how loans can keep impact on track in the social sector and what's in store for philanthropy in 2018.

What We're Excited About

• We are a founding partner of the first U.S.-based Opportunity Collaboration Conference, taking place in Florida in May.
• We answered nearly 900 questions about nonprofit management and the social sector more broadly through our online chat service in January.
• We're giving GrantSpace — our website geared to grant seekers — a makeover so it's simpler to find what you're looking for. Keep your eyes peeled for the new site in April.
• Our revamped custom training program for grantseekers uses in-person and online tools to connect participants in meaningful ways and promote concrete outcomes. Through assignments, peer review, expert coaching, and workshops, you'll be supported from start to finish. Email our training team at fctraining@foundationcenter.org for more information.
• A soon-to-be-released GrantCraft Leadership Series paper by Barbara Chow focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion in philanthropy.

Projects in the Pipeline

• In partnership with Sustain Arts and Audience Architects, a new report mapping the dance ecosystem in the Chicago area
• In partnership with the Council on Foundations, a report on international grantmaking by U.S.-based foundations

For more on these projects or how to work with us, send us an email.

Upcoming Conferences and Events

Our staff will be speaking at these upcoming events:

• "Mapping the Money: A Changing Landscape of Human Rights Funding," February 14, San Francisco, CA (in partnership with the Human Rights Funders Network)
• Webinar: "Funding Arts Programs: How to Articulate Your Impact," February 15
• Webinar: "Going Public: Overcoming the Foundation Transparency Challenge," February 22 (in partnership with United Philanthropy Forum)
• Funding Forward Conference, March 14-16, New Orleans, LA
• PEAK Grantmaking Conference, March 19-21, Orlando, FL
• Salzburg Global Seminar on the SDGs, March 18-21, Salzburg, Austria
• NetFWD Annual Meeting, March 22-23, Paris, France
• Proposal Writing Bootcamp (various dates); we'll be hosting several upcoming bootcamps in a variety of locations — take a look!

Our staff will be attending and/or exhibiting at these events:

• American Library Association Midwinter Conference, February 9-13, Denver, CO
• SXSW, March 10-13, Austin, TX

Data Spotlight

• 328,486 new grants added to Foundation Maps since January 1, of which 4,045 were made to 2,591 organizations outside the U.S.
• New data sharing partners: Austin Family Foundation, Charities Aid Foundation of America, ClimateWorks Foundation, Laffey-McHugh Foundation.

Tell your story through data so we can communicate philanthropy's contribution to making a better world — learn more about our eReporting program.

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.

Because What You Know Shouldn't Just Be About Who You Know

The following post is part of a year-long series here on PhilanTopic that addresses major themes related to the center's work: the use of data to understand and address important issues and challenges; the benefits of foundation transparency for donors, nonprofits/NGOs, and the broader public; the emergence of private philanthropy globally; the role of storytelling in conveying the critical work of philanthropy; and what it means, and looks like, to be an effective, high-functioning foundation, nonprofit, or changemaker in the twenty-first century. As always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback.

_____

"Knowledge is obsolete." As a librarian, my ears perked up when someone shared the title of this TEDxFoggyBottom talk. It's plausible. Why memorize obscure, hard-to-remember facts when anything you could possibly want to know can be looked up, on the go, via a smartphone? As a mom, I imagine my kids sitting down to prepare for rich, thought-provoking classroom discussions instead of laboring over endless multiple-choice tests. What an exciting time to be alive — a time when all of humanity's knowledge is at our fingertips, leading experts are just a swipe away, the answer always literally close at hand, and we've been released from the drudgery of memorization and graduated to a life of active, informed debate! And how lucky are we to be working in philanthropy and able to leverage all this knowledge for good, right?

Though the active debate part may sound familiar, sadly, for too many of us working in philanthropy, the knowledge utopia described above is more sci-fi mirage than a TED Talk snapshot of present-day reality. As Foundation Center's Glasspockets team revealed in its "Foundation Transparency Challenge" infographic last November, only 10 percent of foundations today have a website, and not even our smartphones are  smart enough to connect you to the 90 percent of those that don't.

The Foundation Transparency Challenge reveals other areas of potential improvement for institutional philanthropy, including a number of transparency practices not widely embraced by the majority of funders. Indeed, the data we've collected demonstrates that philanthropy is weakest when it comes to creating communities of shared learning, with fewer than half the foundations with a Glasspockets profile using their websites to share what they are learning, only 22 percent sharing how they assess their own performance, and only 12 percent revealing details about their strategic plan.

Foundation Center data also tells us that foundations annually make an average of $5.4 billion in grants for knowledge-production activities such as evaluations, white papers, and case studies. Yet only a small fraction of foundations actively share the knowledge assets that result from those grants — and far fewer share them under an open license or through an open repository. For a field that is focused on investing in ideas — and not shy about asking grantees to report on the progress of these ideas — there is much potential here to open up our knowledge to peers and practitioners who, like so many of us, are looking for new ideas and new approaches to urgent, persistent problems.

Apocalypse Later? Philanthropy and Transparency in an Illiberal World

The following post is part of a year-long series here on PhilanTopic that addresses major themes related to the center’s work: the use of data to understand and address important issues and challenges; the benefits of foundation transparency for donors, nonprofits/NGOs, and the broader public; the emergence of private philanthropy globally; the role of storytelling in conveying the critical work of philanthropy; and what it means, and looks like, to be an effective, high-functioning foundation, nonprofit, or changemaker in the twenty-first century. As always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback.

_____

How long will it be before nonprofit transparency takes its place alongside diceros bicornis on the endangered species list? Hopefully never, but in a world that's growing more technologically sophisticated and more illiberal, I'm beginning to think that if it's not Apocalypse Now, maybe it's Apocalypse Later.

The value of transparency

Transparency has been a boon to the philanthropic sector, making it possible for organizations like Foundation Center, Guidestar, the Urban Institute, Charity Navigator, and others to create searchable databases spanning the entire nonprofit and foundation universe. Our efforts, in turn, contribute to responsible oversight, help nonprofits raise funds to pursue their missions, and fuel online platforms that enable donors to make better giving choices. Transparency also enables foundations to collaborate more effectively, leverage their resources more efficiently, and make real progress on critical issues such as black male achievement, access to safe water, and disaster response. The incredibly rich information ecosystem that undergirds the American social sector is the envy of others around the globe — not least because it gives us a clear view of what nonprofit initiative can accomplish, how it compares and contrasts with government, and how social, economic, and environmental issues are being addressed through private-public partnerships.

Where we are today

Federal law — U.S. Code, Title 26, Section 6104 — stipulates that public access to Form 990, a federal information form that tax-exempt organizations are required to file annually, must be provided promptly on request at the exempt organization's office or offices, or within thirty days of a written request. However, exempt organizations don't have to provide copies of their Forms 990 if they make these materials broadly available through the Internet, or if the IRS determines that the organization is being subject to a harassment campaign.

In 2015, Carl Malamud, the Don Quixote of open data, dragged transparency into the digital age when he brought suit against the Internal Revenue Service to force it to make the 990s of a handful of organizations that had been filed electronically available as machine-readable open data. Malamud won, and, somewhat surprisingly, the IRS then did more rather than less to comply with the order: as of June 2016, all Forms 990 filed electronically by 501(c)(3) organizations are available as machine-readable open data through Amazon Web Services. As such, they can be downloaded directly in digital form and processed by computers with minimal human intervention. The development represents a victory not only for Malamud but for the Aspen Institute’s Nonprofit Data Project, which has toiled for years to make 990s more accessible. The idea, of course, is that free, open data on nonprofits will enable more innovators, researchers, and entrepreneurs to use the data in ways that help make the sector more effective and efficient. Since Malamud won his case, the IRS has posted some 1.7 million Forms 990 as machine-readable open data.

Get Open: Leaders Reflect on Glasspockets' Impact

The Foundation Center's Glasspockets website is dedicated to the proposition that sharing philanthropic knowledge, processes, strategy, and best practices is a win-win for everyone – from grantmakers to grantees and the communities they serve.

But don't take our word for it....

In a new video, Glasspockets: Making the Case for Transparency, philanthropy leaders – including representatives from the Barr Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, and others – reflect on the positive impact that Glasspockets, and working more openly, has had on their work.

What are you waiting for? Take our "Who Has Glass Pockets?" transparency self-assessment and join the "Glass Pockets" movement today!

– Melissa Moy