
Native American Funding
Inside Philanthropy Sites Six Funders (including 2 Minnesota Funders) As Stand Outs in Native American Funding Inside Philanthropy reports Native Americans represent 2.9% of the U.S. population and receive just…
7 Mistakes New Philanthropic Foundations Make
Kris Putnam-Walkerly writes in her "Confident Giving” Newsletter: “Drawing from my conversations with thousands of foundation leaders, spanning 23 years, here are seven prevalent missteps. By paying attention to these mistakes,…

New Terms: 2023
This guide from Disability: walks through the general dos and don'ts when interacting with individuals who identify as disabled The term “meanwhile spaces” refers to disused sites leased or loaned…

Small Family Foundation Workshop ’23
Date: June 15, 2023 Time: 1- 4 PM Price: $75 Where: Virtual (live) Register Now Now in its 11th year! Small family foundations are defined as giving less than $1M,…

The Latest on Mackenzie Scott: A Web Database with Mixed Applications
Mackenzie Scott’s new website Yield Giving is now accessible to the public. A cumulative gift database, it gives us a great deal of information the $14,000,000,000 she has given to…

Examination of environmental grantmaking practices reveals disparities
“Examining Disparities in Environmental Grantmaking: Where the Money Goes” examines the environmental grantmaking practices of 220 foundations that distributed more than 30,000 grants totaling $4.9 billion that were distributed over…

Four articles on DEI
In an open letter published on Black Feminist Fund, some of philanthropy’s most influential organizations say that “It’s time to fund Black feminist movements like we want them to win”. Among…

ChatGPT in Philanthropy: Useful?
A number of recent articles have covered artificial intelligence gone awry: Microsoft’s AI’s strange declarations of love. ChatGPT’s inaccuracies. Midjourney's odd human portraits with too many fingers and too many…

2023 Lean Foundation Operations And Management Report
Exponent Philanthropy is an association of mostly small funders- private and community foundations with few or no staff, philanthropic families, and individual donors. The group surveys its membership to understand…

What motivates donors to give? …Matching Gifts
An estimated $4-$7 billion in matching gift funds goes unclaimed per year. This, according to American Charities, a 501(c)(3) membership-based nonprofit that promotes workplace giving. In their Facts & Statistics…

About Those 990PFs…
Many funders don’t have a website, this is especially true with small family foundations. So, the 990PFs are often the only source of information about them.* Foundations must submit tax…

Fundraising Event Experience survey
Classy, a leading online fundraising platform and thought leader, highlighted donors’ 2022 Fundraising Event Experience in a survey of 1,000 event attendees: -- 26% attended live events, while 36% went virtual because there was…

A Social Psychologist On Five Elements Of Good Writing
As grantmakers become more isolated from most grantseekers, and most grantseekers become less visible to grantmakers, the art of writing becomes more and more critical to relationship-building success. There are…
Virtual Volunteers
For years, Grantseekers told grantmakers that the only way they’d receive a grant was if a corporate employee was on their board of directors. The pandemic sort of wrecked that…
The Equitable Evaluation Framework
Insights for Grantseekers... when funders place equity at the center of their giving The Equitable Evaluation Initiative group recently published a paper in partnership with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations entitled…
Best day and time to ask for a contribution
When’s the best day and time to ask for a contribution? A Giving Way survey says that Tuesday and Fridays are the best days to ask, and weekends are the worst). The survey…
Funder Affinity Groups
Funder Affinity Groups Funder affinity groups are ongoing open-facing collaborations of grantmakers interested in a specific area of grantmaking (health, environment, K-12 education, for example). Inside Philanthropy explains Affinity Groups: --…
Impact of Mega Grants on smaller nonprofits
Most philanthropoids seem okay with the huge McKenzie Scott-size grants that foundations are putting out for good causes. But some foundation employees are side-barring concerns about the impact these grants are…
A look at the funding shifts in Mental Health in MN
Mental health has long been a neglected issue area among funders. The money designated for mental health usually went to hospitals. But, during the last decade, we have seen funders…