Impact measurement

A gathering of over 400 people marked the 7th annual meeting of the European Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA) on 16-17 November in Turin, Italy. The theme of this year’s conference, Venture Philanthropy as a Catalyst …

What do you get when you convene a conversation with 40 or so philanthropy and development professionals from 20 or so countries about the future of their fields, all over two days? The Rockefeller Foundation, …

Trusts and foundations have a unique role to play in developing the social investment market. This opportunity comes at a time when I expect a lot of funders are pondering the lacklustre performance of their …

‘We make a difference’. This is probably one of the most commonly heard statements in the charity world. But have you ever stopped to think about what it really means?  Charities and funders make a …

Funders today – whether established grantmaking trusts, family foundations or individual philanthropists – are keen to explore how they can offer charities more than money. Financial help is clearly central to grantmaking, but it’s often …

Charity Navigator added nonprofit transparency practices to its financial efficiency formula to produce new charity ratings for thousands of US-based organizations. The new calculation for rating charities affected almost 50% of the organizations (2,626 new …

Another charity ranking system is out, this time in Canada: theMoneySense Charity 100 (not currently available online but the 2010 version is here). It takes a very small sample of 100 out of the more than 85,000 …

I’ve been in Denver for a few days at the Council on Foundations annual conference. I’ve been unable to post updates as I did at the Global Philanthropy Forum because the technology infrastructure available here …

I attended two morning sessions at GPF on Day 3 before I had to leave to catch my flight home. The first was a presentation by Omidyar Network on how they combine grants, programme-related investing …

The received wisdom about measuring impact (much simplified, of course) is that it serves two purposes: it enables non-profits to know how they’re doing in terms of achieving their goals and to adjust accordingly, and …