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PEAK Grantmaking

Weekly Reader – August 13, 2018

What we’re reading and recommending this week. We add to this post throughout the week and look for your suggestions in the comments.

Monday, August 13

Does Collective Impact Really Make an Impact? (Sarah Stachowiak and Lauren Gase, SSIR) Eight findings from a recent study of collective impact initiatives, including their effect on systems and population-level outcomes.

Tuesday, August 14

Adaptive Boards Don’t Stop at Technical Solutions (Jennifer Kramm, NPQ) I want to urge boards and nonprofit leaders to thoughtfully plan for adaptive solutions even if they’re hard to name or messier to approach. For boards of directors to genuinely develop to meet changing needs, we need to change as individual leaders, change as governing groups, and pair technical solutions with adaptive ones.

Wednesday, August 15

The Case for General Operating Support (Andrea Bretting, Michael Jordan, and Mailee Walker, CEP) Instead of having conversations with grantees about how they can make their next proposal the most compelling, we are able to have conversations that allow us to truly learn what grantees are facing that creates challenges or opens up opportunities for them to fulfill their mission.

Thursday, August 16

Ripple Effect: A Foundation Looks to Women and Girls of Color to Take the Lead (Julia Travers, Inside Philanthropy) The Ms. Foundation for Women, the nation’s’ oldest women’s foundation, shared a new five-year strategic plan this month that outlines a $25 million commitment to invest in women and girls of color and gender equity.

Friday, August 17

Don’t Waste the Donor-Advised Fund Debate. It’s a Chance to Reimagine Philanthropy (Jason Franklin and Tyler Nickerson, The Chronicle of Philanthropy) As readers opened the Sunday New York Times business section in early August, they couldn’t miss the newspaper’s prominently splashed report documenting the ways donors were getting overly large tax benefits for their gifts to donor-advised funds while the public seemed to be getting very little in return.


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