Animal and environmental causes receive just 3% of all nonprofit giving, yet the ripple effects of companion animal welfare extend far beyond pets. From housing instability and public health to community safety and economic resilience, animal welfare is deeply intertwined with human well-being, especially in systemically excluded communities. At the Animal Assistance Foundation (AAF), Colorado’s... Read More
The Holloway Family Foundation’s Annual Relay Grant is a streamlined, trust-based approach to grantmaking that places funding decisions directly in the hands of women nonprofit leaders of color. In 2020, several reports highlighted persistent disparities in philanthropic giving to women and girls of color, as well as inequities faced by organizations led by people of color... Read More
Artificial intelligence—particularly large language models (LLMs), which are trained on large amounts of text to generate written responses to prompts —such as ChatGPT or Claude—is becoming an increasingly common part of nonprofit and philanthropic work. These tools offer new possibilities for research, communication, and efficiency, while also raising important questions about accuracy, bias, data privacy,... Read More
Strong grantees and their talented leaders are the engines that power the success of foundations. This is true of small and large foundations alike. During Exponent Philanthropy’s (then Association of Small Foundations’) 2012 National Conference session titled “Capacity Building, Stronger Nonprofits, Improved Outcomes,” TCC Group’s Paul Connelly led a panel of leaders from the Leighty Foundation, Arbor... Read More
What keeps our members up at night? Succession, or the crucial task of passing the leadership baton. Building a pipeline of philanthropic talent to assume key leadership roles—on the board, on staff, or otherwise—is one great way to prepare for succession. Through our Next Gen Fellows Program, a 6-month training intensive for philanthropy’s future leaders, we’ve... Read More
Over the past year, four of us—all women who work as executive directors of foundations with few staff—have been participating in a peer coaching group that grew out of Exponent Philanthropy’s Master Juggler Executive Institute. Because it has had such a meaningful impact on us, we wanted to share some thoughts about this experience and... Read More