For grantmakers, few things are as illuminating as seeing a nonprofit’s work up close. A site visit cuts through the paperwork, brings the work to life in a way no document can, and opens up conversations that simply don’t happen over email. But site visits are also high-stakes moments. They raise expectations, shape relationships, and... Read More
The pandemic reminded us of something we already knew; there’s no substitute for being in the same room. But the hunger to connect runs deeper than COVID. The U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness a public health epidemic in 2023, and noted that approximately half of American adults were already experiencing loneliness before the pandemic even... Read More
As AI-powered meeting tools become increasingly common, foundations face new questions around privacy and information security. This sample policy from Rooted Philanthropic (approved July 2025) offers a practical, real-world example of how to address these challenges — covering internal meetings, external meetings, and accessibility accommodations. Read More
Across the nonprofit sector, an enormous amount of time is spent on grant applications that will never be funded. Some of that is unavoidable. A lot of it isn’t. When application processes are more complex than they need to be, the burden falls on the nonprofits least equipped to handle it, and the real value of... Read More
The 2026 Foundation Operations and Management Report is available now! This is the only resource of its kind for foundations operating with few or no staff. The full Foundation Operations and Management Report offers key philanthropy benchmarks and long-term data on the evolution of lean foundations. Based on our annual survey of members, this report... 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