Public Policy

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Trust in Civil Society

Published: 
July 2021
Public trust is the currency of the nonprofit sector. The public’s belief that nonprofits will “do the right thing” is one of the central reasons the sector exists. Communities have relied upon nonprofits to provide trusted sources of information, life-sustaining services, environmental stewardship, and places of refuge for centuries. In today’s highly polarized environment, understanding and managing trust has never been more important for organizations to own their license to operate, lead, and succeed. Given the outsized importance of trust, it is imperative to assess the status of that...
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Advocacy Field Guide for Lean Funders: How Small and Place-Based Foundations and Donors Can Make Big Change with Little Money

Success in the advocacy and policy arena depends on knowing who the decision-makers are, what motivates them, the best arguments and supporting data to use, the most effective voices and champions, and the best timing. These will be specific to every issue and will vary in every town, city or state. Therefore, to apply the principles and practices in this guide, you first need to choose a focus for your policy work — usually one or two issues you care deeply about — and then you need to learn everything you can about that issue. This, then, is the essential preparation for advocacy — focus...
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The Costs of Political Violence in the United States: The Benefits of Investing in Communities

The insurrection at the United States Capitol occurred while this report was being prepared for publication. As more details emerge, it will be some time before the lead-up to the violent insurrection, the insurrection itself, and its aftermath can be fully analyzed. However, this event certainly illustrates many of the types of costs of political violence that this paper details. There are the immediate economic costs of shutting down the Capitol complex and repairing the damage that incurred. There are costs in increased security; 25,000 National Guard troops were brought into Washington, D...
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Philanthropy Advocacy Playbook: Leveraging Your Dollars

PAP.png Philanthropy Advocacy Playbook: Leveraging Your Dollars is designed to provide foundations with the information they need to both fund and conduct advocacy. The Playbook provides examples of how foundation investments have generated meaningful policy change, as well as links to other publications and fact sheets that will allow foundation leaders to quickly answer their questions and access additional information.
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Advocacy Funding: The Philanthropy of Changing Minds

Grantmakers tend to be cautious about funding advocacy, and for good reason - yet advocacy can play a crucial role in advancing a foundation's mission. In this guide, contributors explain that advocacy includes a lot of opportunities to improve public policy through work that is well within the limits of the law. Whether your purpose is to advance an idea, argue a position, or enrich the policy debate, the guide offers resources and strategies for planning your work, reaching your audience, assessing impact, and more.
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Policy Influence: What Foundations are Doing and Why

For all the conversation and critique about foundations’ engagement in public policy, relatively little data about their efforts in the public policy realm are available, including how many foundations engage in efforts to influence public policy, as well as why and how. To better understand foundations and public policy influence, the Center for Effective Philanthropy studied the perspective of foundation leaders across the country on this topic, through surveys and in-depth interviews.
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