Resources

Finding the Goldilocks Zone in Policy Influence: Five Considerations for Funders Seeking to Get It “Just Right”

A Higher Ed Funder Pivots, Recognizing Racial Inequity as its Biggest Barrier

What You Make Depends on Where You Live: College Earnings Across States and Metropolitan Areas

Deciding whether to invest time and money in higher education is among the most important decisions that a young adult can make. The evidence is clear that workers who went to college earn higher incomes, on average, than those without a post-secondary degree. But considering the variations in different geographic areas, do workers in some parts of the country do about as well with two-year degrees as those with bachelor’s degrees?

This first-of-its-kind study looks beyond the national averages, comparing mean earnings for full-time workers with different levels of education in all 50 states and D.C., in over 100 metro areas, and in rural America using individual-level data for the years 2015 through 2017 from the American Community Survey (ACS).

Policy Influence: What Foundations are Doing and Why

Foundations’ engagement in public policy has contributed to advances in society in areas from civil rights to consumer protections to public health. At the same time, and with greater intensity in recent years, the role of philanthropy in influencing policy has been the subject of scrutiny.

And yet little data is available about how many foundations engage in efforts to influence public policy, why they undertake this work, and how they approach it. So CEP studied the perspective of foundation leaders across the country on this topic. Based on survey responses from 214 foundation leaders and in-depth interviews with CEOs and staff at 43 foundations, as well as survey responses from 419 nonprofit leaders on CEP’s Grantee Voice panel, Policy Influence: What Foundations Are Doing and Why shares what we learned.

Racial Equity and Philanthropy: Disparities in Funding for Leaders of Color Leave Impact on the Table

This research, from Echoing Green and Bridgespan, lays bare the racial disparity in today’s funding environment and argues that population-level impact cannot happen without funding more leaders of color.

Echoing Green and Bridgespan collaborated to research the depth of racial inequities in philanthropic funding. Based on what we see in our work as intermediaries in the sector, two of the biggest factors holding back philanthropy’s efforts to help advance social change are rooted in race:

• Understanding the role of race in the problems philanthropists are trying to solve;
• The significance of race when it comes to how philanthropists identify leaders and find solutions.

Color-blind grantmaking, even when grounded in a well-meaning attempt at equity, is the crux of the problem. Philanthropist Jeff Raikes shares: “Tricia and I recognize that we come into this work with blind spots, as did many of our staff. Over the past few years we have challenged ourselves to better understand the ways a race-conscious approach leads to better results for the communities we want to support.”

Education, Race, and Jobs in the COVID-19 Crisis

The coronavirus pandemic has devastated the US economy—and staggering unemployment numbers still do not fully reflect the extent of the crisis. This analysis reveals that the economic burden has fallen on the most vulnerable groups in our society: workers without bachelor’s degrees, Black and Latino workers, low-income families, parents, and young adults.