GEO 2012 Annual Report

The GEO community engages new

and diverse audiences.

GEO members connect with peers to tackle grantmaking challenges together.

GEO members build knowledge around new ideas and insights from GEO resources.

GEO members lead the field in embracing the essentials of smarter grantmaking.

The GEO Community

Membership

2012 marked a huge growth milestone for the GEO community with the total number of members surpassing 400...

Participants in Embrace Complexity, a community of practice on evaluating place-based initiatives, generated a shared understanding of the types of success indicators that they share in common.

Is Grantmaking Getting Smarter?

More than 50 GEO members helped launch the Collaborative Capacity-Building Lab, a year-long program focused on sustaining the impact of comprehensive and collaborative approaches to community change.

Snapshot of

GEO Members

GEO members outpace the philanthropic field in engaging in smarter grantmaking practices that contribute to nonprofit success, according to GEO's triennial national survey released in March 2012.

Academic

Institutions

including

91 new members

Philanthropic Infrastructure Organizations (e.g. regional associations of grantmakers or grantmaker affinity groups)

ending the year

with 412 total members

GEO members convened to address pressing challenges and advance practice improvement goals through GEO’s Action Learning programs.

Peer Learning

Opportunities

Operating Foundations/Capacity-Building Programs

Participant quote

Private/Independent Foundations (includes Health Care Conversion Foundations)

The GEO community explored emerging topics together through GEO Member Conversations, featuring practical examples and thought-provoking discussions.

Community Foundations

GEO Publications

Action

Learning

and representing

Members by Type of

Grantmaker

3664

individuals.

Corporate Foundations and Giving Programs

"Thank you for welcoming all levels of experience to participate. The questions asked and answered within the group are so relevant. While I have experiences and questions of my own, when I hear other questions asked and answered I am grateful because it is an issue I know I will encounter further down the road."

Family Foundations

GEO resources keep grantmakers informed of the

emerging trends, debates and practices from

the field of philanthropy and feature practical examples

gathered from GEO members.

Conversation Topics

Donor Advised Funds, Philanthropic Advisors, Workplace Giving Programs, and Other

Government Grantmakers

Learn and Let Learn: Supporting Successful Learning Communities

Investing in Change: Funding Collective Impact Efforts in partnership with FSG

How Can Grantmakers Focus on Nonprofit Talent to Grow Impact?

Change the Story, Change the World with Andy Goodman

Four Essentials for Evaluation

Is Grantmaking Getting Smarter?

Strategic "Field Building" Approach to Advocacy Investments

co-hosted with Grantmakers in Health

New Normal for Social Justice Philanthropy

Assessing the Impact of Responsive Grantmaking

Working with Intermediaries

Growing Impact in Rural Communities

Possibility Grantmaking

$250m - $1.9b

Under $49m

Members by Asset Size

GEO convened more than 640 grantmakers in Seattle to share their experiences and learning around supporting nonprofit effectiveness.

$50m - $249m

More than $2b

Government Grantmakers (of all sizes)

5 publications released in 2012

"Short term grants are only going to get short term solutions. Long term grants are going to enable risk taking, they are going to enable continuity and consistency that make organizations better over time."

Plenary session speaker Darell Hammond,

founder and CEO of KaBOOM!

GEO in

the News

What did participants take away from the conference?

“Loved the creative nature of this conference.”

GEO CEO Kathleen Enright launched a Huffington Post blog channel - expanding GEO's reach to more than 311,000 unique monthly visitors to the Huffington Post.

Participant quotes

“I was so pleased to see the quality of interactive learning in each session.”

“This was easily the most interactive learning conference I have attended in years!”

Speaking

Engagements

GEO’s staff members engaged with other influential communities of grantmakers and nonprofits across the country.

Member Survey

GEO staff members spoke at 25 external events and reached almost 800 grantmakers in 14 cities.

Grantmakers who are more engaged in the GEO community are significantly more likely to make changes in practice to enhance nonprofit results. The 2012 survey confirmed that members find GEO's publications and conferences valuable in supporting their work.

Fostering

Connections

Online

Skill-Building

Workshops

GEO members problem solve together

by sharing their grantmaking questions and challenges through GEOList and immediately receive responses and support from the community.

GEO members joined with grantmaking peers for training and discussion on how to better support nonprofit financial sustainability and build evaluative capacity for greater impact. GEO's Scaling What Works initiative partnered with Nonprofit Finance Fund and Innovation Network to deliver the traveling series.

Four Essentials for Evaluation

offers practical guidance for using evaluation as a tool to inform learning.

Online

Tools

Learn and Let Learn

shares how to design and execute successful learning communities that achieve outcomes.

GEO's online presence helped to raise awareness about effective grantmaker practice.

What did participants gain from the workshops?

Smarter Grantmaking Starts Here

GEO members participated in a new remote learning series that offered deeper connections to community peers and a deeper dive into the practices that have the greatest impact on nonprofit results.

WEBSITE STATS

Turning knowledge into action

Annual unique visitors: >33,440

Total number of pageviews: 242,475

Total annual visits: 84,421

Time spent on site: 7,626 hours (317 days)

61% of traffic from returning visitors

After attending the recent finance workshop in Little Rock, Ark., the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation decided to shift their approach to supporting grantee sustainability, from merely asking about grantee plans to finding ways to help nonprofits build reserve funds.

Participant quote

“At the time that I took this course, my organization was at the very beginning of re-thinking our grantmaking programs. The discussions and materials were useful in helping me frame the issue for us. Months later, the course has proven even more useful as we begin to implement re-structuring of our programs.”

>1,600 new followers in 2012

~4,000 total followers by end of year

Total likes at end of 2012: 1,558

New likes in 2012: 480

Widening the Pool: Open and

Inclusive Grant Competitions

shares advice for making processes more open, inclusive and transparent.

How Can Grantmakers Focus on Nonprofit Talent to Grow Impact ?

explores ways to support the unique talent needs of nonprofits as they grow impact.

Collaborative Funding for Greater Impact:

A Case Study of the Cincinnati Experience

offers an example of supporting nonprofits in more collaborative ways to amplify impact.

Message from GEO's President and CEO

Kathleen P. Enright

President and CEO

The Grantmakers for Effective Organizations’ community is united by a shared commitment to achieving better results over time. Every year our work is shaped by the innovations and improvements our members make. We learn from your efforts to connect with peers in order to solve problems together. We support you as you grapple with unanswered questions and look for better ways to back your grantees.

I am pleased to present GEO’s 2012 annual report to highlight some of what we have learned and achieved. Each year, we engage in a few experiments ourselves. This report is one such experiment with a new, interactive format for content delivery. I hope you will enjoy the presentation and find it to be an engaging way to convey our work in 2012.

The year 2013 is looking to be an exciting time for the GEO community. To share about the projects and events in-store, GEO President and CEO Kathleen Enright and other members of the GEO team have recorded a few brief videos describing some of the promising activities to look forward to in the year ahead.

Looking

Ahead