Toward Meaningful, Valuable, Equitable Governance
Learn how effective philanthropic governance can support nonprofits and communities. GEO shares promising practices for boards and grantmaking leaders.
Resource Type: Guide
2026 National Conference Policies
GEO’s 2026 National Conference is creating a vibrant, supportive space where we can transform philanthropic culture and practice together. To help guide us in this work, we have developed policies to guide conference participation. Please reach out to …
A Guide for Trustees Reimagining Capacity Building: Navigating Culture, Systems & Power
Strengthening nonprofit organizations is not just a nice-to-have, but an essential part of foundations’ work to ensure that nonprofits have the resources they need to address today’s most pressing social concerns. Indeed, the vast majority of staffed foundations – 86 percent – do just that – invest in organizational strengthening in areas such as leadership, fundraising, evaluation, communications and technology.
Learning in Philanthropy: A Guidebook
When grantmakers focus on learning for improvement, we use evaluation and learning to generate information and insights that will help us better understand both how we’re doing in our work and how to improve. A focus on taking action based on what we learn ensures that we are engaged in strategic or applied learning. This publication serves as an orientation for staff and board members highlighting key concepts, how to get started, and how others in the field are thinking about and addressing important issues around learning. This publication provides a solid basis for thinking and talking about the next steps in your organization’s learning work.
Using Key Moments to Shape Culture: The Helen Macpherson Smith Trust
With the retirement of their long-time CEO and a milestone distribution to celebrate, Helen Macpherson Smith Trust took this natural opporutnity to review and transition the trust’s organizational culture, grantmaking strategy, structure and processes.
Culture Resource Guide: Shift
Shifting culture doesn’t simply mean developing a fresh values statement or identifying three or four cultural attributes that we want to define us. Rather, we need to back up these actions with real work to create a culture that will make our organization and our grantees more successful.
Culture Resource Guide: Acknowledgments
This list of people helped to make GEO’s Culture Resource Guide possible.
Worksheet: Culture Tightrope
Your organization’s values are often balanced by an opposite value. One way to visualize your future culture is to name the values in tension and the desired balance.
Conversation Starter: Seeing and Understanding Culture
This conversation starter will explore how foundation leaders have made organizational culture more visible to themselves and others.
Worksheet: Anthropologists Game
Get past what your organization says it values to uncover the hard-to-see, hidden values deeply ingrained in your current culture.
Worksheet: Culture Mascot
Create a clear picture of the culture that your organization aspires to have.
Conversation Starter: Understanding Incentives
When certain aspects of the “old” culture seem intractable, even though new expectations have been introduced, the culprit could be that old behaviors are still inadvertently incentivised.