Grounded in Data: Day One of CEP2025

Philanthropy leaders from across the U.S. and around world gathered in downtown L.A. on Monday amid fanfare as the city celebrated back-to-back World Series wins for the Dodgers. The more than 600 leaders were not here to celebrate the win for L.A., but for CEP’s 2025 conference, which kicked off this afternoon.

‘Mounting Pressure’: CEP Presents New Data

After a warm welcome from three leading California grantmaking collaboratives — SoCal Grantmakers, Northern California Grantmakers, and Catalyst — programming got underway with a presentation of hot-off-the-presses CEP research.

Grounding the opening plenary conversation in data, CEP’s Vice President of Research Elisha Smith Arrillaga, Ph.D. presented striking insights from recent CEP surveys that reveal the strain the nonprofit sector is now under and examine philanthropic responses so far.

Drawing from hundreds of survey responses that were collected as recently as a month ago, Smith Arrillaga shared that:

• 81 percent of nonprofits have experienced or anticipate experiencing increased demand for services
• 68 percent of nonprofits say that the current context has had a negative impact on their ability to carry out work
• 61 percent of nonprofits say that the current context poses moderate to significant risk for them to continue to operate.

As one nonprofit leader put it:

On the foundation side, the new CEP data reveals that 55 percent of foundation leaders indicate that the current context has had a negative impact on their foundation’s progress toward goals, and 87 percent report experiencing increased demand for funding in 2025, while 30 percent report increasing their grantmaking.

Smith Arrillaga’s full presentation deck with additional data is available to download and The Chronicle of Philahthropy also published an in-depth analysis of the data. CEP will release a full report with additional data drawn from interviews and further analysis in early 2026.

Civil Society Under Threat

Smith Arrillaga’s presentation set the stage for a discussion of the compounding threats that nonprofits and other civil society organizations are facing right now as well the pressures facing funders, and how they can respond. Moderated by CEP President Phil Buchanan, the discussion was billed as “not an uplifting one,” but in addition to a sobering analysis of the current context, panelists offered both hope and practical avenues toward action.

Panelist Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits and a tireless and bold advocate for the nonprofit sector, noted that “the level of threat that nonprofits are facing right now really is unprecedented.” Fellow panelist and historian Benjamin Soskis, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, affirmed the ‘unprecedented’ nature of this moment, noting that at no point in the past has there been such “overt normalization of targeting ideological opponents.”

Marcus Walton, president and CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, urged those considering how best to respond to such attacks not to resort to backroom strategizing: “If strategy was the answer we would have strategized ourselves into transformation a long time ago.” He instead urged employing language fit to describe this moment and emphasized the importance of convening and of courageous leadership to “interrupt the fear.”

CEP Board Chair and President of the George Gund Foundation Tony Richardson doubled down on the message of leading courageously, offering a phrase that he noted has become something of a mantra at the Gund Foundation: “Our values are not illegal.”

After the main stage sessions, CEP2025 attendees broke out into smaller groups for in-depth sessions on particular topics, including “how philanthropy can shape an inclusive AI future,” “effective grantmaker governance in a time of crisis,” and “reimagining global development” in the wake of significant cuts to official development assistance in many geographies.

Data to Action at the CEP Pre-Conference Session

Ahead of the ballroom doors opening to officially kick off CEP2025, more than 60 attendees from 47 funders who have conducted a CEP assessment in the last five years gathered for a pre-conference session designed specifically for recent CEP assessment users.

Led by CEP’s Alice Mei, the session was an opportunity for CEP assessment users to hear novel insights from CEP’s field-wide dataset, to connect with one another, and to learn from fellow funders who have utilized CEP data to implement change.

One presenter shared strategies their foundation uses to make sense of and disseminate results across an incredibly large organization, including utilizing the GPR results for onboarding; another noted the alignment between the competencies that surfaced when reviewing their Staff Perception Report and what their grantees were asking for, and saw opportunities there.

As CEP’s Kevin Bolduc put it: “This is a generous community of folks who care about the efficacy of philanthropy … There is a lot of practical wisdom in this room.”

CEP2025 attendees ended the day at a poolside reception, with a full day of programming to look forward to on day two. Look for our dispatch from day two on Tuesday evening!