Largest Study on Narratives About Philanthropy with the Council on Foundations

The Challenge

Foundations play a major role in our society, and the majority of Americans view them positively. However,  Americans have little understanding of what foundations do and how they affect our daily lives. This is not just a matter of brand identity for individual foundations; the lack of a clear narrative about what the philanthropic sector does puts all foundations at risk of increased regulation.

The Council on Foundations approached the Center with this problem: How can foundations build better relationships with grantees, communities, and policymakers? 

The Center recognized this as something more than a branding issue. From a public interest communications perspective, this was an issue that transcends the interests of a single organization. The lack of honest, transparent stories about what foundations do created a narrative vacuum around the charitable sector — a space for mystery and doubt. Without a clear shared narrative, critiques about individual foundations could fill the space and spill over to the nonprofits and communities foundations work with. 

The Center proposed a highly collaborative research project with the Council that would examine what storytelling habits could help foundations build a shared narrative about charitable giving.

Research in Action 

The Center developed a research project to answer three major research questions:

1. What shapes perceptions of foundations among policymakers and the larger public, and how do policymakers shape others’ perceptions? 
2. Which storytelling elements might increase the public’s understanding of and trust in foundations? 
3. How do communications practitioners in this field approach their work–particularly storytelling–and shape public discourse and perception?

This project featured a robust, mixed-method research to surface the American public’s and federal policymakers’ perspectives on philanthropy, current communications practices at foundations, and specific types of stories that can increase the public’s understanding of and trust in foundations. This study includes: 

• A national survey of 3,557 Americans sampled from diverse identity and ideological backgrounds to match the U.S. demographics;
• A survey of communications practitioners who work in the sector; 
• Fourteen interviews with four Congressional staffers, ten communications practitioners, and a scholar researching philanthropy; 
• Multiple types of content analyses; and 
• Social media listening across platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). 

The Center’s process is extremely interactive, connecting practitioners to researchers to ensure that the research is actionable. Throughout the project, the Center team sought the insight of the Council on Foundations, making sure we were connecting the insights to tangible actions in the charitable giving sector. 

Turning Research Into Insight

In April 2024, the Center and the Council on Foundations released Philanthropy’s New Voice: Building Trust With Deeper Stories and Clear Language, which is the largest study on narratives about foundations. In this report, we translated the research into six insights and six research-backed recommendations to help foundations tell stories that actually build trust with their communities and an understanding of what philanthropy does day-to-day. 

Insights: 

1. Americans have positive views about philanthropy but don’t understand the charitable sector or the role it plays in their lives.  
2. With some notable exceptions, members of Congress seem more interested in collaboration with foundations than increased regulation.  
3. The philanthropic sector has not effectively established a shared narrative to counter harmful narratives about foundations. 
4. The American public, Congressional staffers, and practitioners want foundations to be more transparent and share details about how philanthropy works. 
5. Foundations’ use of jargon and borrowed metaphors obscures their role in larger ecosystems of change. 
6. Narrative change and storytelling work take a long time, which makes it hard to show the value of this work to leadership or boards.

Recommendations:

1. Tell stories within complex ecosystems in which foundations’ roles are balanced with other actors who contribute to change. 
2. Lean into your role as trusted messengers and tell great, ethical stories.
3. Commit to sector-wide storytelling to fill the narrative vacuum.
4. Tell stories that build the right kind of transparency.
5. Say what you mean, and mean what you say.
6. Commit the time and resources needed to support and evaluate long-term narrative change work.

Measuring Success

This project continues to grow as we present it to communicators and strategists working at foundations or with the charitable giving sector. We’ve presented our findings at ComNet23, ComNet24, Independent Sector, the Entrepreneur Funder’s Network, the Science of Philanthropy conference, and Philanthropy Leads. 

Soon we will release tools that practitioners can use to identify and share stories, measure their effectiveness, and make the case for better stories in their organizations. We will also lead trainings on how to make these changes in partnership with the Council on Foundations.

Learn More

Use the data from our survey to dive deeper into the research. We’d love to see what insights you gain from additional analysis. You can find the cleaned data set in this link.

If you want to learn more about how Americans view nonprofits and foundations, check out this amazing report from our friends at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy: What Americans Think About Philanthropy and Nonprofits.