Blog

Dear partners and friends, 

I’m delighted to share with you Outcomes that Matter, the Nathan Cummings Foundation’s first-ever Impact Report. I know the publication of a report is not Earth-shattering news, but it’s a big deal for me. One of my highest priorities as CEO of this foundation is making our foundation more transparent. My career in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors has convinced me that greater transparency drives greater impact.

Many foundations collect a wealth of information, but almost all of it lives in internal documents that simply collect dust. If we can make more of this information public, we can seize innovations in learning and improvement, and take advantage of one our sector’s biggest natural advantages: the ability to join forces with others without risking the loss of trade secrets, profits, or market share. Just as important, we can send positive signals to the public at a time when trust in institutions is shockingly low.

That’s why my team and I invested a lot of time and effort in producing Outcomes that Matter. If you read the report, you’ll find the following:

• Details on how we’re implementing the board’s bold decision to invest 100 percent of our endowment assets for mission-aligned impact
• Clarity on what areas of work we are now funding as part of our exclusive focus on advancing racial, economic, and environmental justice (REEJ)
• Infographics showing how we allocated all of our grants last year, including the racial and gender makeup of our grantee partners’ leadership teams
• Information on our new $22 million program-related investment (PRI) portfolio
• Results of the four shareholder proposals we filed during the 2023 proxy season
• Case studies on three ways we recently used the totality of our assets (e.g., shareholder activism, impact investments, PRIs, grants, and strategic communications) to advance people-centered impact.

We’ll be publishing impact reports every year. So please share your feedback. We’ll use your input to continuously improve the reports and the work they detail. 

Advancing transparency for impact,
Rey Ramsey