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A Year of Reflection, Learning, and Action

Annual Report 2023-2024
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A Year of Reflection, Learning, and Action

A Message From Our Executive Director

Front cover of the 2023-2024 annual reportTrue transformation is the product of reflection. It is the process of thinking deeply about information and experiences that concretizes our learning and galvanizes change. For individuals and entire communities, transformation can best be achieved through thoughtful, purposeful, and action-oriented reflection.

Philanthropy and higher education share a mission to facilitate reflection and seek transformation — not only in the classroom or in individual nonprofits or localities, but in every community and imbued across every nation where individual and collective knowledge, experiences, and skills are formative.

As part of a flourishing Grand Valley State University community, the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy lives at the intersection of this shared work, where an orientation toward lifelong learning is core to our purpose and rigorous standards of ethical research practice are paramount. In our dedication to an applied research mission, we aim to empower nonprofits and philanthropy to use research and data, to engage in meaningful and mindful training opportunities grounded in that research, and to think critically about big questions and enduring challenges in our work. We aim to build and share knowledge that empowers the transformation of people’s lives, organizations, and whole communities.

“We aim to build and share knowledge that empowers the transformation of people’s lives, organizations, and whole communities.”

We also take the call to reflect, learn, and act as a serious mandate for ourselves as an organization and as the driver for how we contribute to advancing an effective and vibrant field. As you will see in the following annual report, fiscal year 2024 (July 1, 2023–June 30, 2024) has been a time of energizing and honest reflection for the Johnson Center — a year of learning and of action. This year we undertook deeply thoughtful and strategic assessments of our current programs, offerings, and resources — much of this work is ongoing — to determine their best forms and value to the field moving forward. We took action in collaboration with myriad research partners to conduct and publish national studies that increase philanthropy’s knowledge about some of the field’s most critical and emergent questions — especially in the areas of donor-advised funds (DAFs) and collective giving. And we garnered support from scores of individuals and grantmakers who believe in our mission as passionately as we do, and who are securing that mission into the future.

I am delighted to share the work of the center with you in this annual report and look forward to continuing to share the results of our reflections in the weeks and months to come. We draw great strength from the dynamic philanthropic ecosystem and extraordinary university communities of which we are a part, and we are profoundly grateful to everyone who joins us in strengthening these communities every day.

View the Full Report

 

Headshot: Lesley Slavitt

Lesley D. Slavitt, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy
at Grand Valley State University