Our Clients

Discover the various ways we’ve helped these organizations and industry leaders maximize their disaster-giving impact.

Contact our Development team to find out how CDP can help you increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your disaster philanthropy.

To help the Annie E. Casey Foundation build their disaster philanthropy capacity, the CDP consulting services team created a comprehensive domestic grantmaking program. The new program set disaster response guidelines, developed an internal process for funding and reviewing grant requests, and created a team to assess local and national disasters for funding opportunities.

In the wake of the devastating 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation (the Foundation) developed a keen interest in the recovery and resilience of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Foundation partnered with CDP to obtain a strong baseline understanding of disaster prevalence, disaster funders and the opportunities for investment in the region. This knowledge-gathering exercise will inform the Foundation’s role in disaster grantmaking across the Caribbean.

Aspen Community Foundation contracted CDP in 2021 to help create a structure that enables government agencies, nonprofit organizations and philanthropists to coordinate efforts to meet the needs of those affected by disasters. This work is focused on preparation for natural disasters. Since February 2022, ACF has convened stakeholders across Pitkin, Garfield and Eagle counties through three meetings facilitated by CDP. During the convenings, participants explored what might be possible for the region, identified gaps, began creating a Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD) and started building relationships and collaborating to be ready for deployment should another disaster occur.

CDP supports Benevity in their efforts to help purpose-driven brands engage their people and communities in doing good. CDP provides reliable and situational updates on domestic and international disasters which Benevity uses to create response and relief opportunities in their platform for millions of users around the world. We also inform them of which nonprofit organizations are leading relief and recovery efforts to enable their clients to conduct workplace giving and corporate grantmaking initiatives in order to have a maximum impact on families and affected communities. Support from CDP enables Benevity to best inform their clients on current crises and the resultant pressing needs.

When Flint experienced a community crisis caused by lead-contaminated drinking water, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation requested CDP’s expert analysis from CDP’s consulting services team. Drawing upon our experience with other disasters, we interviewed foundation and city leaders, surveyed disaster materials for best practices and experiences, and made a series of recommendations about potential next steps for intermediate and long-term recovery with the help of a national funding coalition.

There’s nothing like helping your community rebuild after massive flash flooding to motivate you to find new ways to bounce back better after a disaster. The Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation engaged CDP’s consulting services team in developing a model to increase their community’s capacity to respond to and recover from future disasters.

CDP partners with The Funders Network on an exciting regional effort to empower community foundations to take lead roles in the face of disaster. Find out more about the Philanthropic Preparedness, Resiliency & Emergency Partnership (PPREP) program that is working with seventeen community foundations from a ten-state area in the Midwest, along the Missouri River.

Building on the work of the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with CDP to convene funders around the concept of strengthening the capacity of local humanitarian leadership. CDP organized and implemented a gathering of philanthropic leaders that advanced an innovative and strategic road map for addressing humanitarian crises through local actors. A tangible result of this work with the Foundation and other philanthropic leaders is the Strengthening Local Humanitarian Leadership Philanthropic Toolkit, found in the CDP Disaster Philanthropy Playbook. CDP continues to convene this group of funders with a current goal of establishing an ongoing coordination structure for continued collaboration.

Google and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy have partnered together since early 2017 to support disaster recovery efforts. Since expanding our partnership with Google and Google.org in 2019, millions in contributions from the Google community have been allocated to disaster response and recovery programs in the U.S. and around the world. With their goal of ensuring individual donations go to established, trustworthy organizations making a local impact for a given crisis, Google and Google.org rely on the expertise of CDP for strategic and effective grantmaking to affected communities through nonprofits on the frontlines to ensure resources reach those who need them the most.

The safety and health of people with diabetes who use insulin and their caregivers during the hurricanes of 2017 spurred the formation of the Diabetes Disaster Response Coalition (DDRC), a group of diabetes organizations that came together to address the needs of people with diabetes during disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires. With funding from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, CDP and M+R were hired to assist the coalition to better prepare for national disasters by defining its mission, building relationships within the disaster response field, develop protocols and internal policies, and forming a structure to ensure its longer‐term sustainability. As a result of this work, the DDRC focuses on preparedness, education of people with diabetes and healthcare providers, communications, and advocacy.

Since mid-2018, the CDP consulting services team has supported the Humana Foundation in a strategic planning process designed to guide the Foundation’s disaster grantmaking efforts. Our work with the Foundation has resulted in a new approach for disaster giving that ties the Foundation’s mission and aims to its philanthropic efforts across the disaster life cycle. With our guidance, the Foundation has focused, refined and communicated its grantmaking parameters. They have also developed relationships with strong humanitarian assistance players with the hope of forming multi-year partnerships.

In partnership with the Lincoln Community Foundation, CDP has designed and implemented three facilitated workshops with the goal of increasing the capacity of the Lincoln community to respond and recover from disasters. Since Lincoln has yet to experience a major disaster, our work centered on helping to inspire the appropriate level of urgency around the topic of disaster preparedness, as well as to assist the Lincoln Community Foundation in building the relationships to navigate a community relief and recovery process should that be necessary in the future.

The Oklahoma City Community Foundation sought to increase the capacity of the greater Oklahoma City community to respond to and recovery from disasters. CDP was brought on board to host a series of workshops with four objectives: 1) create a group where professionals were able to share information on disaster preparedness; 2) determine areas where nonprofit leaders could support the work of the city; 3) finalize a framework for a collaborative planning process for the working groups; and, 4) provide a platform to share these projects and successes.

As part of the $1 billion National Disaster Resilience Competition organized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Rockefeller Foundation retained the Center for Disaster Philanthropy in an effort to help governmental applicants engage with foundations, corporations, and community organizations. Our consulting services team highlighted the money philanthropy contributes to the short- and long-term efforts surrounding disaster recovery and resilience, as well as the intellectual and social capital foundations and nonprofit organizations provide. We made hundreds of connections, with the dual purpose of strengthening competition submissions and underscoring the needs of vulnerable populations.

The Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association asked CDP to evaluate how their industry, given its unique satellite assets, could provide assistance to people affected by natural disasters. Our consulting services team conducted a feasibility study that included an environmental scan, surveys, and research that resulted in the development of a pilot task force.

The San Francisco Foundation (TSSF) came to us to find out how our consulting services team could enhance their disaster grantmaking strategy and help them allocate staffing resources in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic Bay Area event. After an in-depth evaluation, CDP developed a program for TSSF that included a long-term recovery capacity assessment, a disaster analysis tool, and community case studies.

CDP has supported Schwab Charitable since 2015. CDP provides reliable situational updates on domestic and international disasters. We also inform Schwab Charitable of which nonprofit organizations are leading relief and recovery efforts to which their donors may direct grants and have a maximum impact on victims and their families. The CDP team joined Schwab Charitable for two episodes of the Giving With Impact Podcast with Stanford Social Innovation Review: Efficiently and Effectively Supporting Those in Need and What’s Next: The Life Cycle of a Pandemic.

As a local funder, The Simmons Foundation had a vested interest in ensuring that Hurricane Harvey survivors recover and thrive. CDP, working in close collaboration with the Foundation, hosted weekly convenings of local and national funders around the topic of Hurricane Harvey relief and recovery. These convenings created a space for local and national funders to share their priorities and activities and look for collaborative opportunities. Furthermore, the weekly meetings informed the funding community about key developments and issues that arose in the months following Hurricane Harvey’s landfall.

CDP’s consulting services team put our subject matter expertise to work in making TechSoup’s guide for IT disaster planning and recovery more readable and applicable to a much broader – and not necessarily technically inclined – audience.

CDP supports T. Rowe Price by providing reliable and situational updates on domestic and international disasters. We also inform them of which nonprofit organizations are leading relief and recovery efforts where their associates may direct donations in order to have a maximum impact on families and affected communities. Support from CDP enables T. Rowe Price to best inform their associates on current crises and the resultant pressing needs.

When United Way of the Battle Creek and Kalamazoo Region (UWBCKR) approached the Center for Disaster Philanthropy for disaster grantmaking advice, it had already responded to a major flood and was witnessing the impacts of COVID-19 unfold in real-time in its geographic area of concern. UWBCKR determined that it needed something more – better internal preparation for the work of disaster grantmaking and a framework for its fund that was informed by best practices in disaster philanthropy. With the assistance of CDP’s consulting team, UWBCKR completed a place-based funders preparedness workbook and adopted a series of recommendations to craft a strategic approach to leveraging its relationships, history and grantmaking capacity to further a more equitable recovery for its communities.

With a disaster budget already approved by their board, the Westfield Insurance Foundation asked CDP to help them become a more educated and sophisticated disaster grantmaker. Find out how our consulting services team helped our new colleagues refine their grantmaking capacity by moving them from making scrambled eggs to creating a soufflé.