Over the last several years, GEO has been working to better understand what contributes to and impedes efforts to lead productive change in philanthropy. One theme that has arisen time and again is the importance of creating and nurturing an organizational culture that enables grantmakers to be most effective. Organizational culture is the personality, behaviors and underlying assumptions of an organization. While culture can be understood in various ways and is hard to pin down, it has a persistent influence on how an organization behaves. Over the course of our exploration we have become convinced not only that a positive internal culture is an essential bedrock for effective philanthropy, but we have also, as a sector, habitually neglected this important contributor to our success. We designed this publication to spark dialogue and to provide a first set of observations that will support a deeper exploration of culture in the field of philanthrop
