Stanford Social Innovation Review

The Rockefeller Foundation is staying at the forefront of new and big ideas, funding new innovation processes, like crowdsourcing and collaborative competitions

Kiva, the first online peer-to-peer microcredit marketplace, is one of the fastest-growing nonprofits in history. But its nonprofit status was not inevitable. Here’s why Kiva chose to be a 501(c)(3), what this tax status buys the organization, and how being a nonprofit poses challenges. —By Bethany Coates & Garth Saloner

Investors screen for entrepreneurial passion when making funding decisions. 

Defining what it takes to make breakthrough change.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there, the Cheshire Cat tells Alice when she asks for directions in Wonderland. But what if Alice had known exactly where she wanted to end up, and just didn’t know which road would get her there? That is the challenge that entrepreneurs with a social mission face every day. In her autobiography, The Blue Sweater, Acumen Fund founder and CEO Jacqueline Novogratz engagingly tackles this question. 

Voluntary carbon offsets allow people to invest in projects that allegedly counteract their greenhouse gas emissions. But can voluntary offsets help slow global warming? Or are offsets simply a way for guilt-ridden consumers to buy their way out of bad feelings? —By Matthew J. Kotchen

The idea that social entrepreneurs create something called social value—good works that go above and beyond what traditional entrepreneurs and businesses deliver—is a dearly held tenet of the social change movement. But what exactly is social value, and how do social entrepreneurs go about creating it?

Nonprofit lender Root Capital connects rural farmers and artisans with the corporations that crave their products.

When Nau, an outdoor clothing start-up from Portland, Ore., launched in 2005, word on the street had it that the company would push socially responsible business to new heights. But barely a year after putting its earth-toned parkas and virgin merino wool sweaters up for sale in its übercool “webfront” stores, Nau pulled the plug. Find out how Nau tried on too much, too fast. —By Suzie Boss

VisionSpring picks promising social entrepreneurs to restore the eyesight of poor people.

In his new book, The Search for Social Entrepreneurship, Paul C. Light, professor of public service at New York University, uses his considerable talents to provide a rich discussion of the most important issues in the field of social entrepreneurship.