Impact Investing: What Exactly Is New?
A veteran of the microfinance industry looks at impact investing through the lenses of history, language, and psychology.
Public Good Politics
Philanthropy in America: A History by Olivier ZunzA Healthier City
San Francisco’s five-year-old universal health care program sees positive results.
Social Impact Markets
Why a market for social innovations is needed now more than ever.
Making Businesses More Responsible
Corporate sustainability reporting is increasingly mandated by government and the public.Connecting Heart to Head
Leaders of Alcoa and PUMA, two forward-looking multibillion-dollar global companies, describe a framework for sustainable growth.
Open Source for Humanitarian Action
Ushahidi develops free software that allows volunteers to map humanitarian crises from their mobile phones.
Diversity Opportunities
New research finds that some companies are increasingly pro-diversity and others lag well behind.The Rise of Social Capital Market Intermediaries
Donors and grantmakers are allocating money more efficiently, thanks to the emergence of information and funding intermediaries.
The Evolution of Membership
Membership in organizations is growing, but not what it used to be.
A Win-Win for Haiti
Partners in Health and Abbott Laboratories are building a new plant in Corporant, Haiti to produce a therapeutic food called Nourimanba.
Hall of Mirrors
Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools by Steven BrillGiving Blind
Watch dog organizations don't reach most donors.Engineering Higher Efficiency
Toyota brings its vaunted process improvement method to nonprofits.
Global Diseases, Local Needs
The diseases that get funded tend to be the ones for which funders can take credit.
Public Services 2.0
Technology can empower citizens to co-create some government services.Journey into Brazil’s Social Sector
The founder of the first social fund in Brazil tells his story.
Specialists’ Niche
A Danish company finds jobs for people with autism.Governing Innovation
New York’s Center for Economic Opportunity tests new antipoverty programs from the mayor’s office.
Five Ways to Navigate the Fiscal Crisis
How human services nonprofits can stay afloat and advance their missions during a time of government cutbacks.
Redefining Education in the Developing World
A new approach that builds relevant marketplace, entrepreneurship, and health care skills is needed.
The Race Against CO2
The Chinese government's new five-year plan calls for increasing the energy efficiency of new buildings.
Change Comes at a Cost
In 2008, a group of Chicago’s social service agencies formed the Back Office Cooperative, which has produced impressive financial savings. Yet greater efficiency has had a cultural cost.
On-Ramp for Entrepreneurs
Venture for America launches two-year apprenticeships for aspiring entrepreneurs.Giving 2.0: Getting Together to Give
Giving circles are powerful ways to transform the world while also transforming participants’ giving.
Roundtable on Impact Investing
A group of social innovation leaders from around the world discuss impact investing and how to make it more effective.
Shifting the Market
Impact Investing: Transforming How We Make Money While Making a Difference by Antony Bugg-Levine & Jed EmersonGo-Getters and Givers
Giving 2.0: Transform Your Giving and Our World by Laura Arrillaga-AndreessenFinding Your Funding Model
Four guidelines provide a road map for leaders to identify and develop the right funding model for their organization.
Circles of Change
Lending circles, self-help groups, and study circles are among the oldest and most effective tools for creating personal and social change.
Opportunities in Mobile Health
The United States and other industrialized countries can learn from experiments in the developing world that use the humble cell phone as a platform for innovation.
Trawling for Trash
An EU Fisheries Commission Project pays fisherman to remove plastic debris from the Mediterranean Sea.
Too Good to Fail
In August 2010 the US government closed ShoreBank, one of the country’s leading social enterprises. Why did ShoreBank fail?
Revitalizing Struggling American Cities
Living Cities is working with five US municipalities to develop an ecosystem for solving urban problems.
Effective Partnerships
How local governments and nonprofits can work together for large-scale community change.
Microfinance Needs Regulation
The microcredit industry needs to be regulated through policies that address high interest rates and abusive loan recovery practices.
Water Thinking
The Peer Water Exchange manages diverse solutions and resources to fight the global water crisis.
It Takes a General Contractor
Nuru International identifies proven poverty-reduction programs and aims to take them to scale.
Improving Teamwork
Collectivist, group-oriented teams do better work.
Foundations as Investors
Social investors are experimenting with a profusion of creative funding mechanisms to help innovators sustain health-improving approaches and to achieve greater impact.
Investing for the Safety Net
Technologies that reduce costs and improve care for the underserved are often the most difficult to scale up. But a handful of strategies could turn things around.
Student Retention App
A new Facebook app helps incoming freshmen connect—but within the closed community of their college.The Missing Link in School Reform
American educators, policymakers, and philanthropists are overselling the role of the highly skilled individual teacher and undervaluing the benefits that come from teacher collaborations.
Undisclosed Pharma Contributions
Most health advocacy organizations do not report industry funding.Reinventing Health Care Services
A doctor describes his groundbreaking, transdisciplinary effort to design more cost-effective care models for conditions that drive a large proportion of US health spending.
Scaling Play
KaBOOM! How One Man Built a Movement to Save Play by Darell HammondRadically Small Thinking
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee & Esther DufloSupplicants No More
The End of Fundraising: Raise More Money by Selling Your Impact by Jason SaulHow Leaders Encourage Innovation
Transformational leaders capitalize on the creativity that employees have.When the Big Bet Fails
The Northwest Area Foundation learns—and shares—hard lessons from a 10-year initiative.