Stanford Social Innovation Review

Why grassroots design will determine the winners in developing markets.
by Joshua Weissburg

The most trusted employees cash in on lax internal controls to fleece nonprofits.

The Regeneration Project helps the environmental movement get religion.

MomsRising is tapping a vast resource to improve the lives of American families.

Dancing Deer Bakery helps most when it keeps its eye on the bottom line.

(left): CEO Patricia Karter (right) and employees ice cookies. The company hires heavily from its surrounding low-income neighborhood of Roxbury.

When the Salk polio vaccine proved to be effective in 1955, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis had to choose whether to close up shop or to pursue a new agenda. The foundation first broadened its mission, but lost donations, volunteers, and public support. After honing its mission to birth defects, however, it recovered. Here’s how the organization that eventually became the March of Dimes planned – and survived – its transitions.

For much of its history, Wal-Mart’s corporate management team toiled inside its “Bentonville Bubble,” narrowly focused on operational efficiency, growth, and profits. But now the world’s largest retailer has widened its sights, building networks of employees, nonprofits, government agencies, and suppliers to “green” its supply chains. Here’s how and why the world’s largest retailer is using a network approach to decrease its environmental footprint – and to increase its profitability.

TerraCycle turns what others leave behind into fertilizers and fashion.

Management wisdom says that nonprofits must be large and in charge to do the most good. But some of the world’s most successful organizations instead stay small, sharing their load with like-minded, long-term partners. The success of these networked nonprofits suggests that organizations should focus less on growing themselves and more on cultivating their networks.

Social enterprises combine the best of the nonprofit and for-profit worlds, but that very innovation has made it difficult for them to raise money. Philanthropists are reluctant to give grants to profit-making organizations, and commercial investors are wary of investing in organizations that are driven by a social mission. The authors explore the social enterprise capital market and offer short- and long-term solutions to this funding gap.

To persuade a whole group, start by changing the minds of a few moderates.

The more race- and sex-segregated the county, the more Republican it votes.

Xenophobia and altruism may have evolved hand in hand.

Toxic environments knock impoverished kids’ systems out of kilter.

SSIR Managing Editor Eric Nee spoke with Escuela Nueva’s president Vicky Colbert about her efforts to change the way children are educated.