Stanford Social Innovation Review

Since 1970, more than 200,000 nonprofits have opened in the U.S., but only 144 have reached $50 million in annual revenue. They got big by doing two things: They raised the bulk of their money from a single type of funder. And just as importantly, these nonprofits created professional organizations that were tailored to the needs of their primary funding sources.

Greenlight is a nonprofit catalyst: It identifes a local need, scours the country for the best program to meet it, and then establishes a chapter in its hometown.

The Public Radio Fund gives investors a chance to protect nonprofit airwaves. With its help, KTOO-FM in Juneau, Alaska, recently debuted a 24-hour news show and two locally-hosted Alaska-flavored music stations. 

SSIR Managing Editor Eric Nee met with Emmett Carson to discuss his bold plans for the newly merged Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which is now the fourth largest community foundation in the country.

Human-caused climate change, sharply declining conventional energy sources, and population growth are threatening the very platform of human life. Yet only 5 percent of U.S. foundation spending goes to the environment, and a paltry 2.9 percent goes to science and technology.

Foundation payout rates and the time value of money.

President of the Ford Foundation.

Artists for Humanity students are also employees.

Managing the collaboration portfolio.

Breaking down the firewall between foundation
investments and programming.

Social movement and grassroots organizations left in the cold.

CEO of the American Cancer Society.

For Manna, the path to affordable housing runs though a peer-support club.

A theater ensemble transforms into a company with a bottom line.

Charitable donors should think of themselves as “investors” – and should expect returns, just like a stock market investor would. But too often, givers don’t see themselves this way, contributing to an inefficient “social capital market.”

How a nonprofit spurred the Indian government to help seniors.

Where the charitable response to 9/11 went wrong.

Strategies for savvy negotiation.

President and CEO of International
AIDS Vaccine Initiative.

How did the Jacobs Foundation help revitalize a
neighborhood? By listening to its residents.