Stanford Social Innovation Review

Step aside, Stephen Covey. Kent Buse and Andrew M. Harmer have discovered seven new highly effective habits. And theirs may help rid the world of its more deadly diseases, rather than just upping people’s productivity.

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.

To ensure that baby boomers’ wealth does not fall short of its philanthropic potential, Randall Ottinger suggests applying portfolio theory to make wiser social investments.

Most Americans give roughly the same percentage of their incomes.

Foundation grantmaking can become more responsive, intuitive, and effective.

For-profit businesses can efficiently and quickly raise large amounts of money to fund growth and innovation by tapping equity capital—money that people invest in a company in return for ownership and a share of profits. The nonprofit world has no corollary, making it difficult, costly, and time-consuming to raise money. In this article the author explores ways that nonprofits and funders can create their own version of equity capital, and, just as important, develop an equity approach to doing business.

Although the donor-advised fund industry is in a high-growth phase, all boats will rise if we worry less about competing with each other and instead find ways to work together. By Kim Wright-Violich, president of Schwab Charitable.

In the for-profit world, the term “investment” has clear meaning and investors have sophisticated techniques for spotting and growing the most promising companies. Yet foundations and other nonprofit donors have not developed similar clarity or approaches. As a result, the nonprofit sector’s greatest gems often languish well below their full potential. By better translating for-profit concepts, donors can learn how to scout out and grow the best nonprofits. Likewise, certain nonprofits can take a page from business’s playbook and learn how to attract cash for expansion.

PHILANTHROCAPITALISM: How the Rich Can Save the World by Matthew Bishop & Michael Green

National Instrument’s partnerships not only energize science education, but also boost the company’s brand and employee morale.

Left: An engineer readies her robot at the 2008 FIRST Lego League World Festival, an annual competition that brings together teams of students to show off their engineering chops. Powering her robot was sophisticated software developed by National Instruments. Her team, the Power Peeps of Swartz Creek, Mich., placed third.

Despite spending vast amounts of money and helping to create the world’s largest nonprofit sector, philanthropists have fallen far short of solving America’s most pressing problems. What the nation needs is “catalytic philanthropy”—a new approach that is already being practiced by some of the most innovative donors. —By Mark R. Kramer

A vicious cycle is leaving nonprofits so hungry for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations—let alone serve their beneficiaries. The cycle starts with funders’ unrealistic expectations about how much running a nonprofit costs, and results in nonprofits’ misrepresenting their costs while skimping on vital systems—acts that feed funders’ skewed beliefs. To break the nonprofit starvation cycle, funders must take the lead. —By Ann Goggins Gregory & Don Howard

President of the Ford Foundation.

When nonprofits join forces, individuals give less to the cause.

Putting the science of influence to work in fundraising.

When couples haggle over charity, total giving drops.

Gifts are not an incentive for donors to give, they’re an excuse.

When nonprofits earn taxable income, private donors give less.

The importance of social identity in giving.

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.”