Stanford Social Innovation Review

Conservative Protestants are poorer partly because of their religion.

How to get more racial minorities into corner offices.

The military’s better than civilian life, say minorities and women such as Marine Corps Capt. Elizabeth Okoreeh-Baah, the first woman to pilot the V-22 Osprey.

Market solutions to poverty, which include services and products targeting consumers at the “bottom of the pyramid,” portray poor people as creative entrepreneurs and discerning consumers. Yet this rosy view of poverty-stricken people is not only wrong, but also harmful.

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

We must break the stereotype that low-income communities are unable to help themselves.

As the global financial crisis unfolds, those least responsible—our world’s poor—will be most affected. Many have called upon President Obama to uphold his campaign commitment to double foreign assistance. But Dambisa Moyo’s book, Dead Aid, challenges us to think again. —By Jane Wales

The poor are just like everyone else: they do not save as much as they would like.  Yet unlike their richer counterparts, poor people do not receive the cleverly marketed, carefully tested financial products that could help them reach their savings goals more easily.  To enrich the bottom of the pyramid, bankers to the poor should make saving money easier by using the latest findings from economics and psychology.

How nonprofits are finding great employees even during the manpower shortage

In recent decades, nonprofits have significantly increased the size of their endowments. Yet during the current economic crisis, they made scant use of their sizable holdings. Instead of drawing down their endowments to offset losses of income, nonprofits resorted to cutting programs and personnel, sometimes dramatically. To prepare for future financial downturns, nonprofits should treat endowments as rainy day funds, not cut programs to preserve the endowment.

“By paying so much attention to managing their own risks, philanthropists are no longer attending to the marginalized people who risk so much to make change happen,” says Sheela Patel in this First Person.

The world’s first universal cash transfer program is in Namibia and provides cash with no strings attached

THE SPIRIT LEVEL: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett

Welfare to career at Cascade Engineering, Inc. 

When parents have a choice, teachers are better.

Social movement and grassroots organizations left in the cold.

Some families lack the purchasing power to eat well.

Low-income residents of poor towns are underserved by nonprofits.