Stanford Social Innovation Review

SSIR Academic Editor Jim Phills sat down with former NBA superstar Kevin Johnson to discuss how he’s revitalizing his old inner-city neighborhood.

Many businesses serving lower income communities languish because they can’t raise enough money to fund their growth. To meet their needs, a new breed of private equity investment—development investment capital—has emerged. Although this style of investing is still in its infancy, it’s already showing promise.

An innovative federal project turns retiring military personnel into teachers.

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.

Managing Editor Eric Nee spoke with Self-Help’s founder and CEO, Martin Eakes, about the subprime loan crisis and its impact on the poor.

To share its expertise without jeopardizing its mission, FareStart spun out a new organization.
left: FareStart’s Chef Ben works with a trainee in a Seattle kitchen.

The violence, noise, and crowding of poor neighborhoods stress kids and parents, bringing out their bad sides and breeding psychopathology.

Universal child care may not be the best option.

To grow to full scale, serving 50,000 students a year, YouthBuild’s federal funding must increase from $60 million to $125 million annually. Local programs will also need to raise $250 million annually from state and local education and criminal justice funds, and from private donors. How does YouthBuild plan to achieve this breakthrough and help five times as many people? —By Dorothy Stoneman, founder and president of YouthBuild USA

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

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.

Matching unused resources with unmet needs.

Feeling strong has little to do with mobilization in public housing.

Nonprofits are buying Ben & Jerry’s franchises
to help train at-risk youth.

Artists for Humanity students are also employees.

Eastside Prep balances support and structure
in a school for low-income minority students.

How to create programs that fly under the radar screen of cutbacks.

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

Raising a Reader simplifies its message—and takes off.

How savvy social entrepreneurs seized on a tax loophole to raise billions of corporate dollars for affordable housing.