http://www.ssireview.org/articles/ Strategies, Tools, and Ideas for Nonprofits, Foundations, and Socially Responsible Businesses en katiejh@stanford.edu Copyright 2008 2008-03-11T07:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_problem_with_trust/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_problem_with_trust/ In the early 1990s, Janet Greenlee was working as a program director at a family service agency in Denver when the organization’s bookkeeper came to her with a dark confession: She was stealing from the nonprofit. The bookkeeper’s misdeeds started out small. Her car was in the shop, she was short on cash, and so she “borrowed” $10 for a cab. No one noticed. And so the bookkeeper decided to let the organization pay for the car’s repairs as well. Soon enough, she was regularly looting the till, rationalizing that the nonprofit didn’t pay her enough anyway. External auditors failed to find anything amiss. When the bookkeeper finally copped to her crimes, the organization’s executive director didn’t fire her. She was a well-liked, longtime employee, he said. Frustrated, Greenlee resigned. Some 15 years later, Greenlee is a professor at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio, where she studies nonprofit accounting. In the December 2007 issue of the Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, she and her co-authors report research showing that the pilfering bookkeeper was a typical nonprofit fraudster: a female with no criminal record who makes less than $50,000 per year, steals less… Management 2008-05-11T06:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/praise_the_lord_but_dim_the_lights/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/praise_the_lord_but_dim_the_lights/ When the Rev. Sally Bingham speaks from the pulpit of Grace Cathedral, a landmark Episcopal church atop San Francisco’s Nob Hill, she’s more likely to preach about saving the Earth than saving souls. Global warming is a moral issue, she tells the faithful: “If you profess a love for God, then you have a responsibility to be a steward of creation.” It’s a lofty message. But it turns out that doing the right thing, spiritually speaking, can be as easy as changing a lightbulb. Congregants at Grace Cathedral and thousands of other houses of worship are putting their good stewardship into practice by monitoring their energy use, installing energy-saving appliances, and even placing solar panels near their steeples. Bingham and her nonprofit organization, the Regeneration Project, have launched the Interfaith Power and Light Campaign, which is gaining converts across the United States – and garnering attention everywhere from Capitol Hill to CNN. The campaign includes 4,000 congregations in 23 state chapters. Starting with their places of worship, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and Christians of all denominations are taking deliberate steps to reduce their carbon footprint. “This kind of effort helps us celebrate our common ground,” says Dr.… Civil Society 2008-05-02T06:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_mother_lode/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_mother_lode/ At a recent protest against the use of toxic flame retardants in furniture, a group of mothers burst into a catchy song about chemicals. The tune? “Frère Jacques.” “Moms make great protestors when they can get out,” says Joan Blades, cofounder and president of MomsRising. But mothers are often too busy to demonstrate, even on behalf of issues they care about. Enter MomsRising, a grassroots group that uses the Internet to bring mothers together. MomsRising members advocate for family-friendly policies at the state and national levels, including paid maternity and paternity leave, health care for all kids, flexible work arrangements, affordable child care, and fair wages for mothers. Blades got the idea for MomsRising after cofounding MoveOn.org, the online liberal advocacy group. Although Blades initially had no intention of starting another organization, a research finding caught her eye. “I read the data point that there was a huge wage gap between men and mothers – not between men and women,” she says. Intrigued, she explored the trend and co-authored the book The Motherhood Manifesto with Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner. Next, Blades sought to partner with a group that was interested in organizing mothers online, much as MoveOn used… Civil Society 2008-04-27T06:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/baked_goods/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/baked_goods/ In 1994, Patricia “Trish” Karter and two partners founded Dancing Deer Baking Company as an all-natural Boston bakery that sold cakes to upscale local restaurants and cafes. Today, the company sells more than half a million units of cookies, cakes, brownies, and mixes through national supermarkets, retail stores, and the Internet. Dancing Deer will generate $15 million in revenue for the fiscal year ending June 2008 and hopes to pass $50 million in sales by 2012. Increasing sales means increasing social impact for this double bottom line business. Dancing Deer is located in and hires many of its 85 employees from Roxbury, a low-income Boston neighborhood. Many of its employees are low-to-moderate income, minority, and female. Because Dancing Deer believes in motivating its employees and cultivating female business ownership, employees own a 10 percent equity stake in the business. In addition, Dancing Deer donates a portion of its proceeds to One Family Inc., an organization created by the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Charitable Foundation to end family homelessness in Massachusetts. Since the philanthropic partnership began in 2001, Dancing Deer has contributed $200,000, says Toni Wiley, One Family’s executive director. “We look… Social Entrepreneurship, Corporate Social Responsiblity 2008-04-20T06:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/marching_to_a_different_mission/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/marching_to_a_different_mission/ In January 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) – the forerunner of the March of Dimes. Its mission was “to lead, direct, and unify the fight” against paralytic poliomyelitis, commonly known as polio. To head the organization, Roosevelt had only one man in mind, his friend and former law partner Basil O’Connor. “I was never a public do-gooder and had no aspirations of that kind,” O’Connor later said. “But I started enjoying it.”1 O’Connor would not accept anything less than conquering polio. An autocratic leader, he built a formidable organization with a national headquarters and 3,100 county chapters. NFIP’s programs included grants for broad scientific research in viruses, cellular biology, and central nervous system disorders; professional education and training fellowships for physical therapists, physicians, and other health workers; public education about polio; and direct financial assistance for the care of polio patients. Instead of targeting big donors to support its multipronged approach, NFIP raised tens of millions of dollars from the small donations of tens of millions of Americans. The annual Poster Child, Mothers’ March, and March of Dimes fundraising campaigns rallied the nation against polio, a feared disease… Management 2008-04-13T19:17:01-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_greening_of_wal_mart/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_greening_of_wal_mart/ In 1989, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. launched one of the first major retail campaigns to sell environmentally safe products in recyclable or biodegradable packaging. The corporation promoted these eco-friendly products by labeling them with green-colored shelf tags. Although the company boasted more than 300 green products at its peak, it did not directly set or monitor the environmental standards of its suppliers. This resulted in negative publicity for Wal-Mart when the public learned that a green-labeled brand of paper towels had only a recycled tube – the towels themselves were unrecycled paper treated with chlorine bleach. The green tag program began to wane, and by the mid-1990s environmental issues seemed to have slipped off the company’s list of priorities. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart’s reputation among consumers was also slipping. Issues surrounding its competitive practices and labor policies loomed large in the public eye. “The company’s environmental record was nothing to boast about, either,” according to one Fortune article.1 Indeed, a 2005 McKinsey & Company study found that between 2 percent and 8 percent of consumers had stopped shopping at Wal-Mart because of the company’s practices.2 Against this backdrop, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. unveiled a new plan… Corporate Social Responsiblity 2008-04-07T15:32:01-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/garden_variety_revolution/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/garden_variety_revolution/ Of earthworms Charles Darwin wrote, “It may be doubted if there are any other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world as these lowly organized creatures.” With the help of a talented social entrepreneur, hard work, and good luck, earthworms are making history again at TerraCycle Inc. in Trenton, N.J. The eco-friendly gardening supply company, which turns worm castings into organic liquid plant fertilizer, is growing faster than a wonga wonga vine (Pandorea pandorana) in springtime. It’s also affirming the green movement’s place in mainstream business. TerraCycle not only takes worm castings – the technical term for worm poop – and makes organic plant food, but also uses recycled soda bottles and other recycled containers to package all its products. Although the company purchases most of its recycled packaging from professional suppliers, it also reimburses charities and schoolchildren for sending in their recyclables. TerraCycle buys the castings from independent worm farmers around the country and then brews them in big tanks at a Trenton facility called “the worm gin.” “Better, greener, cheaper” is the company’s motto. The company’s natural market is home gardeners – especially those worried about the safety… Social Entrepreneurship 2008-03-30T06:00:01-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_networked_nonprofit/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_networked_nonprofit/ Habitat for Humanity International is a classic nonprofit success story. The organization now includes 2,100 affiliates operating in 100 countries. It boasts a vast portfolio of corporate sponsors such as Lowe’s, Bank of America, and Cisco. And it has built 200,000 houses that shelter more than 1 million people. Yet according to the United Nations, some 100 million people worldwide remain homeless, and nearly 3 billion live in poverty. If Habitat for Humanity continues to build homes at its current rate, the organization will fall far short of its goal of eliminating homelessness and what it calls “poverty housing” – that is, the substandard, overcrowded, and even dangerous conditions in which many poor people live. But one country program, Habitat for Humanity Egypt (HFHE), is covering more ground in pursuit of its mission. Whereas a typical Habitat for Humanity country program produces around 200 houses each year, HFHE has on average built some 1,000 houses annually, for a total of more than 8,000 houses in just eight years. At the same time, HFHE has transformed the communities in which it works by collaborating with local organizations to address the… Program Effectiveness 2008-03-23T06:00:01-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_funding_gap/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_funding_gap/ On a trip to the ancient temples of Angkor Wat, Jeremy Hockenstein was struck by how many of the young Cambodians he met had worked hard to learn English and computer skills and yet were not able to find jobs that used their talents. In 2001, shortly after returning home to the United States, Hockenstein set out to help solve this problem by founding the nonprofit Digital Divide Data. Today, Digital Divide Data employs nearly 500 disadvantaged young people in Cambodia and Laos to perform a variety of IT services for the company’s clients around the globe. In addition, more than 200 former Digital Divide Data employees now work in jobs in other organizations that pay an average of six times Cambodia’s per capita income. Not only has Digital Divide Data provided Cambodian and Laotian youth with jobs and training, but in 2005 the organization broke even financially. Having proven Digital Divide Data’s business model, Hockenstein wanted to expand the organization, but he was unable to convince investors or donors to give him enough money to grow the operation at a fast pace. “After we proved that our business worked and could bridge the divide that… Fundraising and Marketing 2008-03-16T19:05:01-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/aim_for_the_middle/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/aim_for_the_middle/ On its Web site, the San Francisco-based Democracy Center offers a handy guide on how to lobby legislators. The guide first classifies legislators into five kinds: champions of an issue; allies of an issue; fence-sitters, who are neutral about an issue; mellow opponents; and hard-core opponents. It then identifies fence-sitters as “your key targets,” and defines lobbying strategy as “putting together the right mix of [messages] to sway [fence-sitters] your way.” Economists Bernard Caillaud and Jean Tirole reach the same conclusion in the December 2007 issue of the American Economic Review. Using mathematical models, the authors explore how best to persuade a group of people. They write that the most effective method is “to engineer persuasion cascades in which members who are brought on board sway the opinion of others.” The first people in the cascade, they find, should be fence-sitters – moderates who are neither so opposed to a proposal as to be unmovable nor so enamored of it as to be incredible to the unconvinced. “The value of getting an endorsement by someone who is neither an ally nor a resolute enemy is exemplified by the impact of the Financial Times’ endorsement of Tony Blair in his accession… Civil Society 2008-03-11T06:00:00-08:00