From Climate Policy to Climate Talent
Why climate-related philanthropy must invest in the human capacities to get the work done.| ssir.org
Oil and gas's dominance over American life can feel like a David vs. Goliath story. Despite the odds, growing pushback in red, blue, and purple states shows that the Davids have more power than we might think—and philanthropy can help them win.| SSIR Articles
Beyond targeting actions, laws should build the standards, signals, and structures that shape mindsets.| SSIR Articles
The More-Than-Human Life Program at New York University's School of Law is fighting to broaden concepts of justice and rights to include the natural world.| SSIR Articles
Why climate-related philanthropy must invest in the human capacities to get the work done.| ssir.org
The strategic alignment between business and corporate foundations, impact funds, and accelerators shows enormous potential for achieving social impact. But they can align in different ways, each with its strengths and weaknesses. A feature story in the S| ssir.org
A new toolkit to reinforce and reinvent American research science in a time of crisis.| ssir.org
Professionalism has become coded language for white favoritism in workplace practices that more often than not leave behind people of color. This is the fourth of 10 articles in a special series about diversity, equity, and inclusion.| ssir.org
Seven actions social change leaders and machine learning developers can take to build gender-smart artificial intelligence for a more just world.| ssir.org
Ten questions to help unsure funders get unstuck and take strategic action now.| SSIR Articles
An excerpt from The Democratic Marketplace on “predistribution” and freedom.| SSIR Articles
Is water in Sweden really 25 times more valuable than water in Mauritania?| ssir.org
Together We Stand| ssir.org
The world is undergoing simultaneous economic, technological, geopolitical, environmental, and social changes that organizations cannot address alone. Only a collective approach to social innovation can solve for challenges that are too large for individual organizations.| ssir.org
Optimizing for outcomes will require building out a range of local public and private institutions.| SSIR Articles
What savings groups can teach the social sector about partnering with governments for systems change.| SSIR Articles
How a new approach to recruiting board members can transform nonprofits.| SSIR Articles
Ending homelessness is about housing. Except when it’s not.| SSIR Articles
In this time of crisis, nonprofits may be forced into mergers, acquisitions, and sunsets. A few principles will help leaders make the most of a difficult moment.| SSIR Articles
An excerpt from Power to the Partners shows how designing coalitions is vital to successful organizational partnership| SSIR Articles
Foundations and nonprofits built the tools that companies now use for ESG reporting, brand credibility, and risk management. Is there a funding model for maintaining these tools so they remain credible, transparent, and financially viable?| SSIR Articles
A path forward for diversity, equity, and inclusion work.| SSIR Articles
Four priorities for NGOs turning to local government partnerships in the face of funding cuts to help build lasting, large-scale solutions to poverty.| SSIR Articles
Let us take clarity from destruction as we redevelop development.| SSIR Articles
Documented, an immigrant-facing nonprofit newsroom, shares the creative and innovative ways they've gone about reaching underserved communities.| SSIR Articles
Development aid is not a handout but a catalyst for partnership in global stability.| SSIR Articles
Between hard bargains and charity, the future requires catalytic collaboration.| SSIR Articles
The next chapter for global development means learning from markets and building an accountability culture.| SSIR Articles
Finding a way forward in the global pullback from solidarity| SSIR Articles
Climate change and slavery form a vicious cycle. Collective action for a free and livable future is an opportunity to combat both at once.| SSIR Articles
How humanitarian organizations can use cost evidence to survive global aid's "Great Depression" and scale what works to save more lives.| SSIR Articles
Any response to this moment must include careful reflection on philanthropy's role in a democratic society.| SSIR Articles
Those of us in philanthropy may not always agree, but we must defend each other's right to exist.| SSIR Articles
In a crisis, how can foundations justify perpetuity as a guiding star? Increasing payouts goes hand in hand with a trust-based philanthropy approach that prioritizes supporting our partners.| SSIR Articles
The sector's response to the sharp withdrawal of government funding and to threats against basic freedoms should start with the easy answers.| SSIR Articles
Now is the time for funders to back local leaders who are making lasting improvements to people's lives and the systems that shape them, even amidst global disruption.| SSIR Articles
The relationship between impact and time varies issue by issue.| SSIR Articles
How philanthropy can help sustain scientific discovery in a changing research landscape.| SSIR Articles
How Asian philanthropists are embracing adaptive, blended, and locally informed approaches to transform the uncertainty of global aid into opportunity.| SSIR Articles
How to build a proven model into a global network for lead poisoning prevention| SSIR Articles
Many wealthy donors are missing out on opportunities to make transformative investments such as creating a new scientific field or sparking the Green Revolution.| SSIR Articles
As philanthropy adapts to new challenges, internal design choices can either facilitate or stand in the way of strategic dynamism.| SSIR Articles
Four lessons from a Los Angeles hospital's effort to shift power to community health promoters.| SSIR Articles
As global aid declines, new learning partnership models between NGOs and government will play a critical role in scaling and sustaining health reform in low- and middle-income countries.| SSIR Articles
Andrew Hoffman argues for a reinvention of business education so that tomorrow's leaders can effectively tackle today's largest challenges.| SSIR Articles
As promoters and defenders of a free civil society, we at SSIR today find ourselves taking sides: We stand with you as allies against the rise of authoritarianism in the United States and abroad.| ssir.org
Nonprofits & NGOs| ssir.org
Trust-based philanthropy is becoming an increasingly well-defined approach for addressing the power imbalance in the nonprofit sector and closing the gap between funders and grantees. How does a trust-based approach to giving compare to a strategic one? T| ssir.org
The core practices that define a trust-based approach can, through multiple pathways, lead to both increased resource efficiency and outsized impact.| ssir.org
How strategic capacity building and trust-based philanthropy can work in concert.| ssir.org
More nonprofits are managing their brands to create greater impact and organizational cohesion.| ssir.org
A look at how Switzerland radically and successfully changed its approach to drug policy following a heroin epidemic in the late 1980s and 90s, and what the effort teaches us about the social innovation process.| ssir.org
A simple but powerful exercise for teams of all sizes and types.| ssir.org
The onset of COVID-19 has amplified discussions about philanthropic spending during an economic downturn, with some observers saying that a big crisis like the pandemic should compel funders to not just maintain their outlays, but to disburse more. In thi| ssir.org
There is no one right answer to the question whether to pay out more during a financial crisis, which depends on balancing the needs of present and future beneficiaries and so varies depending on a funders’ goals and objectives. This is the keystone article for the Up for Debate series on foundations' payouts during big crises. Visit the series page for responses to this essay.| ssir.org
The economic crisis should spur nonprofits to focus on their mission and foundations to give more.| ssir.org
How companies are responding to US policy changes and what they should do instead| ssir.org
America needs a new story—one that is honest and inspiring, and that doesn’t shy away from its racial history—to guide us toward realizing a thriving multiracial democracy. Open access to this article is made possible by PolicyLink.| ssir.org
Network entrepreneurs are ensuring that systems-level, collaborative efforts not only succeed, but thrive.| ssir.org
The social sector needs new models for understanding what impact might be possible when the systems we operate in fall apart.| ssir.org
Funders must take the lead in breaking a vicious cycle that is leaving nonprofits so hungry for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations—let alone serve their beneficiaries.| ssir.org
Spending more today will mean having less for the future, but the current crisis is unprecedented and the financial trade-off is very modest.| ssir.org
Development Philanthropy Must Be Partnership Not Patronage| ssir.org
Forty years ago, FUNDES launched to serve small enterprises in Latin America. The organization had to reinvent itself many times to survive but continues to support the region’s economic and social development. | Open access to this article made possible by the University of Geneva| ssir.org
They own a growing share of wealth, but the sector isn’t yet set up to meet their needs.| ssir.org
A gift to SSIR is an investment in the future of social innovation.| ssir.org
Dramatic advances in the scale and sophistication of strategic philanthropy have not improved societal conditions at a national level. We propose empowerment philanthropy as a new approach to fostering political and economic self-determination by supporting people in finding their own solutions and ensuring an effective multiracial democracy.| ssir.org
Because trust-based philanthropy shouldn’t mean blind faith.| ssir.org
How organizations can engage with AI in smart and ethical ways right now.| ssir.org
Without a clear understanding of the gaps in the market, it is difficult for impact investors to develop sound strategies to fill them.| ssir.org
Collective impact efforts must prioritize working together in more relational ways to find systemic solutions to social problems.| ssir.org
Laws and programs designed to benefit vulnerable groups, such as the disabled or people of color, often end up benefiting all of society.| ssir.org
Design thinking has failed to deliver on its promise to solve the world’s thorniest social challenges. Adopting a critical design stance can help designers serve communities, rather than their own methodology.| ssir.org
A four-part framework for increasing young refugees’ access to tertiary education.| ssir.org
