As regulatory rollbacks invite polluters to poison air, soil, and water, funders and advocates can respond by rallying around community-led solutions that prioritize health over corporate gain.| SSIR Articles
An excerpt from Silent No Longer on how disability services commodify and devalue the humanity of people with disabilities.| SSIR Articles
The Tech for Palestine business incubator is dedicated to strengthening pro-human rights projects within the technology industry, starting with the rights of Palestinians.| SSIR Articles
The fight to protect our communities and the environment is also a fight to protect democracy.| SSIR Articles
Purpose, values, and humility will be the social sector’s greatest strengths.| SSIR Articles
A Q&A about her 15-year tenure as SSIR's academic editor and how the field of social innovation is changing.| SSIR Articles
A new kind of infrastructure for collective impact initiatives.| ssir.org
Philanthropy has a huge opportunity—and responsibility—to build a culture of repair both inside and outside their organizations.| ssir.org
Renewables are more reliable and affordable compared to their oil- and gas-powered alternatives. Can they survive political headwinds and continue to make big gains in the United States?| SSIR Articles
In an age of lawsuits, storytelling is paramount for long-term progress.| SSIR Articles
An excerpt from Technology for Good on using technology to create innovative and cost-effective ways to deliver programs| SSIR Articles
High-quality impact data and assessments are vital for allocating capital effectively, yet they are resource-intensive for investors and social innovators. Can generative AI speed up and strengthen impact-performance assessment of venture investments?| SSIR Articles
The ground-up work to stop US oil and gas expansion and create new climate politics| SSIR Articles
Why philanthropy must see disruption not as a detour but as an opportunity to positively transform systems—and three strategies to lead the way.| SSIR Articles
How should philanthropy respond to the US government's sharp cuts to social spending and threats against civil society? Some of the social sector's foremost leaders and thinkers share ideas and strategies for meeting the moment. Plus, read a timely follow-up essay from MacArthur Foundation President John Palfrey.| SSIR Articles
The diversity and vibrancy of our sector give me optimism that we will meet the current crisis and weather future challenges in the years to come.| SSIR Articles
Peter Apps' Homesick argues that beneath the housing crisis of rents and shortages is a deeper history of community-unbuilding.| SSIR Articles
Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands greeted a chestnut mare as part of a visit marking the 60th anniversary of the foundation Riding for the Disabled.| SSIR Articles
Digital tools have eased the challenges of recruitment, but fostering long-term engagement remains a problem.| SSIR Articles
Many philanthropists have the capacity and desire to give more. A few simple strategies can help them overcome common roadblocks.| SSIR Articles
For 65 years, the WWF has led global conservation efforts in more than 100 countries. But as environmental challenges escalated in recent decades, the organization found its traditional methods falling short. WWF took the radical step of embedding a culture of innovation across its vast network. Could it transform while staying true to its mission?| SSIR Articles
Soilless Farm Lab's hydroponics approach tackles agricultural challenges to alleviate food insecurity in Nigeria.| SSIR Articles
Healing Soils Foundation is revitalizing soils and protecting the environment while championing Midwest farmers.| SSIR Articles
A collection of standout pieces published online about handling systems collapse, measuring narrative change, and helping NGOs shift to working with government.| SSIR Articles
As an ideas magazine, SSIR offers a sanctuary for deep thinking on the issues of our time, including President Donald Trump's attempts to disrupt the social sector in ways that will be felt for years.| SSIR Articles
Celina Su's Budget Justice is a call to reengage citizenry and build solidarity through participatory democracy.| SSIR Articles
A Brazilian law to promote more inclusive corporate philanthropy failed to direct more money to underserved communities.| SSIR Articles
Having more female political leaders has a demonstrative effect on government support for contraception.| SSIR Articles
Raven Indigenous Outcomes Funds has pioneered community-driven outcomes contracts to center Indigenous communities in Canada as leaders in addressing health and social problems. They present a bold new model for outcomes purchasing.| SSIR Articles
Latinos in Heritage Conservation has grown from a grassroots volunteer-led network into the nation's foremost Latinx historic preservation nonprofit.| SSIR Articles
By streamlining tasks, Avalon Health AI seeks to boost the health-care sector's efficiency in Zimbabwe.| SSIR Articles
A grassroots collective of Iraqi entrepreneurs softened their ambitions when faced with funding shortfalls and corporate offers.| SSIR Articles
Randomized controlled trials are touted as the benchmark for evaluating social programs. The social sector should focus instead on an improvement orientation to evaluating performance. | Open access to this article made possible by the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago| SSIR Articles
Tracka seeks to close the accountability gap between the Nigerian government and its citizens.| SSIR Articles
Smart Growth America's new Center for Zoning Solutions offers a headquarters for the zoning reform movement.| SSIR Articles
Rather than depersonalizing ties to donors, AI tools can help nonprofits be more engaged and responsive to their expectations.| SSIR Articles
The Ark for Ukraine project is a groundbreaking mission to preserve Ukrainian culture using mobile technology.| SSIR Articles
China took a pragmatic approach to adopting social enterprises as a new organizational form.| 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
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
The relationship between impact and time varies issue by issue.| ssir.org
How philanthropy can help sustain scientific discovery in a changing research landscape.| ssir.org
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
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
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
sponsored| 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 supporti| 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