Spring 2014

Issue

Spring 2014

Volume 12, Number 2

The spring 2014 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review includes two articles that highlight the tension between innovation and continuous improvement. In the cover story, “The Re-Emerging Art of Funding Innovation,”’ the authors argue that foundations need to take more risks in their grantmaking. In “Fundamentals, Not Fads,” the authors point out that many nonprofits fail because leaders don’t focus enough attention on fundamental management tasks.

Features

Philanthropy

The Re-Emerging Art of Funding Innovation

By Gabriel Kasper & Justin Marcoux 11

A growing number of foundations are reintroducing risk-taking into their processes and portfolios as one way to create breakthrough change.

Health

Meeting the Challenges of Global Health

By Lyn Denend & Amy Lockwood, with Michele Barry & Stefanos Zenios

In bringing health care to the developing world, innovators can benefit from lessons others learned the hard way. Includes magazine extras.

Nonprofit Management

Programs Aren’t Everything

By Lehn M. Benjamin & David C. Campbell 3

The evaluation of nonprofit outcomes shouldn't focus exclusively on programmatic activity. Here's a look at what it means to take frontline work seriously.

Nonprofits

Why Nonprofit Mergers Continue to Lag

By Katie Smith Milway, Maria Orozco, & Cristina Botero 5

The three hurdles that nonprofit managers must overcome to create successful mergers. Includes magazine extras.

What’s Next

Health

Women at the Wheel

By Suzie Boss

In Mozambique, an effort to train women as ambulance drivers enhances public safety and fosters opportunity.

Impact Investing

Funding the Sun

By Suzie Boss

Village Power Finance gives members of nonprofit associations a novel way to pay for solar conversion projects.

Economic Development

Lots of Opportunity

By Suzie Boss

An online platform helps city governments to discover, organize, and market publicly owned property.

Urban Development

Bike-Sharing Goes Small

By Suzie Boss

Local bike-lending arrangements offer an alternative to bigger, more complex bike-sharing systems.

Field Report

Human Rights

Law Without Lawyers

By Corey Binns

Timap for Justice trains ordinary citizens to provide legal assistance in a country—Sierra Leone—where legal professionals are scarce.

Environment

Scoring Sustainability

By Peggy Lowe

Through an initiative called Earthwards, Johnson & Johnson aims to create a greener company—one product at a time.

Cities

A Smarter Way to Park

By Meredith May

In San Francisco, planners are using variable pricing to reduce the congestion, pollution, and aggravation that come with big-city traffic.

Civil Society

Citizen Chronicles

By Suzie Boss

A program in Alberta, Canada, showcases the way that people with disabilities contribute actively to their communities. Includes magazine extras.

Case Study

Foundations

Growth Force

By Greg Beato 1

A few years ago, the Salesforce.com Foundation revamped its revenue model. Today, it's not just a grantmaker. It's a rapidly expanding software vendor.

Viewpoint

Nonprofits

Fundamentals, Not Fads

By Kim Jonker & William F. Meehan III

The experience of prize-winning social sector leaders highlights the enduring lessons of nonprofit management. Part one of a six-part series.

Health

Making a Healthy Exit

By David Lehr 3

In places like rural Guatemala, the quest to sustain a vital social enterprise often depends on finding the right private-sector partner.

Advocacy

Advocacy Isn’t “Soft”

By Marc J. Holley, Matthew J. Carr, & Mindy Hightower King

Evaluating efforts to promote shifts in policy requires methods that are at once rigorous and flexible.

Impact Investing

A Fault in Funding

By Richard Rutherford & Drew von Glahn 4

An initiative undertaken by the World Bank reveals a troubling gap in the financing of social enterprises.

Research

Advocacy

Lean In—Together

By Jessica Seigel

Gender pay equity is higher in countries where women's involvement in advocacy and organizing efforts is more robust.

Business

Do Volunteers Make Better Employees?

By Corey Binns

People who perform volunteer work, far from being distracted by it, tend to perform better at their jobs.

Individual Giving

Fatal Flaw

By Corey Binns

After a disaster, donors to relief funds pay more attention to the death toll than to the needs of survivors.

Nonprofit Management

Leading Indicators

By Adrienne Day

Team dynamics strongly affect the level of commitment shown by volunteer leaders of nonprofit associations.

Book Reviews

Review

Human Rights

Safety as a Civil Right

Review By Connie Rice 2

Lawless violence in the developing world is a plague that undermines efforts to end extreme poverty.

Review

Water

Future Thirst

Review By Eric Stowe 1

Meeting the world's growing demand for water will require advances in technology that build on 3,000 years of progress.

Review

Civil Society

Going With the “Idea Flow”

Review By Amir Goldberg 1

An emerging "data-driven" science of human behavior promises to help us understand and solve social problems.

Review

Nonprofit Management

The Long Race

Review By Sam Goldman

The art of expanding an organization is less about aiming high than about "grinding it out."

Last Look

Human Rights

Resurrecting Traditional Practices

By Eric Nee

There has been a renewed interest in traditional Indian spiritual practices by Native and other Americans alike.

Smarter Philanthropy for Greater Impact

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