Creating lasting social change often requires changing public attitude, not just public policy. Take the movements for marriage equality and against smoking in the United States, for example. Learn the six-step framework that others have used to successfully change public opinion in the cover article “Aspirational Communication” in the Winter 2020 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review.
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Organizations must connect their causes to the personal aspirations of their audiences to transform public attitudes. A feature story from the Winter 2020 issue.
Better ways of describing how coalitions collaborate exist and naming these variations can help guide local leaders and the diverse communities they serve. See SSIR Editor-in-Chief Eric Nee's note about the Winter 2020 issue for additional insights. A feature story from the Winter 2020 issue.
System work is not about solutions; it’s about discovering and steering local pathways for change at a pace appropriate for our ability to learn and for what local communities can enact and absorb. A feature story from the Winter 2020 issue.
Rebuilding local news coverage is part of a civic-repair program we must pursue to restore the democratic promise of our cities and of our country. A Feature from the Winter 2020 issue.
The Ecosystem Services Market will enable farmers to use improvements in soil health—the key to water conservation and soil carbon sequestration—to generate ecosystem-service credits that they will be able to sell. A What's Next article from the Winter 2020 issue.
After Reesha and Ronald Howard's infant son experienced problems with dairy, they understood the importance of giving other families options to conveniently purchase vegan products in public spaces for health reasons. A What's Next article from the Winter 2020 issue.
The Recycle Pay program allows parents to pay a portion or all of their children’s school fees by gathering plastic and discarded drinking-water bags, which are then recycled. A What's Next article from the Winter 2020 issue.
Instead of simply pegging success to traditional economic measures, like GDP, New Zealand wants policymaking to be driven by what will make the biggest difference to the well-being of people, their communities, and the environment. A What's Next article from the Winter 2020 issue.
The Stepping Up Initiative uses webinars, a tool kit, and data collection to tackle the problem of people with serious mental illness being incarcerated in the United States approximately two million times each year. A Field Report from the Winter 2020 issue.
The women-only transportation program in Papua New Guinea is challenging social norms about gender by improving women's economic lives and securing girls' education. A Field Report from the Winter 2020 issue.
Interns in South Bend, Indiana, first collaborated to help restore a polluted neighborhood waterway. Then the project grew into something bigger. A Field Report from the Winter 2020 issue.
The Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance, a network of 304 entrepreneurs from 34 African countries, believes that business, rather than aid, is the key to eradicating poverty on the continent. A Case Study from the Winter 2020 issue.
Foundation officers and endowment managers too often prefer exceedingly safe grants and investments because of misapplied principles, biases, and concerns about their reputations. A Viewpoint from the Winter 2020 issue.
By understanding the impact of public contracting on their daily lives, citizens become more aware of the need for transparency and accountability. A Viewpoint from the Winter 2020 issue.
To grow the workforce that will advance the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, foundations ought to bring back approaches they relied on decades ago. A Viewpoint from the Winter 2020 issue.
Current versions of local government artist-in-residence programs typically stop short of figuring out how to induce social change by focusing too much on the artists’ narrowly defined art projects. A Viewpoint from the Winter 2020 issue.
Michela Musto's research scrutinized two classroom dynamics: how educators—mostly white college-educated women—enforced rules or responded to boys breaking them; and how educators disciplined white, Asian-American, and Latino boys differently. A Research article from the Winter 2020 issue.
A new research paper reconstructs how an international children’s rights organization worked in Indonesia to disrupt child marriage, a guarded institution in the country. Research from the Winter 2020 issue.
The book presents a thought-provoking framework for categorizing and implementing performance management strategies based on the causal relationship between an organization’s activities and outcomes and on its control over those outcomes. A book review from the Winter 2020 issue.
In their new book, Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne Alstott treat libraries as just one model of a public institution that can thrive alongside market-based options like bookstores and provide desirable benefits to society more broadly and equitably than the private sector can do alone. A book review from the Winter 2020 issue.
Rather than a model with a fixed approach, as collective impact is, the community system solutions framework can be adapted to different types of situations. The Editor's Note from the Winter 2020 issue.
By the end of August, the United States Border Patrol had detained more than 800,000 individuals, including more than 70,000 unaccompanied children.
As long as it is more profitable to rig the rules than play by them, our better angels are unlikely to thrive. Part of the Winter 2020 issue's Realizing Democracy supplement funded by the Ford Foundation.
It is often tempting to try to solve problems by looking for policy fixes, new technologies, and informational solutions, instead of addressing underlying power dynamics.
Organizers renew democracy by building the capacity it requires. Part of the Winter 2020 issue's Realizing Democracy supplement funded by the Ford Foundation.
Powerful organization, rather than efficient mobilization, is the way to re-center people in our political life. Part of the Winter 2020 issue's Realizing Democracy supplement funded by the Ford Foundation.
Recent research documents only a weak electoral connection between state legislators and their voters. It's time to break the cycle and restore political power to ordinary citizens over entrenched minorities. Part of the Winter 2020 issue's Realizing Democracy supplement funded by the Ford Foundation.
Community organizations nationwide are pushing prosecutors to embrace a new criminal justice reform agenda and collaborating with attorneys general to protect working people. Part of the Winter 2020 issue's Realizing Democracy supplement funded by the Ford Foundation.
The imbalance between the wealthy and the rest of Americans dramatically alters how public policy itself is formulated. Part of the Winter 2020 issue's Realizing Democracy supplement funded by the Ford Foundation.
To rebalance our democracy and economy, a real system of economic checks and balances must exist to ensure that working people have power in their workplaces. Part of the Winter 2020 issue's Realizing Democracy supplement funded by the Ford Foundation.
Good strikes force the very consensus building that America needs, and the sooner we reprioritize unions, the sooner we can reclaim democracy. Part of the Winter 2020 issue's Realizing Democracy supplement funded by the Ford Foundation.
When corporate engagement with governments serves narrow interests and money is critical for campaigns and influence, the system causes “corruptive dependencies,” exacerbates inequality, and leads to the perception that our “captured economy” is rigged and unjust. Part of the Winter 2020 issue's Realizing Democracy supplement funded by the Ford Foundation.
Three takeaways to establish the structural and institutional guardrails necessary to creating a serious, concerted, and holistic effort to address issues of power and inequality across civil society, government, and the economy. Part of the Winter 2020 issue's Realizing Democracy supplement funded by the Ford Foundation.
