Making Compliance Work for Philanthropy
Funders need to identify, embrace, and ultimately demystify compliance, reclaiming it as a tool that enables, rather than impedes, philanthropy’s essential purpose.
Foundations - Articles
New and innovative ideas for leaders of foundations (more)
Scale Is a Myth! Embrace the Long Defeat!
Why the ghost of Paul Farmer wants you scaring the horses at Skoll
Returning Yulića: Lessons From Land Rematriation
How funders, sellers, and intermediaries can better support Indigenous “land back” initiatives.
Does Everything in the Social Sector Need to Scale?
In a world that no longer behaves like a scalable system, success must be something other than growth.
What Else Can We Do? The Thirteen Intentions of Philanthropy
A year of turbulence has exposed the dangers of philanthropic monocultures and upended assumptions about impact, effectiveness, and scale. Embracing the varied intentions that motivate people to give offers a more resilient, pluralistic path forward.
Measuring More and Learning Less
How an excessive focus on methods has distracted attention from the more fundamental challenge of building rigor and learning overall.
Meeting the Moments After This One
Philanthropy's role in Minneapolis must be to build for after the current crisis passes.
Keeping Score on Sustainable Grantmaking
How we developed a new benchmark to shift philanthropic norms
Embedding Private Sector Innovations in Government Systems
As international aid to improve education outcomes declines, a new partnership model shows the key to success isn't external funding, it's strategic integration into existing public education systems.
The 10 Most Popular SSIR Articles of 2025
Building collective capacity; AI's power for the greater good; grappling with systems collapse; lessons from collaborative philanthropy; and more.