Solutions - Articles

Podcast

Wendy Kopp - Narrowing Educational Gaps Across America

In an effort to narrow the gap in educational opportunities, Teach For America currently places over 5,000 teachers in low-income and poorly performing schools across the country. Its growing corps of alumni is also taking their educational experiences into careers in law, public health, policy making, and leadership. In this audio interview, Wendy Kopp, founder and chief executive officer of Teach For America, tells host Sheela Sethuraman about the history, goals, and ideals of that program.

Podcast

Dr. Helen Lee - Improved Disease Tests for the Developing World

In developing countries, many tests for infectious diseases never reach the market because there is little financial incentive to pharmaceutical companies to get them there. In this audio interveiw, Alana Conner, senior editor at the Stanford Social Innovation Review, converses with Helen Lee, whose research department at the University of Cambridge has developed tests that allow for the rapid detection—and thus treatment—of diseases in rural settings around the world.

Coming to Terms With the Future of Nonprofit Leadership

By Rosetta Thurman 2

As Baby Boomers retire, we need to think about how the next generation of nonprofit leaders will be different.

Review

Effective Foundation Management

Review By Catherine DiBenedetto

Winter 2008

Podcast

Making Supply Chains Socially Responsible - Environmental Sustainability and Supply Chains

Environmental sustainability is now an imperative for supply chains, and buyers and procurement professionals have more power than ever to exert pressure on suppliers to provide green products. Businesses are also partnering with government and nonprofits to create change in this arena. How do you communicate with suppliers on environmental innovation? At the Stanford 2007 Responsible Supply Chains Conference, executives from an HMO, a government agency, and an entrepreneurial company share successes in greening the supply chains.

Podcast

Social Enterprise: Where Do We Go from Here? - Skoll World Forum 2007

Social enterprise and innovation are about more than just invention. In this panel discussion, experts argue that diffusion or scaling up ideas is an integral part of making truly effective social change. Educators, nonprofit executives, and philanthropists share their perspectives about how to take innovative ideas for social change to that tipping point where they can create large-scale, lasting positive effects.

Cultivate Your Ecosystem

By Paul N. Bloom & J. Gregory Dees 1

Social entrepreneurs not only must understand the broad environment in which they work, but also must shape those environments to support their goals, when feasible. Borrowing insights from the field of ecology, the authors offer an ecosystems framework to help social entrepreneurs create long-lasting and significant social change.

Podcast

Charles Handy - The New Philanthropists

In Britain, something is happening that hasn't for 100 years. More people are becoming incredibly wealthy, not only through inheritance, but also because of their own hard work. A phenomenon on this scale has not happened since the Victorian industrialists. In this audio lecture, Philosopher Charles Handy tells his 2007 Skoll World Forum audience about entrepreneurs who put their energies into meeting some perceived social need—something that government never gets around to and that private enterprise typically doesn't see a market for.

Preparing the Next Generation of Nonprofit Leaders

By Rosetta Thurman 18

We should be focused on cultivating and developing the leaders we already have in the nonprofit sector, instead of trying to attract 640,000 new ones.

Failing Well

By Judith M. Gueron

Foundations need to make more of the right kinds of mistakes.