Research: The Business of Bribery
A new study from Indonesia shows that extortionists respond to market forces in much the same way as do lawful businesspeople.
Impact Investing - Most Popular
Socially responsible investing that produces both financial and social returns (more)
What’s Next: Keeping an Eye on Parks
ParkScan, an interactive Web tool, enages residents as park monitors.
Q&A: Jeff Raikes
Jeff Raikes takes over the Gates Foundation at a turbulent time when philanthropic resources are down and social needs are up.
Podcast
Randy Komisar - Online Capital Markets for Philanthropy
How do we create an efficient capital market for philanthropy? What are the best ways to marry program evaluation with powerful dynamics among online giving places? What role should public policy take in all this? In this free-ranging audio lecture, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Randy Komisar offers a venture capitalist's perspective on these questions and more.
Social Innovations
Shades of Green
Social networking tools reveal that there is an intricate web of relationships between business and environmentalists, which if developed could benefit the environmental movement.
Offsetting Green Guilt
Voluntary carbon offsets allow people to invest in projects that allegedly counteract their greenhouse gas emissions. But can voluntary offsets help slow global warming? Or are offsets a way for consumers to buy their way out of bad feelings?
Let’s Share
A new evaluation tool allows donors and investors to track their investments and compare their data to those of organizations doing similar work.
Podcast
Pamela Hartigan - The Power of Unreasonable People
Why are social entrepreneurs sometimes considered "unreasonable," and how are they different from business entrepreneurs? In this audio interview, author Pamela Hartigan discusses with Design for Change host Sheela Sethuraman how these pesky pioneers are creating markets that are changing the world. She also talks about Volans Ventures, her new enterprise dedicated to integrating the worlds of social and environmental innovation with business-driven wealth creation.
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.