The Evolving Promise of Pay for Success
Despite growing pains, the pay for success funding model is finding renewed success in communities across the United States and is primed to evolve into an ever-more-powerful tool for social change.
Social Services - Most Popular
Innovations in public services that promote equity and opportunity (more)
Becoming Unstuck With Relational Activism
At a time when division seems like the only thing we all have in common, two “relational activists” describe how building person-to-person connections can keep us from being paralyzed by recalcitrant and complex social problems.
Excerpt
An Office Space of One’s Own
An excerpt from Shared Space and the New Nonprofit Workplace, which looks at the challenge of finding affordable and stable office space for nonprofits.
People-Powered Trauma Care
The chaos of Dhaka's roads inspired Jon Moussally, a physician in Massachusetts and instructor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, to cofound a volunteer-based emergency response system aimed at reducing death from road traffic injuries. A Field Report from the Fall 2019 issue.
Inside Switzerland’s Radical Drug Policy Innovation
A look at how Switzerland radically and successfully changed its approach to drug policy following a heroin epidemic in the late 1980s and 90s, and what the effort teaches us about the social innovation process.
Hippocratic Oath for a Digital World: Insights From SSIR’s 2019 Data on Purpose Conference
From emphasizing the importance of a data culture to exhorting people to "move thoughtfully and improve things," nonprofit leaders, funders, scholars, and technologists at SSIR's 2019 Data on Purpose Conference provided deep insights into surviving and thriving in an increasingly digital world.
The Cost of Financial Precarity
Anxiety about debt and financial stability can severely reduce the productivity and health of employees, which can hurt a company’s bottom line. Businesses, government, and philanthropic organizations should embrace the case for improving the financial well-being of workers.
Review
Social Insecurity
Katherine Newman’s Downhill From Here challenges current economic thinking by arguing that the crisis in retirement security is caused by a flawed system, not flawed humans.
Video
Social Services
Homeless Shelter Uses Feedback to Help Its Clients Regain Independence
The Arkansas nonprofit Our House, which provides shelter to homeless families and individuals working to regain their economic independence, has built a culture of continuous feedback with surveys, community councils, and “happy or not” voting terminals. Part of a series produced for SSIR with the support of the Hewlett Foundation.
Making Civic Engagement Efforts Work
New experiments with civic engagement, outreach, and philanthropic models in Philadelphia offer inspiration for leaders across the social sector.