Spring 2025

Issue

Spring 2025

Volume 23, Number 2

Read about how community-based organizations around the world are healing the social fragmentation behind mass atrocities, genocide, and identity-based violence; how a small farm outside Dallas demonstrated how placed-based neighborhood transformation can succeed; how nonprofit leaders can use programmatic asset transfers for greater social impact; how one Latin American organization repeatedly pivoted over 40 years to better serve the region’s small businesses; and other topics in the Spring 2025 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review.

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Features

Human Rights

Preventing Identity-Based Violence From the Ground Up

By Susan Appe, David A. Campbell & Kerry Whigham

Worsening conflicts around the world need more than state actors to resolve them. Community-based organizations are working to heal the social fragmentation at the root of mass atrocity and identity-based violence.

Cities

Growing Community Together

By Seth D. Kaplan

To succeed, place-based neighborhood transformation must have deep roots in the community that support innovative ways to branch to outside resources. Bonton Farms offers a model of such work.

Organizational Development

Programmatic Asset Transfers as a Strategic Tool for Social Impact

By Michelle Shumate, Lindsay Kijewski, Kate Piatt-Eckert & Christine Thompson

Although often triggered by organizational stress, asset transfers should be seen not as a sign of organizational failure but as a valuable way to help both sides of the transfer achieve their goals. | Open access to this article made possible by The Sustained Collaboration Network

Case Study

Social Enterprise

Continuous Transformation to Serve the Mission

By Tina C. Ambos, Alexander Zimmermann & Sebastian H. Fuchs

Forty years ago, FUNDES launched to serve small enterprises in Latin America. The organization had to reinvent itself many times to survive but continues to support the region’s economic and social development. | Open access to this article made possible by the University of Geneva

What’s Next

Economic Development

Building for the Future

By Kyle Coward

Chicago-based HIRE360 connects underrepresented workers and businesses to opportunities within the traditionally insular world of construction.

Technology

Court AI

By Neha Bhatt

A new AI-powered technology is expediting India’s notoriously dilatory legal system.

Civic Engagement

Mobilizing Youth in the Philippines

By Marianne Dhenin

The artist-activist collective DAKILA is organizing young people to push for their own political agenda.

Human Rights

Anticipatory Humanitarian Aid

By Andrew Mambondiyani 1

Mercy Corps leverages satellite data and AI to preemptively send emergency relief to people ahead of natural disasters.

Field Report

Health

Saving Lost Souls

By Puja Changoiwala

Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation rescues wanderers from India’s streets, treating them for their mental illnesses and reuniting them with their families.

Nonprofits & NGOs

Funding the Fourth Estate

By Kyle Coward

Philanthropists have been accused of donating disproportionately to major media outlets. An alliance of small news nonprofits seeks to make funding more equitable to save the news industry.

Viewpoint

Foundations

Foundations Should Invest More in Staffing

By Kyle A. Smith & Bob Fischer

Critics of grantmaking practices and advocates of reform should support hiring more staff to improve accountability, return on investment, and equality of opportunity.

Technology

Local Digital Spaces Are Essential Civic Infrastructure

By Deepti Doshi

With traditional community spaces underfunded and neglected, investing in the health of our online gathering places has become essential.

Philanthropy & Funding

Why Does Philanthropy Ignore Big and Easy Wins?

By Colin Dwyer 9

The overdose crisis exposes how funders allow themselves to be diverted from impact.

Research

Education

Political Participation Across Partisan Divides

By Daniela Blei

A teachers’ union brings together members from opposed political sides by focusing on community interests.

Environment

How Regular Employees Became Recyclers

By Daniela Blei

The disappearance of the recycling coordinator role, is a testament to an environmental success story: the institutionalization of recycling in higher education.

Environment

Who Protects the Forest?

By Chana R. Schoenberger

The Batwa tribe of Democratic Republic of Congo demonstrates that the role of Indigenous peoples in forest protection defies stereotypes.

Governance

Activist Directors Cause Problems for Stakeholders

By Chana R. Schoenberger

Push for short-term gains generates greater complaints about ESG issues among stakeholders.

Book Reviews

Review

Technology

Should Heartland Cities Become Tech Hubs?

Reviewed By Amy Sample Ward

Urbanist Nicholas Lalla offers a playbook for tech-led economic development in midsize cities, avowing that inclusive growth can offset the worsening wealth inequities that the tech sector has helped generate.

Review

Leadership

The Sweet Spot of Discomfort

Reviewed By Liz Scheier

D. Christopher Kayes offers a compassionate, albeit slim, guide to resilience-building for leaders.

Editor’s Note

Human Rights

An End to Mass Violence

By David V. Johnson

The cover story of our new issue examines efforts around the world to prevent identity-based violence, genocide, and mass atrocities.

SSIR Online

Leadership

SSIR Online, Spring 2025 Issue

By SSIR Editors

A collection of standout pieces published online about co-leadership, democracy, multigenerational living, Gen Z, and global development’s power dynamics.

Last Look

Arts & Culture

Monument to a Peanut Farmer

By Marcie Bianco

The landmark in Plains, Georgia, gives a nod to the late president’s big grin and humble beginnings.

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Magazine Sections
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- Case Study
  
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- What’s Next
  
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- Field Report
  
  Profiles of innovative work
- Viewpoint
  
  Insights from the front lines
- Research
  
  Highlights from scholarly journals
- Book Reviews
  
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- Editor’s Note
  
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  Takeaways from SSIR's digital channels
- Last Look
  
  Images that inspire
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