Spring 2023

Issue

Spring 2023

Volume 21, Number 2

Read about how America can craft a new narrative to fully realize its multiracial democracy, how civil society is innovating new ways to reinvigorate democratic politics, how nonprofits can better manage their capacity by delving into their true assets and liabilities, how carbon-offset programs further greenwashing and threaten Indigenous people’s rights, and other topics in the Spring 2023 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Explore SSIR’s 20th Anniversary Essay Series on the future of social innovation here.

Features

People putting stripes and stars on an American flag

Civic Engagement

How We Achieve a Multiracial Democracy

By Angela Glover Blackwell 3

America needs a new story—one that is honest and inspiring, and that doesn’t shy away from its racial history—to guide us toward realizing a thriving multiracial democracy.
Open access to this article is made possible by PolicyLink.

Civic Engagement

The Emerging Field of Political Innovation

By Johanna Mair, Josefa Kindt & Sébastien Mena 2

Civil society has attended to social problems for decades while intentionally refraining from overt engagement with politics. But a new field of practice seeks to reinvigorate democracy by emancipating social innovation from this stricture.

Nonprofits & NGOs

The Invisible Balance Sheet

By Roland J. Kushner 1

Nonprofits can better evaluate and deploy their capacity to achieve their missions by accounting for the assets and liabilities that don’t necessarily appear on their financial statements.

Environment

The Problem with Carbon Offsets

By Roshan Krishnan, Sofia Jarrin Hidalgo & Marianna Fuchs

Carbon offset programs enable affluent states and corporations to greenwash and pose serious threats to Indigenous peoples’ rights. Consider the case of the LEAF Coalition’s partnership with Ecuador.

What’s Next

Civic Engagement

Bookstores as Civic Centers

By Kathy O. Brozek

The indie bookstore movement believes the future of bookstores lies in their ability to serve as thriving community spaces.

Environment

Growing the Green Workforce

By Marianne Dhenin

Chicago-based nonprofit Openlands created an arborist apprenticeship program to train the next generation of arborists to maintain the city’s urban forest.

Education

A School of Indigenous Knowledge

By Kristi Eaton 1

The Tat Sat Community Academy tackles Uganda’s education crisis with a curriculum that emphasizes practical job skills, financial literacy, and cultural knowledge.

Arts & Culture

TV for Africa’s Deaf Community

By Valentine Benjamin

Signs TV Uganda offers programming by deaf broadcasters that is also interpreted in sign to serve Africa’s growing, yet underserved, hearing-impaired demographic.

Field Report

Human Rights

A Bank of Their Own

By Puja Changoiwala

Shunned by traditional financial systems, sex workers in Asia’s largest red-light district started their own bank. Now it is empowering other marginalized groups.

Civic Engagement

News You Can Trust

By Noor Noman

The Trust Project is setting standards for principled journalism worldwide to combat the spread of misinformation and rebuild public confidence.

Technology

Technology on the Farm

By Vijaya Sunder M & Siddhartha Modukuri

Outgrow combines digital technologies and India’s ancient agricultural wisdom to support small-scale farmers.

Viewpoint

Civic Engagement

To Save Democracy, Fund Organizing

By Loren McArthur 1

Philanthropies concerned with toxic polarization and growing political extremism should invest in community organizing.

Social Enterprise

Saudi Female Social Entrepreneurs

By Ghadah W. Alharthi & Tuukka Toivonen

Women in the Middle East seeking to launch social enterprises face significant barriers, but they can overcome them by leveraging social ties.

Education

Anchoring Higher Education in the Community

By Dennis Littky & Michael K. Allio

At College Unbound, we aim to empower adult learners to transform their families, communities, and workplaces. We also aspire to transform higher education.

Research

Environment

Air-Pollution Knowledge Is Power

By Chana R. Schoenberger

Tweets about local air quality from US embassies around the world reduced local pollution and improved health.

Social Services

Discipline, Punish, and Palliate

By Chana R. Schoenberger

Palliative measures such as needle-exchange programs form a third model of neoliberal urban-poverty governance alongside policing and paternalism.

Advocacy

For Investors, Protesting Beats Divesting

By Daniela Blei

Investors exert more influence over corporate management through engagement than through boycotts and divestment.

Leadership

The Values of Mentorship

By Daniela Blei

Mentors are more effective when they see mentorship as a learning opportunity.

Book Reviews

Review

Philanthropy & Funding

The Future of Elite Giving

Reviewed By Maribel Morey

The coauthors of For-Profit Philanthropy recommend policies to reestablish the public’s trust in philanthropy—but did it ever exist?

Review

Arts & Culture

People Behave Badly

Reviewed By Susan Dwyer 1

We learn a great deal about how people are complicit in wrongdoing from Max H. Bazerman’s Complicit. But we are left wondering why.

Editor’s Note

Leadership

20 Years of SSIR

By Eric Nee

While the array of media products that SSIR offers has changed over the last 20 years, our mission has not.

SSIR Online

Philanthropy & Funding

SSIR Online, Spring 2023 Issue

By SSIR Editors

A collection of standout pieces published online about housing justice, ESG, funding social ventures, and the effects of large, unrestricted gifts on leaders.

Last Look

Arts & Culture

Artful Disobedience

By Marcie Bianco

A collection of multimedia art called for solidarity with Iranian women in the current uprising in Iran.

20th Anniversary Essays

Other

Nonprofits & NGOs

Invisible Balance Sheet Exercise

By Roland J. Kushner

To warm up your thinking about invisible assets, liabilities, and net assets, try the following activity.

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