Winter 2025

Issue

Winter 2025

Volume 23, Number 1

Read about how funders can achieve greater impact through the collective ownership of strategies; how the community development field should rethink financing to prioritize impact, flexibility, and local empowerment; how development professionals should work with the existing assets of informal economies; how Kenyan fishing villages are using mangrove conservation to fund local development; and other topics in the Winter 2025 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review. Plus: Two special supplements from the Skoll Foundation (Social Innovation and the Journey to Transformation) and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (Practices for Transitions in a Time Between Worlds).

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Features

Philanthropy & Funding

Collectively Owned Strategies

By Jordan Fabyanske, Sonila Cook & Mariah Levin 1

Funder-owned strategies often reinforce donor-grantee power imbalances and focus on short-term measurable gains, thereby limiting philanthropic impact. Global and systemic challenges can be addressed more effectively with strategies that are collectively owned. | Open-access to this article made possible by Dalberg Catalyst.

Economic Development

A New Blueprint for Financing Community Development

By David Fukuzawa, Nancy O. Andrews & Rebecca Steinitz 1

The traditional model of community development finance is limited by market conservatism and a focus on scale, rather than local control. We need a new paradigm that prioritizes impact over scale, emphasizes flexible and creative financing strategies, and empowers community voice. | Open access to this article is made possible by The Center for Community Investment, a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

Economic Development

Strengthening Africa’s Urban Informal Economies

By Joel Bothello & Tim Weiss

Conventional needs-based development policies can be harmful to informal businesses. Instead, development professionals must embrace an asset-based approach, identifying how existing collective solutions foster business resilience. | Open-access to this article made possible by the Concordia University Research Chair in Resilience and Institutions, John Molson School of Business, Concordia University.

Case Study

Economic Development

The Promise of Blue Carbon Credits

By Maria Medeleanu, Frank Mazza, Thaisa Tylinski Sant’Ana, Fatima Formuli & Joseph Wong

Kenyan fishing villages are restoring their mangroves in exchange for carbon credits and better fish stocks. Their community-led projects offer a model for doing conservation, sustainability, and development right.

What’s Next

Environment

Brewing Fertilizer From Food Waste

By Robyn Huang

The Icelandic startup Melta transforms community food waste into fertilizer, with the goal of cutting emissions and promoting sustainable farming in Iceland.

Civic Engagement

Democratic Giving

By Sarah Murray

Wealth Shared empowers a collective of people to determine grantmaking decisions.

Design Thinking

Cool Carts

By Charu Bahri 1

Cooling innovation helps food hawkers who cannot afford conventional refrigeration.

Philanthropy & Funding

Closing Philanthropy’s Gender Gap

By Marianne Dhenin

The Giving List Women believes that investing in women and girls helps everyone thrive.

Field Report

Nonprofits & NGOs

Ukraine’s Wartime Lifesavers

By Paul Hockenos

Ukrainian civil society is training both civilians and military on first aid and emergency medical response.

Food

Reimagining the Spice Trade

By Marianne Dhenin

Diaspora Co. strives to bring South Asia’s heirloom and single-origin spices to the United States while ensuring that partner farms and farmworkers thrive.

Food

Fish Farming in the Desert

By Marianne Dhenin

The Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research’s aquaculture program is bolstering the nation’s economy and food security.

Viewpoint

Health

Leadership for a Healthy Tomorrow

By Claire Chaumont & Tim McDonald

Public health leaders must develop new competencies to guide the systemic change necessary to improve human well-being.

Technology

AI for Social Good

By Iqbal Dhaliwal & Michael Hou

We need rigorous impact evaluations of AI in the social sector to ensure that it promotes social welfare.

Measurement & Evaluation

Learning in Stages

By Loïc Watine & Lucy Rimmington

To achieve impact at scale, funders should expect different monitoring, evaluation, and learning activities as programs mature.

Research

Education

The Dangers of Grit

By Daniela Blei

Pushing low-income students to work harder can be self-undermining.

Collaboration

How to Fight Polarization

By Daniela Blei

Personal stories that highlight humility and vulnerability can overcome mistrust and polarization.

Advocacy

How Social Enterprises Advocate

By Chana R. Schoenberger

Research demonstrates that social enterprises are political actors that seek to influence public policy and sociocultural norms.

Organizational Development

Decentralized Workplace

By Chana R. Schoenberger

Companies that adopt nonhierarchical organizational structures require deliberate efforts and collective planning to succeed.

Book Reviews

Review

Environment

Reinventing Corporate Sustainability

Reviewed By Richard Roberts

In Terrible Beauty, Auden Schendler argues that by focusing on incremental rather than systemic change, the corporate sustainability movement has played into the fossil-fuel industry’s hands.

Review

Human Rights

A Blueprint for Liberation

Reviewed By Aria Florant

Decolonize Design founder Aida Mariam Davis challenges settler-colonialist paradigms to offer a new pathway to freedom for Black, Indigenous, and oppressed peoples.

Editor’s Note

Philanthropy & Funding

Ownership and Equity

By David V. Johnson

SSIR’s new issue delves into ownership in both the straightforward and metaphorical senses and how the idea grounds a community and provides a source of systemic change.

SSIR Online

Technology

SSIR Online, Winter 2025 Issue

By SSIR Editors

A collection of standout pieces published online about strategic philanthropy, strengthening global democracy, crisis planning, and nonprofits leveraging AI innovations

Last Look

Environment

Elephants in New York

By Marcie Bianco

The traveling exhibition The Great Elephant Migration raises awareness about the survival of the elephant species and our mutual coexistence.

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Magazine Sections
- Features
  
  New and in-depth explorations of solutions to social, environmental, or organizational problems
- Case Study
  
  An inside look at one organization
- What’s Next
  
  New approaches to social change
- Field Report
  
  Profiles of innovative work
- Viewpoint
  
  Insights from the front lines
- Research
  
  Highlights from scholarly journals
- Book Reviews
  
  Reviews of new and notable titles
- Editor’s Note
  
  Perspectives on the print magazine issues from SSIR's editor-in-chief
- SSIR Online
  
  Takeaways from SSIR's digital channels
- Last Look
  
  Images that inspire
- Sponsored Supplements
  
  Collections of articles on a single topic, funded by a sponsor
SSIR is published by the
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