Winter 2021

Issue

Winter 2021

Volume 19, Number 1

Read about how workers are using digital tools and online engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic to achieve real benefits, how win-win strategies promoted by academics and business leaders are unproven and counterproductive, how human-centered design for social innovation has become more collaborative and focused on systems change, how employees are fighting to make their companies better corporate citizens, and other topics in the Winter 2021 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Features

Advocacy

Platform Power to the People

By Sanjay Pinto & Beth Gutelius

The coronavirus pandemic has shown how digital tools can foster online engagement that leads to real benefits for working people.

Business

The Dangerous Allure of Win-Win Strategies

By Andrew A. King & Kenneth P. Pucker 18

For the past 30 years, celebrated academics and business leaders have promoted the idea that companies often profit by addressing social and environmental problems. Although these proposals have been hailed as promising breakthroughs, they are unscientific and counterproductive.

Design Thinking

The Next Chapter in Design for Social Innovation

By Jocelyn Wyatt, Tim Brown & Shauna Carey 1

To address more complex social challenges, design thinking must become radically more collaborative and oriented toward systems change.

Advocacy

Business Disruption From the Inside Out

By Forrest Briscoe & Abhinav Gupta

Employees increasingly want their employers to become more responsible corporate citizens. Here is a playbook for how employees can be effective change agents and how leaders can respond to employee activism.
Open-access to this article made possible by The Pennsylvania State University and The University of Washington.

What’s Next

Environment

Saving the Honeybees

By Luke O’Neill

In an effort to save the bees and buttress the global food supply, Edete, an Israel-based agricultural technology company, has set out to reduce the strain on bees by assisting them with crop pollination.

Arts & Culture

The Future of Fashion

By Payal Mohta

With the goal of reducing pollution, Amsterdam-based Fashion for Good created the Good Fashion Fund (GFF), the first investment fund focused exclusively on encouraging collaborations between fashion and technology.

Health

Centering Disability in Health Care

By Victoria A.  Brownworth

The Missing Billion initiative aims to end the health-care gap for disabled people by 2030 by identifying breakdowns, building evidence, and compiling best practices for the health system framework.

Arts & Culture

News Through a Gender Lens

By Hilary Weaver

The 19th, a new nonprofit, nonpartisan publication, is dedicated to in-depth reporting of the issues that matter to women, especially health care.

Field Report

Advocacy

The Power of Collective Bargaining

By Tim Keary

Union rights organization Jobs With Justice relies on its extensive nationwide network to advocate for economic and social justice for workers.

Advocacy

Safeguarding Atheist Refugees

By Priti Salian 1

A Germany-based nonprofit is helping ex-Muslim asylum seekers find shelter from religious persecution.

Philanthropy & Funding

A Guaranteed Return

By Adrienne Day 1

The Good Returns Cycle Program aims to supplement corporate philanthropy by unlocking profits to help social enterprises.

Case Study

Health

A Nonprofit Networked Platform for Global Health

By Tamara Kay & Jason Spicer

Project ECHO developed a revolutionary model for helping doctors and clinicians in New Mexico to treat hepatitis C. It spread around the world to address numerous chronic diseases. With the COVID-19 pandemic, it found its moment.

Viewpoint

Philanthropy & Funding

Philanthropy Must Not Support Hate

By Mark Hurtubise 24

Commercial national charities and community foundations should refuse requests by donor-advisors to give to hate groups.

Social Enterprise

Applying a Gender Lens to Social Entrepreneurship

By Winthrop Carty

The social sector will flourish through embracing less patriarchal and more collaborative approaches that focus on long-term systemic change.

Education

School Districts Must Embrace Social Responsibility

By Lin Johnson III

Schools must help liberate their students and their families from social injustice and support the revitalization and sustainability of their communities and environment.

Economic Development

Unveiling the Informal Economy

By Andrew Charman, Joel Bothello & Robert Nason

Stereotypes cloud our perception of the informal economy, but we have much to learn from the entrepreneurship that unfolds there.

Research

Civic Engagement

Protests, Violence, and Political Change

By Daniela Blei

The Black protests of the US civil rights era influenced the national political agenda via the media coverage they received.

Foundations

How Corporate Philanthropy Buys Influence

By Daniela Blei 4

Companies use charitable giving to disguise political lobbying.

Business

Precarious Scheduling in the Service Sector

By Daniela Blei

Racial inequality exacerbates the oppressive scheduling faced by service sector workers.

Social Enterprise

Lending in the Shadow of Colonialism

By Daniela Blei

Financial program to help microenterprises in Tanzania fails to take historical context into account.

Book Reviews

Review

Education

Learning Isn’t an Algorithm

Reviewed By Flower Darby

Failure to Disrupt details the promise and pitfalls of technology in the remote classroom.

Review

Philanthropy & Funding

The Feminist Trailblazer of Black Philanthropy

Review By Maryann Reid

A new biography of Madam C. J. Walker shows how America’s first self-made female millionaire and Black entrepreneur put philanthropy at the center of her business and life.

Editor’s Note

Human Rights

The Union Makes Us Strong

By Eric Nee

One of the important ways to improve the lives of ordinary Americans is to empower workers and encourage the growth of unions.

SSIR Online

Nonprofits & NGOs

SSIR Online, Winter 2021 Issue

By SSIR Editors

Links to all of SSIR's online-only articles published the past three months, with editors' notes about standout pieces on menstrual health, virtual events, and the downside to an overly positive organizational culture.

Last Look

Arts & Culture

The Knights of COVID-19

By Marcie Bianco 1

The Swedish model of relying more on civic-minded ethics than on government restrictions has proved to be an outlier worldwide.

From Philanthropy to the Front Lines

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