SSIR’s 2021 Social Innovation Reading List
Highlights from book excerpts published by SSIR online this year on topics including mutualism, grassroots development, breakthrough ideas, racial injustice, and well-being.
Leadership Innovative ways to develop strong leadership capabilities
Latest
Using Founder Sabbaticals as Organizational Reset
Founder sabbaticals are as important for the organization as for the well-being of the founder. But for a founder’s sabbatical to build organizational resilience, examine internal power dynamics, and prepare for the founder’s eventual (and inevitable) departure, organizations must plan for, resource, and require them.
Podcast
Crisis and Change: Conversations With Leaders—Political Polarization
Susan Urahn of The Pew Charitable Trusts and Sarah Rosen Wartell of the Urban Institute discuss the many challenges facing American democracy—and ways to find common ground in a polarized environment. Produced in partnership with The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Excerpt
Failing to Lead
An excerpt from Failing To Win: Hard-Earned Lessons from a Purpose-Driven Startup on critical mistakes and what could have been.
Centering Equity in Collective Impact
A decade of applying the collective impact approach to address social problems has taught us that equity is central to the work.
Most Popular
Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition
Social entrepreneurship is attracting growing amounts of talent, money, and attention, but along with its increasing popularity has come less certainty about what exactly a social entrepreneur is and does.
Creating High-Impact Nonprofits
Conventional wisdom says that scaling social innovation starts with strengthening internal management capabilities. This study of 12 high-impact nonprofits, however, shows that real social change happens when organizations go outside their own walls and find creative ways to enlist the help of others.
What Business Execs Don’t Know—but Should—About Nonprofits
Business leaders play vital roles in the nonprofit sector – as board members, donors, partners, and even executives. Yet all too often they underestimate the unique challenges of managing nonprofit organizations.
The Bias of ‘Professionalism’ Standards
Professionalism has become coded language for white favoritism in workplace practices that more often than not leave behind people of color. This is the fourth of 10 articles in a special series about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The New Volunteer Workforce
Nonprofits rely heavily on volunteers, but most CEOs do a poor job of managing them. As a result, more than one-third of those who volunteer one year do not donate their time the next year.