Social Innovations

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Effective Funding

By Steven Lawry

How foundations can best support social innovators.

Root Solutions

By Suzie Boss

Nonprofit lender Root Capital connects rural farmers and artisans with the corporations that crave their products.

The New Frontier

By Jennifer Roberts

LeapFrog Investments will bring better insurance to more of the world's poor.

Brian Lehnen, Scott Morgan, Anne Marie Burgoyne - Year One in the Life of a Nonprofit Start-up

What fuels the creation of a nonprofit organization? In this panel discussion, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, panelists talk about their experiences founding an education-related nonprofit in the United States and a microenterprise in Africa. They explore how they came up with the ideas for their enterprises, how they focused and manifested those ideas, and what smart and not-so-smart choices they made along the way. A portfolio manager adds her insights on what elements make a startup appealing to potential funders.

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Drowning in Data - Thumbnail

Drowning in Data

By Alana Conner Snibbe 9

Funders are calling for more program evaluation, but nonprofits are often collecting dubious data, at great cost to themselves and ultimately to the people they serve.

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Microfinance Misses Its Mark

By Aneel Karnani 46

Despite the hoopla over microfinance, it doesn't cure poverty. But stable jobs do. If societies are serious about helping the poorest of the poor, they should stop investing in microfinance and start supporting large, labor-intensive industries.