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Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion and Analysis: Unitus, We Stand; Divide Us, We Fall

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:53:24 -0400

“He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money”—Benjamin Franklin, 17th-century social entrepreneur and co-founder of the United States.

This, in a nutshell, is the apprehension driving many of the critics and critiques of Seattle-based Unitus, a nonprofit that on July 2, 2010, unexpectedly abandoned its microfinance work in favor of a yet-to-be-named new poverty alleviation mission. The almost instant blowback came on July 9, 2010 in the Chronicle of Philanthropy with phrases like “decision to wind down its sole program shocked. … Is [there] a more sinister reason lurking behind the positive spin…? The announcement …came just before the long July 4th weekend which to some observers calls to mind a ‘bury the news’ ploy used frequently by for-profit corporations.”

Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion and Analysis: Am I a (4) Square?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:49:02 -0400

I’m a big fan of social media but I have to admit: I’m having a hard time getting into the habit of updating my whereabouts. Part of it is that my life just isn’t all that exciting: if there were a badge for Yet Another Before-Dawn Hour Spent Writing A Book or a badge for Marathon Blogging or Watching Rubicon, I would have long ago been anointed somebody’s Mayor—somewhere. At least once. Dan Fletcher, writing in TIME recently, quipped that the idea of updating his whereabouts “is a bit too much like having a pint-size version of my mother in my pocket, constantly prodding me for updates.” Indeed, it’s kind of like that Twitteleh video that made the rounds last year spoofing Twitter, where the Jewish mother uses tweets to prod her son with endless queries asking, Where Are You Going? Who Are You With? Are You Wearing a Sweater? and, perhaps inevitably, Who’s the Girl?]

Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion and Analysis: An Appraising Stare Down the Gift Horse’s Gullet

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:00:54 -0400

Jane Mayer’s excellent piece in this past week’s New Yorker about the brothers Koch, oil billionaires who’ve donated hundreds of millions to nonprofits promoting right-wing causes, finally clarified for the Nonprofiteer her unease at Bill Gates’s campaign to persuade billionaires to donate half their estates to charity. It’s not a question of who has or hasn’t taken the pledge, though that’s an entertaining parlor game. Nor is it the fact that the generosity of extremely wealthy people may not be what the rest of us have in mind when we hear the word “charity.” (The Kochs’ “charity,” for instance, is a term of art encompassing donations to all kinds of institutions, predominantly think-tanks churning out rationales for the economic interests of wealthy people and front groups to make it appear that defending those economic interests is the political will of the non-wealthy majority.)

Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion and Analysis: Nonprofit Institute Haiku Contest

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:00:23 -0400

We had fun with our Nonprofit Management Institute page last week where we solicited haikus about nonprofits. The poems posted ranged from symbolic to quirky and we found ourselves checking back frequently to see what new people were writing.

Realizing that we are neither haiku poets nor literary professionals, the task of choosing just five to feature became too difficult. So below, we have listed one from every Facebook user who posted to our page. Thank you all for taking the time to pen a few syllables about what makes nonprofits great!

Fabio Lotteri:
Haiku of unexpected – Reflection 3
As growing tree feeding my roots on communities help
In human being innovation and understanding Spirit is
Dreams come true leaving the ego in the Global Village dawn as Sakura snowfall first time child eyes surprising imagination
*Sakura = cherry tree, Hanami = observing, admiring the flower blossoming

Christelle Aroule:
Numerous causes
And limited resources
But lasting changes

Susan Rasfeld Yackley:
No profit motive,
So, use heart and hands to help,
Hope everlasting!

Kim Kuulei Birnie:
Data justifies
Smarts and passion make it work
Funding always helps!

Lily Price: Challenging, forging ahead
Never giving up your hopes
You are a light house.

Stanford Social Innovation Review Article Feed: Q&A: Neal Keny-Guyer

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:01:34 -0400

Neal Keny-Guyer has been the CEO of Mercy Corps since he joined the Portland, Ore.-based organization in 1994. During his tenure the organization has grown severalfold in size, joining the ranks of leading global relief and development groups. Today, Mercy Corps operates in nearly 40 countries; it has a staff of about 3,800 and an annual operating budget of more than $300 million. Before joining Mercy Corps, Keny-Guyer spent more than a decade working in the social sector, first with at-risk American youth at Communities in Schools, then with Southeast Asian refugees at CARE/UNICEF, and finally with war-torn Middle Eastern communities at Save the Children. Mercy Corps’s guiding principles are that those affected by a crisis are always the best people to direct their own recovery, and that in most cases the best way to do this is to help local people create market-based solutions. That’s why you will find Mercy Corps assisting local farmers and merchants as they reopen food markets or paying cash to local workers who are helping clear their streets and rebuild their homes. In this interview with Stanford Social Innovation Review Managing Editor Eric Nee, Keny-Guyer explains why disasters can create opportunities to change society…

Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion and Analysis: Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics and Data Visualization

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:24:50 -0400

Count me among the believers that the present era of growing transparency and access to data is one of the most transformative trends of our time. But as always, the trend may not be as positive as it might seem.

Don’t get me wrong, more access to data is better than less access to data. But what matters most is what we do with the data. With more and more data available, increasingly one of the things we are doing is data visualization, just to make sense of the numbers.

Visualizations are incredibly useful because for most humans comprehending the meaning of large sets of numbers is quite difficult, and comprehension based on data is a key tool for change. But because people have a hard time comprehending data and an easier time comprehending visualizations, it becomes incredibly important that we use data visualization well.

Let me give you a few examples. First, consider the “runaway” Toyota stories that dominated the news this spring. Data visualizations, like this one (Figure 1), appeared in many media reports offering what seems to be compelling evidence that indeed something was wrong with Toyotas.

Stanford Social Innovation Podcasts: Muhammad Yunus - Creating a World Without Poverty

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 01:00:00 -0400

In the world of international development, microcredit has become an increasingly important means of poverty alleviation. In this audio interview, Stanford Center for Social Innovation correspondent Ashkon Jafari talks with Nobel Peace prize winner Muhammad Yunus about how he founded Grameen Bank to offer economic building tools for some of the poorest people in Bangladesh. Yunus shares lessons learned along the way, future directions, and what gets him up and motivated every day.

Suite101.com Nonprofit Management Feed: Non-Profit Customer Service

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:20:46 -0400

In business they are customers and in non-profits they are clients, but the techniques for meeting their expectations are the same.

Suite101.com Nonprofit Management Feed: Best Charity for Responsible Philanthropy

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:48:25 -0400

Gospel for Asia is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that funnels donor's funds to where they are intended. Consider giving to this outstanding organization.

Suite101.com Nonprofit Management Feed: Best Charity for Responsible Philanthropy

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:48:25 -0400

Gospel for Asia is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that funnels donor's funds to where they are intended. Consider giving to this outstanding organization.

Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion and Analysis: Digital Job Creation For Youth

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:00:08 -0400

Last week in Kenya, I had a glimpse into the future. It is a space that integrates outsourcing demands, IT skills, entrepreneurship, and the formal economy with employment opportunities for the poor, particularly women and youth.

Welcome to the world of micro-work. I was visiting a Samasource training center in Nairobi. Samasource is a social enterprise with a mission to provide productive and dignified computer-based work to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty.

Its model works like this: Samasource acts as an outsourcing agent that focuses on data services such as image tagging and audio or video transcription. Upon receiving a work order from a client, Samasource breaks down the project into micro tasks and then directs these tasks electronically to partners in countries such as Kenya, Haiti and Pakistan where poverty levels are high. There, trained workers complete these tasks. Samasource provides quality assurance before the final product is delivered to the client.

Samasource screens its partners—local non-profits or small companies—who employ marginalized women and youth. Partners must fulfill social impact criteria such as paying workers a living wage. They also need to reinvest profits in their businesses, demonstrate the capacity to run a computer lab, and ensure quality work. Samasource also trains workers at partner sites to ensure proficiency in key skills.

Stanford Social Innovation Review Article Feed: Do No Evil

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:34:06 -0400

Before the dust settled from the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti in January, the search was on for accurate information. Which buildings were still standing? Where should responders look for trapped victims? How could displaced family members hope to find each other in all the chaos? While humanitarian agencies airlifted crews and supplies to the devastated island, engineers launched programming marathons. Within days, Google released a new online gadget to assist on-the-ground efforts. Embedded on high-traffic Web sites, including the U.S. Department of State home page, Google’s Person Finder allowed anyone to submit information or search an online database for details about the missing. Other Google tools were harnessed to help. Google Map Maker helped aid workers in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, navigate ruined streets. The company created a new Google Crisis Response Web page for Haiti to steer the public toward charitable giving opportunities, seeding the pot with a more than $1 million donation of its own. Google was not the only technology company that rallied to help Haiti. But by marshaling the brains, tools, and cash at its disposal, the Internet giant was demonstrating its special brand of corporate philanthropy. Google isn’t just interested in helping out the…

Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion and Analysis: H.R. 5533: How the Nonprofit Sector Can Rally for a Seat and a Table

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:30:23 -0400

In the spring of 2008, Shirley Sagawa wrote an article for the Journal of Democracy outlining how the nonprofit sector needed a Small Business Administration for itself. In the article, Sagawa states,

“The Internal Revenue Service focuses on tax compliance, and the Corporation for National and Community Service supports volunteer programs. No agency, however, counts nonprofit health or capacity as central to its mission. Nor does the private sector fill this gap. Foundations provide minimal support, and over the last five years almost all of the leading funders have either cut programs or decreased their size significantly. A federal response is the answer; the General Accounting Office has recommended that ‘providing assistance to improve [nonprofit] capacity may be one area where the federal government could employ a more strategic approach.’ What is needed, specifically, is an SBA for nonprofits–a government agency that can provide both funding and guidance to the nonprofit sector.”
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Suite101.com Nonprofit Management Feed: Transformational Leadership in Non-profits

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:55:08 -0400

Non-profit leaders are more than managers, they are agents of transformation. How is transformational leadership defined and how is it different?

Suite101.com Nonprofit Management Feed: Transformational Leadership in Non-profits

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:55:08 -0400

Non-profit leaders are more than managers, they are agents of transformation. How is transformational leadership defined and how is it different?

Stanford Social Innovation Review Article Feed: Research: Long Suffering Falls Short

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:44:32 -0400

When school groups visit the Nazi Documentation Center in Cologne, Germany, “teachers often think that their job is to induce guilt in their students,” observes Roland Imhoff, a doctoral candidate in the department of social and legal psychology at the University of Bonn. “But pushing the guilt button may backfire,” he cautions. Supporting this warning is Imhoff’s dissertation, which shows that emphasizing Jews’ ongoing suffering from past atrocities may actually inflame anti-Semitism rather than cool it. “There is a widespread assumption that collective guilt has positive outcomes,” notes Imhoff. Yet several theories in sociology and psychology offer a different logic: Guilt moves people not to relieve suffering, but to exacerbate it by rationalizing that the victims somehow deserve their plight. Other theories reach the same conclusion through different paths: Rather than guilt, people’s desire to believe in a just world or to maintain the status quo can lead them to despise victims. Noting these ironic misplacements of malice, the Israeli psychoanalyst Zvi Rex once quipped, “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.” Imhoff and his coauthor, University of Bonn professor Rainer Banse, captured this form of anti-Semitism in a novel laboratory experiment. University students first read a passage…

Stanford Social Innovation Review Article Feed: A Bigger Pie

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:24:56 -0400

After three years of working at San Francisco’s Mission Pie, Marzett Lee would still rather eat cake. The 20-year-old shrugs off the café’s just-baked pies with a smile—never mind that the goodies are made with seasonal pickings from some of the Bay Area’s finest sustainable farms. Baked fruit just isn’t her thing, she says. Neither are vegetables. Indeed, when she first started working behind the counter at Mission Pie, ingredients like turnip and butternut squash were as foreign as quiche. But as a place to work, the bakery-café has found a steadfast fan in Lee. When she started as a 17-year-old intern, Lee was so terrified of customers that she would root herself to the sink and wash dishes. Three years later, she has had raises in pay, responsibility, and confidence—opening in the morning, supervising other workers during the day, and keeping up small talk with the regulars who file in on weekends. The bakery even helped raise money for her to join an educational sailing program in the Caribbean. “Working here just opened everything,” says Lee, a budding hairdresser who gets to the café via a two-bus commute from her home in the city’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood. There, she…

Stanford Social Innovation Review Article Feed: Research: Next to Godliness

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:12:57 -0400

Looking for the cleanest possible way to increase charitable donations? Spray citrus-scented Windex. According to new research, “people are more likely to engage in moral behavior when they are in a clean-scented room,” says lead author Katie Liljenquist, an assistant professor of organizational leadership at Brigham Young University. A few years ago Liljenquist and her coauthor discovered that moral “purity” is more than a metaphor. “When people recall an unethical behavior, they feel literally dirty,” Liljenquist says, and try to “wash away their sins” with an antiseptic wipe. So the researchers set out to see if the reverse is true as well: Does a clean smell make people clean up their acts? To find out, they prepared a baseline and a virtuous-smelling space. For the scented condition Liljenquist would run into the center of the room and spritz a little lemon Windex just before the participant arrived. Participants then either played a one-shot anonymous trust game or filled out a survey requesting donations to and volunteers for Habitat for Humanity. Game players learned that their (imaginary) partner had just very trustingly turned over his or her entire $4 to the participant. The money would be tripled because of the partner’s…

Stanford Social Innovation Review Article Feed: What’s Next: In Their Own Words

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:12:03 -0400

Lorena Carrillo is a Mexican immigrant who supports her family as a domestic worker in San Francisco. Domésticas like Carrillo can feel invisible in the well-to-do neighborhoods where they work. That’s changing, however, thanks to a highprofile advertising and social media campaign that plasters domestic workers’ faces on billboards, buses, and blogs as if they were fashion models. The goal is greater awareness of everything from workers’ rights to nontoxic cleaning products that reduce health risks for domésticas and employers alike. This creative campaign is one of eight to emerge from a national, three-year initiative called New Routes to Community Health. Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Benton Foundation, New Routes aims to improve the health of vulnerable and often isolated populations by enabling immigrants to use media to tell their own stories. User-created content focuses on a range of topics and employs an assortment of digital tools. In Boston, Haitian immigrants are producing a series of radio soap operas, or telenovelas, to raise awareness of depression and anxiety within their community. In Chicago, young Latinos are writing and staging theatrical productions that break down cultural taboos about sexuality and other sensitive topics. Although they differ in…

Stanford Social Innovation Review Article Feed: What’s Next: Embracing Practical Solutions

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:49:04 -0400

Every hour, 450 low-birthweight babies die in the developing world. Despite mother love and warm blankets, their tiny bodies don’t have enough fat to regulate temperature and protect fragile organs. Outcomes would improve with better access to incubators, but the $20,000 per unit cost, not to mention the need for electricity, makes this an impractical solution for rural villages. A low-tech alternative incubated on the Stanford University campus is now getting ready to roll out in India, which has an unfortunate corner on the world market of low-birth-weight babies. Embrace, a fledgling nonprofit, will soon begin distributing a baby warmer that looks like a miniature sleeping bag. It features a special insert containing a waxy compound. When heated by hot water, this phase-changing material maintains a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit for up to four hours. At a unit price of about $25, the baby warmer is a low-cost but potentially highimpact innovation. Embrace CEO Jane Chen was part of the product development team, which included engineering and business students in a class called Entrepreneurial Designfor Extreme Affordability. By the end of spring term 2007, they had reviewed medical research, dispatched a team member to Nepal for fieldwork, and…

Stanford Social Innovation Review Article Feed: What’s Next: Putting More Fun into Play

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:37:04 -0400

Turn kids loose with sand, water, and simple stuff they can move around—and then get out of their way. In no time, they’ll create their own world of castles, fanciful creatures, and vehicles powered by sheer imagination. Such childish fun may seem out-of-date to today’s heavily scheduled kids and their wellmeaning parents. But free play is about to get a big boost. Imagination Playground, designed pro bono by architect David Rockwell in collaboration with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, is under construction in lower Manhattan. When the playground opens next year, it will showcase a multilevel environment designed to let kids act like kids. Four years in the planning, the playground will come with trained “play associates.” Their charge: encourage youthful creativity while reminding parents and nannies to take a giant step back. Now, a new partnership between the Rockwell Group and KaBOOM!, a nonprofit that helps communities build playgrounds, is preparing to take the essential ingredients of the Imagination Playground to a much bigger scale. The two organizations have formed a for-profit venture that will handle distribution and marketing of Imagination Playground in a Box. The basic product is a container on wheels, not unlike…

Stanford Social Innovation Review Article Feed: What’s Next: Banking on Change

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:28:25 -0400

On a study trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, with a group of fellow philanthropists, Tricia McKay visited a low-income credit union where she saw customers routinely making deposits and taking out small loans. Back in Seattle where she heads the Medina Foundation, McKay couldn’t help but notice a lack of similar services for the working poor of Washington state. She became acutely aware of “payday lenders and check-cashing services on every corner of low-income neighborhoods. We have a market failure,” she concluded, when it comes to serving “the unbanked, underbanked, and want-to-be-banked.” That gap narrowed a bit in May when a five-year effort spearheaded by the Medina Foundation resulted in the grand opening of Express Credit Union. Actually, it’s a reopening of a 75-year-old institution that originally served transportation workers. The old Express was losing members and lacked capital to modernize its systems. The makeover brings in a new board of directors and CEO, a new business plan, and a sister nonprofit called Express Advantage to provide financial literacy education and other support. An infusion of capital includes $1.4 million from the Medina Foundation plus smaller grants from other philanthropists. Through an unusual partnership, Washington’s largest credit union, BECU, is helping…

Stanford Social Innovation Review Article Feed: Research: Diversity Brings the Dollars

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:14:58 -0400

Guacamole Doritos, Wasabi Funyuns, and Mountain Dew Code Red (which is targeted to African-Americans) are three fruits of PepsiCo Inc.’s diversity initiatives. These initiatives, which include mentoring programs and support groups, attempt to harness employees’ racial and ethnic heritages for competitive advantage. So far, the company’s efforts seem to be paying off: For instance, PepsiCo attributed part of its 8 percent growth in 2004 revenues to its diversity programs, reports a Nov. 14, 2005, article in The Wall Street Journal. Like PepsiCo, many other corporations have claimed that ethnically and sexually diverse workforces generate more creative ideas, tap into more markets, and develop better solutions than do more homogeneous ones. But the plural of anecdote is not data, and so the business case for diversity has often foundered for want of systematic evidence. This summer, however, sociologist Cedric Herring crunched the numbers and discovered that, indeed, more diverse workplaces have higher revenues, more customers, larger market shares, and greater relative profits. “What I’ve done is use real data from real organizations to document what people have speculated about for quite some time,” says Herring, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Results like his are “the holy grail…

Stanford Social Innovation Review Article Feed: Research: House Divided

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:57:37 -0400

Some state legislation makes for game-changing, visionary public policy—developing highway systems, organizing state parks, establishing statewide systems of public assistance. Some is more modest in scope—say, building a trailside museum in the Jamaica Plain district of Boston, or temporarily protecting the raccoons and mink of Red River County, Texas. What is it that leads lawmakers sometimes to craft policies with a broad impact and sometimes to focus on narrow, district legislation tailored to the interests of a specific village, city, or county? According to a new study, the first answer is fierce party politics. It may be hard to believe as one watches Republicans and Democrats rip one another to shreds and log-jam budgets, but political scientist Gerald Gamm of the University of Rochester finds that “in the absence of competitive party politics, you don’t see broad-based policymaking at the state level.” “Party competition puts together coalitions of legislators who are all on the same team, and gives those legislators an incentive to show how they’re different from the other party,” explains study coauthor Thad Kousser, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego. “It enables parties to become meaningful policybased organizations that compete over different visions…

Stanford Social Innovation Review Article Feed: Research: Evil Green

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:48:44 -0400

Australian company Aussie-Bum just launched a new line of eco-friendly underwear. It’s manly, lightweight, and made of banana fiber—the perfect match for a sustainable lifestyle. The company’s marketing material touts the environmental benefits of banana underwear. What it doesn’t mention is that owning a pair may make you behave badly. New research shows that buying green products makes people more likely to cheat and steal. Although the mere presence of ecofriendly options tips consumers’ subconscious toward cooperation and generosity, actually buying them does the opposite. “After having purchased green products as opposed to conventional ones, people shared less of their money with an anonymous other person,” says lead author Nina Mazar, experimental psychologist at the University of Toronto. “They became more selfish, less altruistic.” Mazar and her coauthor designed two online storefronts. One of them carried mostly green goods, such as compact fluorescent lightbulbs and organic potato chips, and the other carried mostly conventional products—incandescent bulbs, Pringles, and the like. Students who volunteered for the study got $25 to spend, and the researchers sat them down in front of one of the two online storefronts. After shopping, the volunteers had to decide how much of a $6 gift to give…

Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion and Analysis: The Charitable Giving Market is Efficient After All

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:38:57 -0400

“The charitable giving market is highly inefficient.” In the five years I’ve been writing about philanthropy I’ve used that phrase, or at least that sentiment, more times than I could possibly count. That’s not a blinding insight on my part by any means—it long predates me and is a view shared by many who are working to improve the sector.

The premise is that in well-functioning markets, capital moves to where it gets the best return. People or organizations who don’t generate a high enough return find it increasingly hard to raise funds, while those who produce high returns find it increasingly easier to find the funding they need. You don’t have to spend long looking to conclude that’s not the case in philanthropy. Nonprofits that aren’t very good at what they do can raise huge sums while highly effective programs struggle to get by.

I was a true believer of this perspective until a few months ago. While reviewing the work of a client, Hope Consulting, which had just completed one of the most comprehensive surveys of donor behavior and thinking for many years, it suddenly struck me: donors are getting exactly what they want from their charitable giving. In other words, the market is in fact efficient, even highly so.

Suite101.com Nonprofit Management Feed: Fund Raising for Charity

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 19:57:37 -0400

Most people have a favourite charity and some make monthly contributions, others take part in sponsored events so how can you boost your sponsorship?

Suite101.com Nonprofit Management Feed: Fund Raising for Charity

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 19:57:37 -0400

Most people have a favourite charity and some make monthly contributions, others take part in sponsored events so how can you boost your sponsorship?

Suite101.com Nonprofit Management Feed: Essential Elements of Strategic Planning in Non-Profits

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:41:01 -0400

There are four essential elements for effective strategic planning in Non-Profits: Leadership, Strategy, Organizational Culture, and Operations.

Suite101.com Nonprofit Management Feed: Strategic Planning in Non-Profits - the Essential Elements

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:41:01 -0400

There are four essential elements for effective strategic planning in Non-Profits: Leadership, Strategy, Organizational Culture, and Operations.