Recently added articles from Stanford Social Innovation Review:
editors' note
Jul 01, 2008; Phills, James A Jr; Nee, Eric ... IN "MICROLOAN SHARKS," JONATHAN C. LEWIS attacks what he sees as greed and profiteering in microfinance-an industry celebrated for its potential to alleviate poverty. We are struck by the similarities between these foreign "banks gone wild" and the financial institutions here in the United ...
letters
Jul 01, 2008; Anonymous ... Pro Bono MBAs James W Shepard offers MBAs who hope to volunteer for nonprofits some great tips ("MBAs Gone Wild," SSIR, vol. 6, no. 2, p. 25). That said, I can't resist challenging the basic premise of the article-that the nonprofit sector desperately needs outside expertise ....
out & about
Jul 01, 2008; Anonymous ... GRANTMAKERS FOR EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATIONS (GEO): (above) During GEO's "Ideas to Action" conference March 10-12 in San Francisco, Beth Rubenstein, executive director of Out of Site, explains the many ways her nonprofit offers arts education to San Francisco public high school ...
A Lot of Hot Air
Jul 01, 2008; Conner, Alana ... A popular program for cutting air pollution from vehicles doesn't work To its residents who still have a sense of smell, Mexico City is redolent with the perfumes of exhaust and ozone. The metropolis's air pollution levels routinely rocket past the World Health Organization's maximum ...
Where Nice Is Naughty
Jul 01, 2008; Conner, Alana ... In most parts of the world, strangers helping strangers is strange With tea leaves still steeping in its harbor, Boston is the cradle of American independence. Yet the students wending through its cobblestone streets are remarkably cooperative, finds a study in the March 7, 2008, issue ...
Government Cares the Most
Jul 01, 2008; Conner, Alana ... Public nursing homes outshine nonprofits and for-profits In the early 19th century, U.S. local governments built public nursing homes to take care of their elderly residents. But now, 65 percent of nursing homes are for-profit, 28 percent are nonprofit, and a mere 7 percent are public, ...
Smoke and Mirrors
Jul 01, 2008; Conner, Alana ... Can a tobacco company ever be socially responsible? Since the World Health Organization clamped down on tobacco advertising, corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are among the few remaining outlets that tobacco companies have to promote themselves publicly. British American ...
Don't Save; Be Saved
Jul 01, 2008; Conner, Alana ... Conservative Protestants are poorer partly because of their religion Lisa Keister was born poor. "I deaned houses when I was 10 years old," she says. Now a professor of sociology at Duke University, she's trying to understand what leads people not to build wealth. Her answer? Their ...
The Toughest Job You'll Never Get
Jul 01, 2008; Conner, Alana ... Would-be EDs cite inadequate mentoring, low pay, and poor lifestyle as career obstacles Jatinda Abcarian, executive director of Oakland, Calif.-based Youth Radio, knows her organization from way back when. In the early 1990s, she was among the first high school students to undergo Youth ...
The Price of Going Left
Jul 01, 2008; Conner, Alana ... In new democracies, right-leaning elections attract foreign investors A few decades ago, developing countries were either one-party socialist states, absolute monarchies, or military juntas, and so were not privy to the planned chaos of elections. But with the spread of democracy, these ...
Fast Food and the Family Farm
Jul 01, 2008; Boyd, Bruce ... It's time to reform how we grow food and what we have for dinner Almost 30 years ago, my family bought a small farm along the Mississippi River in northwestern Illinois near the historic town of Galena. The farm has a couple of pastures where the neighbors' black-and-white Holsteins ...
C-Level Diversity
Jul 01, 2008; Rice, John ... How to get more racial minorities into corner offices by John Rice Last September, on the 50th anniversary of the landmark desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, Americans acknowledged how the Little Rock Nine (as the first group of black students came to be called) prompted ...
We've Arrived. Now What?
Jul 01, 2008; Wright-Violich, Kim ... The rise of national donor-advised funds by Kim Wright-Violich When I interviewed for my current position at Schwab Charitable in 1999, the nonprofit was still a start-up and just launching a "donor-advised fund" giving program. Though I had been active in the charitable sector for 15 ...
Less Is More
Jul 01, 2008; Välikangas, Liisa; Gibbert, Michael ... Financial aid discourages innovative solutions to poverty by Liisa Välikangas & Michael Gibbert The prevailing orthodoxy when it comes to helping the poor has boiled down to a catchphrase: Give adequate resources to those with inadequate resources. In our experience, however, ...
Martin Eakes
Jul 01, 2008; Nee, Eric ... Managing Editor Eric Nee spoke with Self-Help's founder and CEO, Martin Eakes, about the subprime loan crisis and its impact on the poor. When Martin Eakes was a teenager growing up in a poor, rural community outside of Greensboro, N.C., his best friend, who was an African American, was ...
Achieving Breakthrough Performance
Jul 01, 2008; Gottfredson, Mark; Schaubert, Steve; Babcock, Elisabeth ... From the Girl Scouts, to Partners In Health, to the city of Providence, R.I., great organizations have one thing in common: great managers. These managers, in turn, share four simple management principles that they use to guide organizations from mere mediocrity to stand-out ...
THE EQUITY CAPITAL GAP
Jul 01, 2008; Miller, Clara ... For-profit businesses can efficiently and quickly raise large amounts of money to fund growth and innovation by tapping equity capital-money that people invest in a company in return for ownership and a share of profits. The nonprofit world has no corollary, making it difficult, costly, and ...
Reimagining Microfinance
Jul 01, 2008; Counts, Alex ... Critics of microfinance institutions (MFIs) ask them to choose between helping the poor or making money for investors, but this is a false choice. MFIs can have their impact and profit, too, says the author, the CEO of the Grameen Foundation. He sketches a new vision of microfinance as a ...
Measuring Microfinance
Jul 01, 2008; Karlan, Dean ... Microfinance institutions target driven, spirited entrepreneurs. Their clients do not sit around waiting for handoutsthe old style of development-but rather seek opportunities to better themselves and their families. Before entering a microfinance program, many clients are below the poverty ...
Microloan sharks
Jul 01, 2008; Lewis, Jonathan C ... Commercial microfinance institutions (MFIs) must calculate two bottom lines: alleviating poverty for clients and also generating profits for investors. To achieve the latter goal, some MFIs charge their impoverished clients exorbitant interest rates. The recent Banco Compartamos IPO in Mexico ...