Inside Social Innovation

“Crisis and Change: Conversations With Leaders” is produced in partnership by The Pew Charitable Trusts and Stanford Social Innovation Review. In this episode, Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and La June Montgomery Tabron, president and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, discuss the origins of wealth inequality and its impact on American democracy. They also share how their institutions are cr...

“Crisis and Change: Conversations With Leaders” is produced in partnership by The Pew Charitable Trusts and Stanford Social Innovation Review. In this episode, Tonya Allen, president of the McKnight Foundation, and John Palfrey, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, address the growing threat of a changing climate. They discuss how they’re answering the global call for solutions that promote equity and pro...

Powering Needs, Empowering Lives from Uncharted Ground, a podcast series produced by SSIR and Jonathan Levine. Each episode of Uncharted Ground tells a documentary-style story about one nonprofit or social entrepreneur’s journey to solve a daunting global problem. This episode travels to India where a social enterprise called SELCO has been transforming the lives of the rural poor with affordable sol...

In this episode, Crystal Hayling, executive director of The Libra Foundation, and Sonal Shah, founding president of The Asian American Foundation,...

“Crisis and Change: Conversations With Leaders” is produced in partnership by The Pew Charitable Trusts and Stanford Social Innovation Review. In the series, leaders from across the social sector share insights about how they contend with challenging times and societal division.

In this episode, Susan Urahn, Pew’s president and CEO, and Sarah Rosen Wartell, president of the Urban Institute, discuss the deepening political polarizat...

Political polarization. Climate change. Racial reckoning. Income inequality. A global pandemic. Since 2020, all five of these immense challenges have emerged or deepened, commanding our attention and prompting major societal and cultural shifts. In this special series produced in partnership by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Stanford Social Innovation Review, we talk with leaders from across the social sector. They take us behin...

The entertainment industry has become an important partner to the nonprofit sector, inspiring people to become active around social issues such as climate, poverty, and human rights. What can campaigns for change learn from narrative storytelling experts? How can nonprofit leaders successfully partner with entertainment companies?

In this recording from SSIR’s

Even as nonprofits are put on the defensive by political polarization, inequality, climate change, and other threats, many of them still seek out opportunities to expand their impact. For those dissatisfied with small steps forward, mergers present the chance to leap ahead. But it won't be easy.

"It takes a lot of time," says David La Piana, managing partner o...

Scholars have noted that most new ideas are poor ones that won’t be adopted. So how can organizations integrate innovation productively and prevent it from having unintended consequences? 

In this recording from SSIR’s 2019 NMI conference, Chris...

What do mayors look for and ask from nonprofit managers? What do they wish leaders in the sector would ask of them, and how can public servants and nonprofit leaders learn to better communicate and collaborate?

In this recording from SSIR’s 2019 NMI conference, Mayors Libby Schaaf of...

Predictive analytics can help organizations iterate rapidly, become more transparent and precise, and pinpoint opportunities to address inequities in their work.

In this recording from our 2019 Data on Purpose conference, Parag Gupta, vice president of the Stupski Foundation, and Jeff Gold, assistant vice chancellor at California State University, share a case study of how public higher education institutions are successfully using...

Blockchain can help with a variety of social and economic challenges—from securing identity for refugee or homeless populations to minimizing the presence of conflict diamonds in the industry’s supply chain. But at the end of the day, technology is just a tool serving an end, and one that must be handled carefully to manage the values embedded within it.

In this recording from our 2019 Data on Purpose conference, Cara LaPointe, sen...

What can help the social sector go big on data in the right ways? For one, organizations should stop underestimating their capabilities. And for another, they should build their data strategy around deeper strategic goals as opposed to funding opportunities.

In this recording from our 2019 Data on Purpose conference, Kevin Miller, civic technology manager from the Microsoft Cities Team, Aman Ahuja, a data consultant, Kathryn Petti...

What responsibilities do we have as individuals, organizations, and a society for how we conduct ourselves online? In this recording from our 2019 Data on Purpose conference, Henry Timms, president and CEO of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and former president of 92Y, offers a pledge—a Hippocratic Oath of sorts—to help social sector leaders create digital communities that give people a meaningful role in our society.

“We ne...

In a world where the pace of organizational learning is often slower than the pace of technological change, activists and nonprofit leaders must develop their “technical intuition.” Not everyone needs to become a tech expert, explains Alix Dunn, of the consulting firm Computer Says Maybe, but this ongoing process of imagining, inquiring about, deciding on, and demanding technological change is critical.

In this recording from our 2...

In 2016, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, launched 100&Change—a new grant competition, that would award $100 million to an organization with the best proposal to help solve a critical social problem. The foundation awarded the grant to Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that produces Sesame Street and other children’s educational programs, in partnership with the International Rescue Committee. The grant supports prog...

In 2016, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, launched 100&Change—a new grant competition, to award $100 million to an organization with the best proposal to help solve a critical social problem. In 2018, Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that produces Sesame Street and other children’s educational programs, was named the winner in partnership with the International Rescue Committee. The grant supports programming to edu...

Communication strategy can’t be an afterthought for organizations that want to fully embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion. It requires a careful examination of words, images, ideas, and narrative framing. Where should you start?

Using insight from systems thinking and social, behavioral, and cognitive science, Ann Christiano and Annie Neimand describe how to craft stories and multimedia experiences that disrupt bias and drive s...

“Community-centered” approaches to social change are nothing new. But the term has become a buzzword in the professionalized social impact world, and strategies intended to elevate the needs of grassroots movements often miss the mark. How can nonprofits do better at treating the people they’re trying to support as partners instead of patients? How can organizations shift their approaches from advocating for a population to advocat...