Stanford Social Innovation Review

⭐ SSIR’s New Issue (online now): Collectively Owned Strategies • Doing Community Development Right • The Solidarity Practices of Informal Economies 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eBBPUep9 The Winter ’25 Issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review features: “Collectively Owned Strategies” | In their cover story, Jordan Fabyanske, Sonila Cook, and Mariah Levin from Dalberg Catalyst and The DO School Fellowships argue for a reconfiguration of philanthropic power through strategies that are collectively owned. “New Blueprint for Financing Community Development” | David Fukuzawa, Nancy O. Andrews, and Rebecca Steinitz propose a new paradigm for community development that prioritizes impact over scale, emphasizes flexible and creative financing strategies, and empowers community voice. “Strengthening Africa’s Urban Informal Economies” | Joel Bothello and Tim Weiss argue that development professionals should take an assets-based approach to strengthening Africa’s urban informal economies. Plus: Book reviews of Terrible Beauty by Auden Schendler and Kindred Creation by Aida Mariam Davis (Aida D.). 📚   Subscribe now to SSIR to read these reviews and more: https://lnkd.in/eTRxhPWe 🐟 A fascinating case study on how Kenyan fishing villages are using mangrove conservation to fund local development 🎓 An argument for reforming public health education ❤️🩹 A timely profile of Ukraine’s wartime lifesavers 💬 Research on how to fight polarization with personal stories And don’t miss two special supplements from the Skoll Foundation (Social Innovation and the Journey to Transformation) and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) (Practices for Transitions in a Time Between Worlds), available to all readers! Explore the full issue now! https://lnkd.in/eBBPUep9

🌏 In a world of increasing complexity and polarization, system orchestrators drive collective action to achieve outsized impact: “Systems orchestrators know that leadership duties—and the power that goes with them—should be shared among multiple people, including other types of social innovators, government officials, and C-suite executives.” Don Gips of the Skoll Foundation, Tulaine Montgomery (Tulaine M.) of New Profit, Rohini Nilekani of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, and Cristiane Sultani of Instituto Beja share insights from working with successful system orchestrators to remake entire systems around education, health care, environmental sustainability, protecting democracy, and economic equity: “It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the big, audacious goals of society can be achieved without system orchestrators. If philanthropy provides them the wraparound, long-term support they deserve, we may never have to.”

Multigenerational living is an old solution whose time has come. However, creating the opportunity for multiple generations of families to live together requires building the spaces for them to do it. That means transforming the zoning regulations, financial structures, and social patterns that separated them just over a century ago. Jonathan F.P. Rose outlines how US housing policy can be amended to make multigenerational living easier. https://lnkd.in/e2ER69KP

Who imagines what’s next? Elissa Sloan Perry, head of the Prefiguring Futures Lab at Change Elemental, outlines what’s needed to support imagination and to make it possible to take risk, especially for marginalized individuals: “Given our systems of oppression and othering, the very people who are most often resourced to imagine a way out of social problems such as poverty, homelessness, racism, and transphobia are often not the most affected and thus the least likely to imagine a true solution. We often get new ways for the relative few to access settler-colonialist and capitalist ‘solutions,’ instead of true liberation whereby people and the planet can exist in mutually accountable, interdependent well-being.” This essay on building social imagination is part of a larger series of articles that illuminates practices for new pathways to a better tomorrow: https://lnkd.in/gnprbwhA

In Terrible Beauty, Auden Schendler argues that by focusing on incremental rather than systemic change, the corporate sustainability movement has played into the fossil fuel industry’s hands. Richard Roberts, head of research at Volans, a sustainable business think tank and advisory firm, reviews Schendler’s new book in the latest issue of SSIR: “Schendler’s advice to those working in corporate sustainability is not to quit your job—that really would be hypocritical—but to focus on getting your company to use its political influence for good. To do this, companies need to stop obsessing about ‘operational greening’ and instead divert resources toward efforts to engage with policy makers.” Read the review: https://lnkd.in/embsSEiU

Cross-sector initiatives don't need to start big to make a big impact. Join us next month for a transformative two-part webinar series led by three distinguished experts from the University of Minnesota, @Vanessa Laird, Kathryn Quick, and Myles Shaver. Register now: https://bit.ly/CrossSector

For too long, community development finance has fallen prey to market conservatism, prioritizing scale over social mission and uniformity over community-tailored solutions. But a different model is sprouting up that empowers community voice, prioritizes equity, and responds flexibly to local needs. Community development experts David Fukuzawa, Nancy Andrews, and Rebecca Steinitz take readers from Appalachia to Coachella to understand this dawning revolution: “Taking community development impacts to scale requires high-volume capital deployment and the conservative risk thresholds that attract and retain private, public, and philanthropic investors. The result is a virtuous cycle of expanding capital, expanding deployment, and broader reach. Yet it is increasingly clear that to achieve the impacts it seeks, community investment needs to better address the roadblocks of structural and systemic racism, local complexities, and overly restrictive views of philanthropic leverage and investment.” Read the full story in SSIR’s new winter issue: https://lnkd.in/eaYGbpgk

Tensions frequently arise when different organizational cultures—the proverbial “how we do things”—come together. Working effectively with and across cultures is even more challenging when organizations come together to tackle social and environmental challenges. Tirza Gapp and Jennifer Howard-Grenville of the Cambridge Judge Business School describe four practices that help build cultural savvy and an effective inter-organizational culture that helps collaborations deliver on their goals. 1 Sharing and continually updating cultural requirements 2 Leveraging external relationships 3 Adapting how things are done 4 Accumulating and remembering a repertoire of what works

🤩 Very much looking forward to digging into this Stanford Social Innovation Review supplement on navigating the monumental transitions upon us. All the chapters look amazing, and I am proud to share a byline with Kate B. on Tackling the Wealth Defense Industry. ~ Thank you Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) for sponsoring this inquiry! https://lnkd.in/gcRzXdYy

We are thrilled to announce the publication of a new article series, “Social Innovation and the Journey to Transformation”, published today in the Winter 2025 Issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. As we reflect on the past year and look forward to the next, we’ll be deep-diving into each article’s insights, learnings, and examples. We worked shoulder-to-shoulder with social innovators and other funders from around the globe to develop the series and share what’s working and what we’ve learned about forging solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. https://skoll.wf/journey We invite you to join us in exploring the impactful insights and strategies social innovators are using to drive social transformation. Discover how collaborative efforts in philanthropy are helping innovators take their solutions to the next level of scale and sustainability. From system orchestration and mission-aligned investing to storytelling and new evaluation and learning approaches, this series explores what it takes to transform societies around the world. Philanthropy can play an even larger role in providing sustained support to social innovators who build bridges across sectors and drive collective action. How can we, together, identify new ways to accelerate social transformation, collaborate with one another, and join efforts for outsized impact? Keep an eye out over the coming weeks as we share more inspiring stories and practical lessons from the frontlines of social innovation. #JourneyToTransformation #SocialInnovation #CollaborativePhilanthropy #Impact #CollectiveAction