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The Social Impact Investment Mirage

Stanford Social Innovation Review

Last year, our social impact startup hit a milestone that eludes 96 percent of female founders: we hit one million dollars in revenue. We know that for social entrepreneurs trying to solve global challenges, the system is rigged. Underneath every accomplishment lies a profoundly broken funding landscape for social innovation.

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A Social Movement Requires Momentum

Stanford Social Innovation Review

In the realm of social change, community-based leaders are skilled at influencing and using momentum to advance local solutions but often lack all the financial resources they need to push those solutions to their full potential. In its wake, momentum for change seemed to build.

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The Colors Co-op Experiment: Learning the Right Lessons from Our Failure

NonProfit Quarterly

As a former Windows on the World worker and a co-founder of ROC who witnessed the restaurant’s opening (2005) and closing (2020), I believe it is important to assess what worked, what did not, and what can be learned from the experience that might inform future co-op and social enterprise efforts. million yearly.

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Can Cities Be the Source of Scalable Innovations?

Stanford Social Innovation Review

What little optimism remains to tackle such complex challenges is mostly placed in supranational schemes, such as the COP climate change conferences, or transformational national policy, such as the Green New Deal in the US. ” Scaling up social innovation takes time, but there are also varying ways it can be done.

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Putting Health at the Center of Climate Change

Stanford Social Innovation Review

As with their environmental footprints, companies need to evaluate how and when they can support health and livelihoods across the full range of their business activities, and then take action across their supply and value chains. For example, the Forever Better financing program incentivizes suppliers to work on climate and social issues.

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Instead of Disruption, Leverage What Already Exists

Stanford Social Innovation Review

For as long as most of us can remember, social enterprises and social movements have sought to disrupt systems from the outside or to make fundamental policy changes from the top down. By Jim Bildner & Stephanie Khurana. In Education. We see the same thing in organizations focused on educational attainment.

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Reimagining the Role of Business in Protecting Biodiversity

Stanford Social Innovation Review

To combat this crisis, governments and international bodies have turned to diverse policy frameworks for biodiversity preservation at national, regional, and global levels. These policies hold a clear expectation for global corporations to engage in and promote biodiversity conservation and restoration. We stand at a crossroads.