Can business acumen help overcome social challenges? Can entrepreneurial zeal generate innovative solutions? Can the energy of a new generation be harnessed to lead us forward on pressing causes? These were some of the questions addressed at the 2015 Social Innovation Summit. The assembled…

This week, Stan Katz, Benjamin Soskis and Maribel Morey released HistPhil, a new blog that focuses on both “the studying of history and the making of history”. The blog is a result of the co-founders insight that philanthropy as a whole has much to gain from studying its past. The founders hope…

In late May I attended a meeting in Atlanta focused on impact investing hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Southeastern Council of Foundations (SECF) and the Council on Foundations (Council) about impact investing. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s collaboration with the…

While the globalization of markets has dispersed investments around the world, we’ve hatched a plan to bring capital back to our communities in a transparent, coordinated, and collaborative way. I’m excited to announce Canopy, an innovative, member-owned, for-benefit company designed to advance…

The Social Impact Exchange exists to build a growth capital marketplace that supports scaling high-impact nonprofits in the U.S.  Funders with shared interests convene in working groups (currently active in health and education) to identify and vet highly effective nonprofit initiatives primed…

After a week of nonviolent protests following the death of Freddie Gray, Baltimore erupted on the evening of Monday April 27. Stores were looted, cars were burned, tear gas hung in the air. On the morning of Tuesday April 28, leaders of the Baltimore Community Foundation gathered to discuss what…

At the Council on Foundations Annual Conference in San Francisco, there was enormous interest in how foundations can lead together by aligning all of their assets with their missions. However there is one investment nearly every foundation makes, but which many fail to properly evaluate.…

While attending the Council on Foundations annual meeting in San Francisco last week, I learned about exciting new trends in philanthropy. The theme that really stood out was the graying lines of business, investing, and philanthropy. For profit companies are being founded with the specific purpose…

When my husband Bob went to Iraq to cover the war, I was worried but didn’t think of it the way families of our soldiers do. After all, he was there as the anchor of ABC News. But then the call came that he had been severely injured. Like more than 1 million wives, mothers and other family members…

In 2009, Blue Shield of California Foundation learned of the increasingly high rates and devastating impacts of domestic violence among military families. Given the incredible stress these families had endured after more than a decade at war, the findings were difficult to hear, but not surprising…

I was a foundation officer and government official in the White House and Pentagon before I became a military family member…before there was a war. Before the Marine I married deployed to combat three times. Before I knew neighbors who faced the knock of a Chaplain and a Casualty Assistance Officer…

With a topic taken from the headlines of today’s newspapers, the Annie E. Casey Foundation Atlanta Civic Site in partnership with the Council on Foundation and the Southeastern Council of Foundations conducted a day long learning forum entitled Flipping the Script: Changing the Narrative on Boys…

This Memorial Day takes on new significance for the philanthropic sector as we take our commitment to veterans and their families to another level. Building on last April’s historic Philanthropy-Joining Forces Impact Pledge convening, next week on May 12, the Council will host an event in…

Ten years ago this month I waddled – enormously pregnant – into a job interview with the founder of a billion dollar healthcare tech company. “I have this crazy idea about education,” he said. Technology, he hypothesized, could make learning more interesting for students. He saw it as a platform…

The Orcas Island Community Foundation (OICF) is a small but mighty foundation. In 2011, with assets of $4 million spread across 70+ funds, we had outgrown our ‘off the shelf’ bookkeeping software, spending over half of our precious staff time on accounting. We struggled with finding right sized…

Even as the high human, economic, environmental, and planetary costs of climate change come into sharper focus, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, tightening the timeframe for a transition to a low-carbon future. Climate change exacerbates growing pressures on life-sustaining…