Aug 10, 2010

A Warning Sign of the Next Food Crisis?

While Russia’s decision isn’t necessarily a sign of another rampaging food crisis, it is just another alarm bell about the state of the world food supply and how susceptible the system is to weather and government action. Ultimately, this is another data point on the priority of improving yields around the world, fighting the brown revolution with every tool we have, and ending the unjust and evil tyranny of developed world food policy.

Jul 30, 2010

Further Thoughts on Unitus/SKS

Some conversations and reactions to my earlier post have made it clear to me that I need to clarify some points and my thoughts on Unitus and SKS.The key issue for me is not that something “wrong” was done; it’s certainly not that people are profiting by serving the poor. The key issue is how we as a society handle the cross-overs between the public interest and private interest. We debate these issues endlessly when it comes to economic stimulus, bailouts, and government contracts. It’s time for the social entrepreneurship sector to debate these issues too—and to come up with some very good answers that ensure the public maintains confidence in social enterprise as a way of solving our pressing problems.

Jul 28, 2010

Why Every Social Entrepreneur Should Be Paying Attention to SKS and Unitus

There are some very real issues for the social entrepreneurship community raised by the SKS IPO and the Unitus shutdown. Issues that social entrepreneurs have, to date, been able to ignore. No longer. We are for the first time, I believe, seeing what the endgame for social entrepreneurship can look like. The social entrepreneurship space is still the wild west—everyone is making it up as they go along. I suspect that is going to rapidly change as the details about SKS and Unitus slowly trickle out.

Jul 28, 2010

A Guide to the SKS/Unitus Story

Given that stories about the SKS IPO and the Unitus shutdown, how the two are interrelated and what it all means for the social entrepreneurship community are spread across the web, I thought it would be useful to publish a mostly comprehensive guide here. Please suggest anything that I’ve missed in the comments. I’ll add to it as I see new material.

Jun 29, 2010

U.S. Lagging, Not Leading, Social Entrepreneurship

Jun 02, 2010

The Brown Revolution

It’s often discussed that philanthropy has a fad problem. Philanthropic attention tends to gravitate to the “new”, and even when these “hot” areas show success, they are infrequently carried to scale. In other cases, donors simply declare victory and move on, leaving programs that require on-going funding to spiral downward into failure.

Agriculture is one area that has been a victim of philanthropy fads. Investment poured into the sector during the 1960s and 1970s and yielded perhaps the greatest success in the history of global philanthropy: the green revolution. But the success of the green revolution in Asia led many funders to focus on other sectors, believing the problem was solved. As a result, investment in agriculture and agricultural research declined and progress on improved varieties of global staple crops slowed—and the green revolution never reached Africa.

Recently there has been some movement on this front. The Gates Foundation in particular has become vocal about agriculture in Africa in particular, initiating the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and bringing other funders on board.

But the neglect of the agricultural sector has exposed us all to a counter-revolution, a brown revolution.

May 31, 2010

Patient Optimism In Other Words

May 05, 2010

Better Ways to React to Rigorous Evaluation

A few weeks ago I wrote a post criticizing the reaction of microfinance organizations and the City of New York to rigorous evaluations of their programs. This week, I’ve seen two pieces of writing in reaction to evaluation of programs that I think provide positive examples.

Apr 23, 2010

Esther Duflo wins John Bates Clark Medal

Today Esther Duflo was announced as the winner of the John Bates Clark Medal. The award is granted to the economist under age 40 who has “contributed the most to the profession.“ The increasing recognition of Duflo’s groundbreaking work to bring experimental economics to bear on real world questions is a ray of hope that philanthropy and public policy can learn from what works.

You can read an extensive interview with Esther Duflo here.

Apr 20, 2010

Global Philanthropy Forum: Nutrition

The most important thing about Singer’s steps is that they are all modeled on successful, cheap initiatives in other industries that didn’t require everyone to come to the table and agree in the first place. They are examples of individuals and organizations just starting their work and then getting others to join them. If we can replicate those successes in the nutrition space, we can fix this problem. We don’t need new innovations in nutrition, we just need to use the ones that are already there.