Merging finance and social impact to make a better world
You are interested in giving to charity. But you might not know exactly where to start. What are the rules around tax deductions? What organizations are true charities? And how can you be sure your money is being used effectively? This Ultimate Guide to Charitable Donations will walk you through all the ins and outs of charitable giving, specifically from an individual donor perspective.
The world is getting closer to a more sustainable model for pay-for-success arrangements. Reinvestment Fund, out of Philadelphia, announced a $10 million fund last year to support pay-for-success projects in a portfolio approach that would diversify investors from the risk of any single project.
The United Way of Salt Lake is funding early childhood education through a pay-for-success program. The program promises significant cost savings to the State of Utah and demonstrates a strong business case to scale the program. But is that enough to make it a good social impact bond?
Since the turn of the century, the poorest half of the world’s population has received just 1 percent of the total increase in global wealth. Meanwhile, half the new wealth has gone to the richest 1 percent. As a result, the richest 8 people now own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world. Something is not quite right in how we have structured our economies. This has not only meant entrenching global poverty (according to World Bank projections) but also rising political and economic instability. Inequality creates conditions in which crime and corruption thrive. In more unequal societies, rich and poor alike have shorter lives, and live with a greater threat of violence and insecurity. Rising inequality is a problem for us all.
Is your nonprofit’s technology stuck in the 20th century? Does this hamstring you in executing your ambitious, yet difficult, fundraising strategy?
Data collection and use is a massively growing field with increasingly more technologies and companies dedicated to it. As a nonprofit, you’re often at the mercy of funding constraints that limit you from going out and buying the flashy new system or paying a data engineer to help make sense of all the information available to you. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying. There are cultural factors that enable successful data usage, and once employed, can help skyrocket your ability to attract sustainable funding.
The great scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla coined the term human energy in an essay he wrote in 1900, in which he related all human progress to simple physics. This idea has largely gone unnoticed amid his myriad other inventions and original thoughts. But it shouldn’t any longer. We are going to re-examine his ideas on human energy and find ways to relate them to actually making a difference in our world. After all, that was what he was aiming for.
Though we may never be able to comprehend human life, we know certainly that it is a movement, of whatever nature it be. The existence of movement unavoidably implies a body which is being moved and a force which is moving it. Hence, wherever there is life, there is a mass moved by a force. All mass possesses inertia, all force tends to persist.
Around the world, innovative financing methods are being used to tackle social issues. Programs and organizations typically funded by grants are constantly at the mercy of governments who have trouble thinking past the next election cycle. As a result, when spending cuts need to be made governments typically look for the quickest fix – cutting social services.
Nonprofit fundraising is a complicated topic and a critical function. Nonprofits are in a unique position from businesses in that they cannot price their products and services to, well, make a profit. Operating budgets must be conceived from other sources than program revenues. This is a guide focused on fundraising for nonprofits. It will discuss the following major topics:
1. Crafting a nonprofit fundraising strategy
2. Optimizing your organization
3. Kickstarting your donor development
4. Developing your marketing campaign
5. Leveraging grants and other funding opportunities
Despite all the criticism, negativity and reports of failure, the Peterborough social impact bond may prove to be a disrupter in the way we fund social services and invest in impact. Plenty has been written and said about the Peterborough prison social impact bond, so there is no need to go into detail here. Why …
Continue reading “The World’s First Social Impact Bond: Success or Failure?”
It is very easy to look at pay for success as the next great innovation in public service. It’s also easy to look at it as the next great weapon of Wall Street greed. That’s the problem. There are still far too many unknowns about the real potential of these projects, and it is far …