Center for Social Innovation

Social pressure plays a major role in determining corporate strategy and performance according to an award-winning paper coauthored by Professor David Baron. The researchers find that social pressure and social performance reinforce each other, greater social pressure is associated with lower financial performance, and financial and social performance are largely unrelated.

Banking industry executives need to look broadly at chanbes to reform the American financial system, says Herbert Allison, MBA '71, the head of the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Practically all taxes distort economic incentives to some extent, opines healthcare expert Alain Enthoven. But taxes on healthcare currently under consideration by the Senate Finance Committee are particularly perverse. Instead of promoting prepayment and integrated care with the right incentives-the best long term strategy for keeping coverage affordable-this policy moves us in the wrong direction.

Social pressure plays a major role in determining corporate strategy and performance according to an award-winning paper coauthored by Professor David Baron. The researchers find that social pressure and social performance reinforce each other, greater social pressure is associated with lower financial performance, and financial and social performance are largely unrelated.

Banking industry executives need to look broadly at chanbes to reform the American financial system, says Herbert Allison, MBA '71, the head of the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Practically all taxes distort economic incentives to some extent, opines healthcare expert Alain Enthoven. But taxes on healthcare currently under consideration by the Senate Finance Committee are particularly perverse. Instead of promoting prepayment and integrated care with the right incentives-the best long term strategy for keeping coverage affordable-this policy moves us in the wrong direction.

Many nonprofits fail to use their volunteers effectively, asking them to stuff envelopes when they could be doing more skilled and mission-critical work, speakers told a Stanford conference. While financial donations dropped in 2008, volunteering rose to more than 8 billion hours of service, worth an estimated $162 billion.

Fundraising professionals play instrumental roles at nonprofit organizations but get less pay and support than they need and deserve.  The way a charity’s fundraising staff treats donors is more important than any other factor in determining whether givers give to a particular charity, according to Adrian Sargeant, Robert F. Hartsook Professor of Fundraising at the Center on Philanthropy.  So if they expect to be more successful in their fundraising, nonprofits will need to increase their investment in fundraising, particularly in paying and supporting the work of their fundraisers and closing the pay gap between men and women.

“Merge Minnesota: Nonprofit Merger as an Opportunity for Survival and Growth” published by MAP for Nonprofits proves a useful source of information about the merging process of nonprofits. 

The Global Impact Investment Initiative (GIIN) is an important, but still forming, coalition of investors who focus on both social and environmental impact as well as financial return.  GIIN wants to have a positive impact on poverty, economic justice and a sustainable environment. That means it needs to counter the exclusive nature of its innate and valuable club and be sure to include the voices and the perspectives of all; it has to be inclusive. 

In a recent Harvard Business School working paper titled Goals Gone Wild, the authors make the case that setting goals can be counterproductive.  The gist of the article is that when you set a goal, you tend to pursue it at the expense of everything else. This can be a good thing if the goal is very well defined and captures the core of what you are trying to achieve. But it can also literally blind you to other important things.