A white-haired black woman and a bald white man walk into a bar...OK, so I don't actually know any bar room jokes about white-haired black women, bald white men or any combination thereof.

What do a white-haired black woman and a bald white man really have in common? Both...

Let's face it. A tremendous amount of anti-poverty work is boringly unglamorous.

No, I am not referring to the blistering drudgery of building a school wall by hand or digging a ditch hard-packed soil for a new village water pipe. Community-based actions in a distant land, after all, can...

For 24 years, the Social Venture Network (SVN) has been pushing back against the received wisdom of American commerce. SVN members are building better, smarter businesses with multiple bottom lines: profits, planet, people.

Before Occupy Wall Street, there was SVN. Before impact investing and social entrepreneurship, there...

Last week's third annual Opportunity Collaboration (Ixtapa, Mexico) opened with my thoughts for a shared vision at social change conferences:

Greetings, Fellow Delegates.

At the Opportunity Collaboration, we are -- first and foremost -- pragmatists. In every conversation we are aware that the root causes of economic...

The 2011 Opportunity Collaboration is convening this week in Ixtapa, Mexico. Expectations are high.

Last year's Opportunity Collaboration was, by all accounts, over-the-top successful. But, what does that really mean?

For sure, it means more than my personal sense of accomplishment. I founded it in 2009, but...

We make it waaaay too easy for economic development gurus and market fundamentalists to naively hype the marketplace as a cure-all for poverty. Surely, after 10,000 years of mixed market behavior, we know better.

After all, even after the Industrial Revolution, economic globalization, the Information Age, and on and...

In important ways, the United States is a surrogate Latin American country.

The U.S. Hispanic population hovers around 48 million. In absolute numbers, only Mexico ranks higher. By 2050, the U.S. Hispanic population will be 132 million.

Consider income and wealth gaps. According to the...

Last week, the world's super achievers convened in New York for three days to celebrate their shared global citizenship as well as their accomplishments in solving the world's toughest problems. Heads of state, corporate titans, nonprofit CEOs, celebrity journalists, Hollywood stars and academic thought leaders rubbed elbows, received awards and...

Once a year, I teach a course at the University of California Blum Center for Developing Economies, but all year long I am on the lookout for good books to assign my students. I just finished a winner.

The Social Entrepreneur's Handbook is by Rupert Scofield,...

Meet Sakena Yacoobi.

She is a heroine of mine. She is also a heroine to hundreds of thousands of Afghan girls.

Sakena heads the Afghan Institute of Learning in Kabul, Afghanistan.

When I met Sakena, she was already a widely-acclaimed rock star for social change. As...

If you favor opportunity and upward mobility for the downtrodden, the disenfranchised and the deprived, then you know government is the ultimate program at scale. Want to go big? Go government.

Sure, the private sector innovates best, but only government has the power and resources to effectuate universal compliance. The...

Hidden deep inside the layered mystery of how markets work and the marketplace allocates resources, capitalism innovates to generate jobs making faster computers and deadly cigarettes. Innovation brings us the electric car and bigger bombs. It brings us progress and it brings us poverty.

"We are on the verge of...

If you think Portland-based Mercy Corps is an air ambulance service, a religious sect or a merciful military organization, you would be wrong.

Mercy Corp -- operating in 40 countries, employing about 4,000 people -- annually tackles the world's toughest challenges: agricultural development; children's survival; citizen involvement;...

We all know collaboration is a good idea. In politics, call it compromise. In business, call it a strategic alliance. Whatever you want to call it, teamwork produces results.

Examples range from innovation centers like Silicon Valley to artistic centers like turn-of-the-century Paris. Whether buying the latest computer or...

In an unexpected, but welcome, move, two prestigious and important actors in the social impact investing sector have announced to their respective memberships a full-on merger. SJF Institute and Investors' Circle will combine boards and senior management effective immediately.

In the nonprofit and social...

I am flying home from Santa Fe, and kinda proud of myself. Before the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, I had firmly promised myself that I would not, repeat, not, buy any more handmade artisan crafts. I have no, repeat, no, more room for anything in either...

When was the last time President Obama spoke with us about poverty in America? Not in last State of the Union speech, not in front of a barrio health clinic, not while touring a low-income housing project. Poverty is off the political agenda. The poor are invisible. Our national conscience...

Who can argue with the evaluations expert who challenged me over coffee, "Management needs data for informed decision-making." The smiling, but incredulous, tone implied that the opposite position (mine, I guess) is willful, ignorant, unruly.

In the fierce world of economic injustice and grinding poverty, the rationale for social impact...

I want to do good, but I don't want to waste my time or money doing it. You, too?

In the action world of volunteering, organizing and check-writing, anti-poverty evaluation feels paralyzing. Mostly we ignore the evaluators because in large measure, the research studies inconclusively nitpick. This feature of...

In nonprofit fundraising, in the investment world, in political campaigns, in TV ads and even at grant-seeking research universities, hyping products and services is routine. Propaganda happens.

Nonetheless, for the misdemeanor infraction of enthusiastically summoning the world to address global poverty with a solution that appeals to Western sensibilities...