Philanthropy’s Rural Blind Spot

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Stanford Social Innovation ReviewSpring 2021 /Vol.19, No.2

BUILDING AN AMERICAN OWNERSHIP

SOCIETY

By Elwood M. Hopkins

THE PROMISE OF SOCIAL SECTOR FRANCHISING

By Greg Starbird, Fiona Wilson &

E. Hachemi Aliouche

BUILDING CITIES’

COLLABORATIVE MUSCLE

By the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative

SPRING 2021 VOLUME 19, NUMBER 2

The most economically distressed communities are the least likely to apply for funding and the least likely to have the local resources to address inequity.

By Robert Atkins, Sarah Allred & Daniel Hart

Philanthropy’s Rural Blind Spot/Building an American Ownership Society/The Promise of Social Sector Franchising/Building Cities’ Collaborative Muscle

Philanthropy’s

Rural Blind Spot

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Join us for an ONLINE convening where we will navigate the social, economic, political and environmental forces reshaping our world, with an array of internationally recognized academics, policy-makers and organizational leaders exploring systemic shifts, inherent challenges, and potential solutions from both a global and regional perspective.

11-13 May 2021

For more information, visit ssir.org/frontiers

C M Y CM MY CY CMY K

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SPRING 2021 / VOLUME 19, NUMBER 2

Stanford Social Innovation Review / Spring 2021

Published by the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society

F E AT U R E S

Building an American Ownership Society

BY ELWOOD M. HOPKINS

Neighborhood investment trusts can help create more inclusive economies in cities and restore the fabric of US democracy.

Philanthropy’s Rural Blind Spot

BY ROBERT ATKINS, SARAH ALLRED & DANIEL HART

The most economically distressed communities are the least likely to apply for funding and the least likely to have the local resources to address inequity. Grant makers must rethink their strategies to ensure that their resources go where they will do the most good.

The Promise of Social Sector Franchising

BY GREG STARBIRD, FIONA WILSON & E. HACHEMI ALIOUCHE

The massive growth of commercial franchises like McDonald’s offers inspiration for scaling social impact.

Although still very young, social sector franchising is spawning an array of successful enterprises that offer lessons for further expansion.

Building Cities’

Collaborative Muscle

BY JORRIT DE JONG, AMY EDMONDSON, MARK MOORE, HANNAH RILEY BOWLES, JAN RIVKIN, EVA FLAVIA MARTÍNEZ ORBEGOZO & SANTIAGO PULIDO-GOMEZ

The most pressing problems facing cities require multi- agency and cross-sector solutions. We offer tools to facil- itate the process of diagnosing and solving problems by breaking down silos to build up cities.

26 34 42 50

O N T H E C OV E R Illustration by Tracy Walker

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D E PA R T M E N T S

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E D I T O R ’ S N O T E The Urban and Rural Divide

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S S I R O N L I N E

Design Thinking for Soil Cultivation /Rehab- bing the Republic / Perpetuity and Founda- tion Spending / Debating Foundation Spend- ing During a Crisis

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W H AT ’ S N E X T

Redesigning DEI / Inclusive Mobility Solutions / Liberation Technology / Africa’s Climate Activist

11

F I E L D R E P O R T

Integrative Philanthropy

The Eastern Congo Initiative is transforming foreign aid by advocating for, investing in, and partnering with community organizations.

BY ABIGAIL HIGGINS

13 Frugal Solutions

A pioneering initiative is showing how traditional financial organizations can cocreate with nonprofits and entrepreneurs to improve the financial health of all Americans.

BY NAVI RADJOU

15 Precision Fishing

SmartCatch deploys digital technology to help make the world’s commercial fishing industry more sustainable.

BY GORDON FELLER

18

C A S E S T U D Y

The Psychedelic Revolution in Mental Health

Rick Doblin launched the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in 1986 to research and advocate for the use of LSD, magic mushrooms, and Ecstasy to treat mental illness. After more than three de- cades of labor, he has found his moment.

BY MARC GUNTHER

The international aid community suffers from a hunger for certainty that prevents the cultivation of robust systems for dealing with uncertainty and constrains funding decisions.

— FROM DOING DEVELOPMENT DIFFERENTLY P. 61

,

V I E W P O I N T

57 Closing the Research-Practice Gap in Education

Research-practice partnerships can help academic researchers and school district leaders discover what works for schools and classrooms.

BY LAURA WENTWORTH, RITU KHANNA, MICHELLE NAYFACK & DANIEL SCHWARTZ

59 Civic Mobilization Infrastructure in an Age of Existential Threats

Brazilian civil society worked together to win basic income for the poor. Its success illustrates how organizations must interlock to secure rights and push for social change.

BY ALESSANDRA OROFINO, MANOELA MIKLOS

& MIGUEL LAGO

61 Doing Development Differently

International aid must use different approaches to address the massive systemic problems it seeks to solve.

BY LENI WILD

63

R E S E A R C H

Voluntarism and Unselfish Leadership / What Kinds of Protests Work? / Citizen- Donors of the World / Boycotts and Corpo- rate Boards

B O O K S

67 Make America “We” Again

Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett’s The Upswing

REVIEW BY MATT YGLESIAS

69 Outsourcing Governance

Chiara Cordelli’s The Privatized State

REVIEW BY SARA ANGEVINE

71

Digital Bookshelf

72

L A S T L O O K

Hope on the Horizon

6

18 11

59

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Stanford Social Innovation Review (ISSN 1542-7099) is published quarterly by the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, a program at Stanford University’s School of Humanities and Sciences: 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA 94305-6042. Phone:

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“public charity.” Confi rming documentation is available upon request.

Stanford Social Innovation Review was established in 2003 by the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The founding publisher is Perla Ni. The former academic editors are Stephen R. Barley, James A. Phills Jr., Robert Scott, David Brady, and Chip Heath.

A

sk Americans what parts of

the country are the most poverty-stricken and they will probably talk about cities like Cleveland, Balti- more, and St. Louis. They aren’t likely to mention rural areas in states like Missis- sippi, New Mexico, and Arkansas.

Yet the rate of poverty is signifi cantly higher in rural America than it is in urban America. According to the most recent data from the federal government, in 2018 the poverty rate in metropolitan areas was 12.6 percent, while the poverty rate in nonmet- ropolitan areas was 16.1 percent, more than 25 percent higher!

And poverty is just one of the areas where there is a divide between urban and rural. Rural areas have fewer cultural institutions, fewer colleges and universities, fewer nonprofi t organizations, fewer social services, fewer jobs—the list goes on.

Given this disparity, you would think that philanthropists would be pouring

Deputy Editor, Print David V. Johnson Deputy Editor, Digital M. Amedeo Tumolillo

Editors Aaron Bady, Marcie Bianco Contributing Editor Jenifer Morgan

Art Direction David Herbick Design Social Media and Barbara Wheeler-Bride Digital Production Editor

Copy Editors Elissa Rabellino, Annie Tucker Proofreader Dominik Sklarzyk

ERIC NEE JOHANNA MAIR MICHAEL GORDON VOSS

Editor-in-Chief Academic Editor Publisher

SSIR ACADEMIC ADVISORY COUNCIL

Paola Perez-Aleman, McGill University; Josh Cohen, Stanford University; Alnoor Ebrahim, Tufts University; Marshall Ganz, Harvard University; Chip Heath, Stanford University; Andrew Hoff man, University of Michigan; Dean Karlan, Yale University; Anita McGahan,

University of Toronto; Lynn Meskell, Stanford University; Len Ortolano, Stanford University;Francie Ostrower, University of Texas;

Anne Claire Pache, ESSEC Business School; Woody Powell, Stanford University; Rob Reich, Stanford University

money into rural areas. Sadly, that’s not the case. In fact, it’s the opposite. Philan- thropists have been putting much more money into urban areas.

According to a US government study of more than 1,200 of the largest US foundations, “the average real value of grants from large foundations to organizations based in nonmetro counties from 2005 to 2010 was about $88 per capita (in 2010 dollars), less than half the average ($192 per capita) given to organizations in metro counties.”

Why do so many US philanthropists ig- nore rural areas, and what can be done to remedy the gap? Those are the questions that the authors of “Philanthropy’s Rural Blind Spot” seek to answer in the cover story in this Spring 2021 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review.

One of the reasons for the giving gap is that the largest US foundations are mostly based in urban areas. Of the 10 US foundations with the largest endowments, all but the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (Battle

Creek, Michigan) and Robert Wood John- son Foundation (Princeton, New Jersey) are based in large metropolitan areas.

There are of course community foundations based in rural areas, but they are smaller than their urban peers. For the most part, private foundations and corpo- rate philanthropy exist in an urban bubble, largely isolated from the rest of the country.

It’s not as if philanthropists have to travel far from home to fi nd rural poverty.

It’s right outside their door in places like upstate New York and California’s Cen- tral Valley. The article takes a close look at New Jersey as an example of the divide and shows that rural southern New Jersey receives much less philanthropic money than does urban northern New Jersey.

One of the other reasons why rural areas don’t receive as much philanthropic money is that they don’t have as many nonprofi t organizations as urban areas do. As a result, there are fewer grant applications from rural areas, and those that are sub- mitted are more likely to be rejected than those from urban areas.

Philanthropists aren’t the only ones ig- noring rural areas. The government and business are also guilty. Think about the digital divide. But unlike the public and private sectors, philanthropy has the ability to change where and how it invests quickly, if it chooses to do so. —ERIC NEE

The Urban and Rural Divide

Publishing and Brian Karo Marketing Manager

Publishing and Shayani Bose Marketing Manager

Marketing Coordinator Angela Orr Advertising Jeremy Davenport,

Involved Media

Sponsorship Cynthia Lapporte, Oak Media Website Designers Arsenal, Hop Studios

Intern Svenya Braich

STANFORD CENTER ON PHILANTHROPY AND CIVIL SOCIETY Faculty

Codirectors Woody Powell Rob Reich Robb Willer

Executive Director Carla Eckhardt

PACS Team

Cristina Alfonso, Erinn Andrews, Haifa Badi-Uz-Zaman, Lucy Bernholz, Sawako Sonoyama Clarin, Kathryn Davis, Davey Kim, Lisa Kohara, Elyse Lee, Heather Lord, Joe Mernyk, Toussaint Nothias, Nithya Magal, Djurdja Jovanovic Padejski, Nathaniel Persily, Christian Seelos, Rebecca Shamash, Priya Shanker, Eva Woo

STANFORD CENTER ON PHILANTHROPY AND CIVIL SOCIETY ADVISORY BOARD

Chairman Members

Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen Herbert A. Allen III, Laura Arnold, Roy Bahat, Ted Janus, Karla Jurvetson, Kathy Kwan, Xin Liu, Carter McClelland, Felipe Medina, Kim Meredith, Jeff Raikes (ex offi cio), David Siegel, Liz Simons, Darren Walker, Yilan Zhao

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Stanford Social Innovation Review / Spring 2021 Find us on Twitter

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TOP PHOTO COURTESY OF RARE; BOTTOM PHOTO BY ISTOCK/DELPIXART

Farmers work an onion field in El Moral, Valle del Cauca, Colombia.

EDITORS’ PICKS OF STANDOUT DIGITAL-ONLY CONTENT

ssir.org/online

Design Thinking for Soil Cultivation

ONLINE: “Using Design Thinking to Tackle Climate Change When ‘What You Know No Longer Works,’” by Sarah Stein Greenberg and Madhuri Karak

Some smallholder cultivators can no longer rely on traditional farming methods to raise their crops as climate change destabilizes growing seasons and renders their land less arable. In this essay, Greenberg and Karak explore how the inclusive and collaborative principles of design thinking have helped such farmers manage soil productivity. The article is one of many that SSIR Online has rounded up on the topic—including “The Next Chapter in Design for Social

Innovation” from the Winter 2021 issue—to mark the 10 years since SSIR published the seminal article “Design Think- ing for Social Innovation,” by IDEO’s Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt.

Debating Founda- tion Spending During a Crisis

ONLINE: “Foundation Payout Policy in Economic Crises,” by Larry Kramer

Should a big crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic com- pel philanthropists not just to maintain their outlays but to disburse more? “A funder might credibly think it wiser not to increase payout during an economic downturn, even a severe one,” argues Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, in the keystone article to an “Up for Debate”

series on the topic. Nine other authors, including Darren Walker, Kathleen Enright, and John Palfrey, respond.

62%

The percentage of Ameri- cans who believe the fundamental structure of US government needs to change. For more, see

“Grassroots Organizing and Preparing for the Unprece- dented,” by Lissy Romanow.

34

The number of the top 50 US foundations (73 percent by assets) who have living donors, are family con- trolled, or are not founded explicitly in perpetuity.

70%

The percentage of the world’s food produced by smallholder cultivators.

Perpetuity and Foundation Spending

ONLINE: “The Myth of Perpetuity in Foundation Strategy,” by Katie Smith Milway and William Galligan

How much should articles of incorporation that require perpetuity constrain foundation spending? Milway and Galligan report on their analysis of the articles of incorporation and bylaws of the top 50 private foundations in the United States. They found no indica- tion that founding intent, or endowment recovery after severe recession, prevented or constrained trustees from lever- aging endowment dollars when they felt that circumstances and mission merited it. In an era of COVID-19, rampant inequality, and political crisis, the article issues a call to action: Instead of letting founding intentions constrain conscience, the best trib- ute that boards can pay their founders is to revisit their purpose and rethink their compact with government and society.

Rehabbing the Republic

ONLINE: “How Can Philanthropy Help Rehabilitate US Democracy?,” by Mohit Mookim, Rob Reich, Nadia Roumani, and Ayushi Vig

Part of SSIR’s series on the effects of the US presidential election, this essay offers suggestions for donors looking to repair civic and democratic institutions in America. The essay pinpoints vulner- abilities in government infrastructure, the electoral process, civic education and participation, the press, social media, and information systems that charitable dollars can help strengthen.

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NEW APPROACHES TO SOCIAL CHANGE /

E D U C AT I O N

Redesigning DEI

BY SHANI SAXON

S

ome of Aida Davis’s earliest memories are of encounters with anti-Blackness and dehuman- ization. The daughter of Ethio- pian immigrants, she describes Apple Valley, her small South- ern California hometown, as a hostile environment that wel- comed neo-Nazis on the city council and where neighbors touted white supremacist values. As painful and frightening as those experiences were, they helped propel Davis on her path to launching Decolonize Design, a global consulting firm that aims to provide organizations with a meaningful alternative to traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) approaches.

“I started Decolonize Design out of a frustration with traditional design and organizing approaches,” Davis says. “I believe that design is a tool. It’s a problem-solving approach to create innovation, which is indigenous to systemically oppressed peoples. To survive in really harsh conditions is innovation, and we need to reclaim that.”

Davis was the sole employee when she founded her organization at the end of 2018. She says it was “unsurprising”

that, as a Black woman, she wasn’t initially able to get investor funding. Instead, her consulting firm continues to rely on the fees it charges

clients. Ultimately, Davis says, she and her team—which has grown to eight members—are trying to build a movement of stakeholders, not shareholders.

“At this point we are doing well, and I’m not excited at the prospect of investors,” she says.

Davis is committed to maintain- ing her integrity and her vision for her business, which likely wouldn’t be possible if she had to answer to investors.

Davis believes that what she refers to as the “DEI indus- trial complex” is superficial and harmful, and Decolonize Design seeks to disrupt that model through community- centered alternatives. Davis explains that this 30-year-old industry, which spends about

$8 billion on diversity trainings alone, isn’t providing any tangi- ble results or change.

Many organizations using a traditional DEI model focus on a lack of diversity, or a need to create a more diverse workforce.

Davis questions what people really mean when they say they

want more diversity. “It’s typ- ically discussed in relation to white, heteronormative, dom- inant culture, and that type of thinking has to be abandoned,”

Davis explains. “DEI asks people of color to participate more deeply in a system not created for them and one that does not see their complete culture and humanity,” she adds. “DEI in its current form cannot address the intergenerational legacies of white supremacy, nor is it a mechanism for organizational change and innovation.”

Decolonize Design offers an alternative framework that is grounded in belonging, dignity, and justice (BDJ). Belonging means that all people are wel- comed in a space as they are. No person is expected to change anything about who they are in order to fit into an environment. Dignity means that every- one is respected and valued in a company, from the CEO to the janitor. Justice is “about making people whole and repairing harm and being reparative and restorative,” Davis says. The BDJ framework seeks to abol- ish assimilation and promotes taking responsibility to challenge and confront racism and anti-Blackness head-on.

“While organizations are increasingly acknowledging DEI, the framework has been critiqued for good reason,”

observes political economist and participatory designer

Nicole Anand. “The Decolo- nize Design BDJ framework

boldly and powerfully drives organizations toward values that can only be assessed through the understanding of lived experiences.”

Through workshops, focus groups, and training sessions, Davis and her team create sustainable transformation for companies by centering Black and Indigenous methods. “We believe in Sankofa, which means we have to look back to move forward,” says Davis about the concept, which originates from Ghana’s Akan tribe. “We can reclaim design to create new experiences and new services, so that everybody can reach their potential.”

The companies that seek help from Decolonize Design have usually suffered a failed DEI experience. Her team selects clients based on their desire to exercise courage and to take a stand in language and action.

“As a music company, failing to have the talents of margin- alized people equitably repre- sented at our company and in our work was a foundational failure,”

says Lauren McGuire, president of Man Made Music. “Decolonize Design’s Belonging, Dignity, and Justice approach is both a breath of fresh air and a welcome punch to the gut. We sought radical change, and Decolonize Design’s

‘anti-DEI’ approach is the disrup- tion to the status quo we both wanted and needed.”

Anyone who has benefit- ted from white supremacy has a responsibility to make moves to be restorative and reparative.

According to Davis, while there is no clear formula for what this looks like, the principles necessary to guide the design of effective strategies “include rigorous and disciplined inquiry, limitless reimagining of systems, a culture of learning and leadership, and abandoning assimilation.” n

Aida Davis founded Decolonize Design, a global consulting firm, to revolutionize the diversity, equity, and inclusion conversation.

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PHOTO BY ISTOCK

PHOTO COURTESY OF SHELLEE FISHER

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Stanford Social Innovation Review / Spring 2021 7

The Toyota Mobility Foun- dation (TMF), which is the automobile manufacturer’s arm dedicated to creating and supporting solutions to mobility challenges, kickstarted FutureLab with a onetime grant of $1-million-plus in-kind support. “It created a collaborative experience between Babson College and the Toyota Mobility Foundation by combining Toyota’s expertise with Babson’s entrepreneurial thought and action mindset,” says Ryan Klem, TMF’s director of programs, referring to the college’s leadership model.

This model manifests itself through collaborative relationships between FutureLab’s students and community partners, like hospitals, government agen- cies, and senior support centers, which allow ideas incubated in Babson College’s undergradu- ate business school setting to be developed into real-world models and practices. “The combined coursework and applied real-life experience with local community mobility partners created a unique experience for the students to combine a human- centered design approach with Toyota’s problem-solving methods,” Klem explains.

At the beginning of a semester, students meet with community partners to learn about their challenges. With this information, students spend the semester conducting extensive interviews and observing the challenges in action in different settings (e.g., a parking lot or inside a supermarket) and different contexts (e.g., different times of the day). Students follow up with the community partners

periodically to share observa- tions and receive feedback before presenting findings and sug- gesting solutions. Once ideas are developed and tested, community partners are encouraged to take ownership of projects and scale them as appropriate.

Some community partners, such as the Massachusetts Exec- utive Office of Elder Affairs, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and the Massachusetts Bay Trans- portation Authority’s ADA para- transit program (The RIDE), are generally aware of mobility challenges prior to collaborating with FutureLab’s students. But through this partnership, led by students’ insights and innovations, they are able to uncover underlying issues and develop effective solutions.

For example, people don’t actively plan for limited mobility when they lose their vision or can’t drive anymore due to advanced age, but they continue to desire the ability to go where they want and when they want.

The Massachusetts Executive Office of Elder Affairs, which promotes the independence

and well-being of older adults and their caregivers, decided to work with FutureLab to research potential solutions to ease adoption of mobility alternatives once independence is restricted during the fall 2019 and summer 2020 semesters.

“The team started with signif- icant observational work and reported many detailed obser- vations that we had not previ- ously thought of that directly impact walkability and mobility,” says Elder Affairs’ deputy secretary, Robin Lipson.

COVID-19 has also exposed social and technological ineq- uities, which directly affect accessibility, especially for older people. “When I think about the future of FutureLab, I’m really thinking about how urban living is changing,” Erzurumlu says.

“I’d really like us to think about the mobility, connectivity, and social qualities of health.”

Although student research focuses on problems within the Boston metro area, Erzurumlu sees a future where FutureLab-developed solutions could be applied on a wider scale.

S O C I A L S E R V I C E S

Inclusive Mobility Solutions

BY JOANNA HAUGEN

L

ack of mobility has rip- ple effects on people’s access to education, transportation, and health services. For some people, immobility may be a temporary state, such as when they break a bone and require a cast and crutches.

But for others, such as those who lose their sight and can no longer drive, immobility is a more chronic issue in their lives.

Undetected gaps in mobility access can hamper people’s ability to navigate everyday activi- ties that people without mobility challenges take for granted.

Identifying these gaps and finding solutions to mobility challenges lie at the heart of FutureLab, founded in 2019 by Sinan Erzurumlu, a professor of innovation and operations man- agement at Babson College, and Cheryl Kiser, executive director of Babson College’s Lewis Insti- tute for Social Innovation.

“Our goal is to combine what we learned at the lab and codesign the solutions with our partners,” Erzurumlu says.

FutureLab’s partners include entrepreneurs, government officials, corporations, and universities, who collaborate with Babson College students to investigate mobility-related issues, interview people challenged by them, and develop plans to address these problems over the course of a semester.

Creating solutions to mobility access is central to the mission of FutureLab, a collaboration between Babson College and the Toyota Mobility Foundation.

SHANI SAXON is a full-time television and !

film development executive who also works as a freelance writer in the criminal justice and immigration space. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with her three children and their boss, a rescue dog named Stormy.

JOANNA HAUGEN is a writer, public speaker, and founder of Rooted, a solutions platform at the intersection of sustainable tourism, storytelling, and social impact.

PHOTO BY ISTOCK

PHOTO COURTESY OF SHELLEE FISHER

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Anti-Human Trafficking Oper- ations Center (COAT), where an expert anti-trafficking team investigates the report.

The app also functions as a resource hub for information and prevention. It offers an educational module (available in both English and Spanish) that explains what human trafficking is, who is the most at risk, and the most common strategies that traffickers use to isolate and exploit victims.

LibertApp also includes a global directory of consulates’ contact information that users can access for support.

While COAT and Migración Colombia now manage the app, IOM, an international

organization that supports migrant communities and advises national governments on migration policy, developed the original concept, provided technical support, created user profiles, and built the educational module. IOM saw LibertApp as a new tool to support high- risk groups such as Venezuelan migrants and refugees. “It is necessary to permanently search for different strategies for the prevention of trafficking” and to ensure the “rescue of victims who are in Colombia or abroad,”

says Ana Durán-Salvatierra, IOM Colombia’s chief of mission.

Venezuelan migrants are the most high-risk group for human trafficking in Colombia,

PHOTO BY REUTERS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

decade. According to Colombia’s Ministry of the Interior and Justice, 686 cases of human trafficking occurred within the country from January 2013 to July 2020. Many of those seized were women, children, and Venezuelan migrants.

To combat this crime, Migración Colombia, the nation’s border control agency;

the US Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM);

and the International Orga- nization for Migration (IOM) launched a mobile applica- tion called LibertApp last July.

Pressing the app’s panic button immediately sends the user’s live geolocation data to the Colom- bian Ministry of the Interior’s

See SSIR Live!’s upcoming webinar lineup here!

ssir.org/webinars

Professional Development, Practical Skills,

Committed Experts!

“I don’t think there’s one silver bullet that solves a problem,”

he says. “When we propose the questions ... we hope that other departments, other municipal- ities, or other senior centers could take what we’ve learned and see if it works for them.” ⁿ

TIM KEARY is a freelance writer and copywriter.

H U M A N R I G H T S

Liberation Technology

BY TIM KEARY

H

uman traffickers have forced hundreds of women, children, and men into sexual slavery in Colombia during the past

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largely because the majority are residing in the country ille- gally and are hesitant to contact authorities for fear of depor- tation. “I think it’s universally agreed that underreporting of trafficking is one of the biggest issues that is driving a lot of the problems with increasing [the] numbers of prosecutions and actually being able to catch people and save survivors,”

notes a US Department of State representative with PRM, who requested anonymity in order to comply with the deparment’s communications policy.

PRM funded the app, which had a budget of $15,000. The investment was part of the department’s overall contribu- tion through the United Nations appeal known as the Refugee and Migrant Response Plan, a global initiative that had granted a total of $276.4 million to Colombia as of November 2020.

In less than a year of oper- ation, 246 people have used the app to make reports, cul- minating in a handful of inves- tigations and rescues. The most notable success story occurred last summer when COAT received a report from LibertApp that led to the rescue of a Venezuelan minor from a bar in Maní, in the Casanare region of Colombia, that was being run as a brothel. During the raid, authorities captured two Colombian citizens alleged to have managed the estab- lishment and who coerced 15 women into sexual slavery.

For Durán-Salvatierra, the raid proved that apps like LibertApp are a valuable tool.

“The fact that the rescue of a minor who was being sexually

PHOTO BY REUTERS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

At the forefront of the effort to raise awareness about Africa’s climate plight is Vanessa Nakate, a 24-year-old Ugandan social media activist who gained international recognition last year when she was cropped out of an Associ- ated Press photo of youth climate activists at the 2020 World Economic Forum at Davos, such that the photo only featured four young white women, including Sweden’s Greta Thunberg.

Nakate’s activism was inspired, she says, by seeing her father do community work through the local Rotary Club.

In 2018, she began researching the various problems affecting Ugandans to see how she could contribute to society. She came across the #FridaysForFuture movement, founded by Thunberg in August 2018, which began as school climate strikes and later became a weeks-long solo strike at the Swedish Parlia- ment ahead of its election. Oth- ers soon joined Thunberg, and the movement spread globally online, marked by the hashtag

#FridaysForFuture.

“I found out about Greta, [who was] a very good influence in starting the climate strikes,”

Nakate says. “I just felt that I had to speak up because I found out about the dangers of climate change. I was really scared to go to the streets and start striking, but I decided it was something impacting people’s lives, and I had to start striking now.”

On January 6, 2019, Nakate took to the streets, climate- striking at four high-traffic public locations. That same day, she launched her activism online.

That year, Nakate took her solo strikes to Uganda’s Parlia- ment. She also organized community cleanups and spoke about climate change to primary school students. When her Twitter audi- ence grew to 20,000 followers (she had more than 180,000 in January 2021), Nakate decided to create Rise Up, which aims to amplify the voices of young African climate change activists. She hosts Rise Up Sunday activists’ meetings on Zoom with youth activists in Africa to discuss strategies for raising awareness and making social change.

“What I like about Vanessa is her consistency and pas- sion for Mother Nature,”

says Edwin Namakanga, who manages both the Rise Up exploited and who reported her

situation through the applica- tion’s panic button could have been carried out a few days after the launch of LibertApp is proof for the IOM that these types of applications do work and are absolutely necessary to combat human trafficking,”

she says.

With user adoption of the app still in its infancy, Migración Colombia, IOM, and PRM recognize the need to raise awareness. As part of a pro- motional strategy, “Migración Colombia is working with IOM and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to launch socialization campaigns aimed at all audiences,” says Rafael Dario Eugenio Parada, a subdi- rector at Migración Colombia.

Reaching migrant populations and high-risk groups is more challenging than ever before because COVID-19 social distance restrictions are still in place across Colombia.

But as more success stories like Casanare emerge, LibertApp is proving how technology can be used to stop human trafficking and save lives. ⁿ

SENTA SCARBOROUGH (@sentascar) is an award-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated producer, and screenwriter.

Vanessa Nakate and other climate change activists demonstrate in the Luzira suburb of Kampala, Uganda, on September 25, 2020.

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E N V I R O N M E N T

Africa’s Climate Activist

BY SENTA SCARBOROUGH

I

n nations across Africa, extreme weather—

from droughts to tor- rential rains that cause floods and landslides—has destroyed crops and homes, resulting in famine, forced migration, and increased homelessness.

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Uganda Twitter and Facebook accounts. “She has inspired a lot of the climate activists.”

Nakate’s powerful social media activism inspired one of her Twitter followers, Tim Reutemann, a climate finance expert for Switzerland’s federal office for the environment, to become a financial spon- sor. Until then, all of her social media and community projects had been self-funded.

In 2019, they partnered on a project to equip Ugandan schools with energy-efficient solutions, including upgraded stoves to reduce carbon emissions and solar panels to bring electricity. “The project addresses the most glaring injustice in climate

change—helping the poorest of the poor reduce their need for firewood and the destruction of their supporting ecosystems,”

Reutemann says.

Initially, Reutemann provided a total of $15,000 to fund the equipment and compen- sate Nakate for project man- agement. Improvements in each school cost about $3,000.

Nakate started a crowdfunding campaign through GoFundMe, which has raised more than

$20,000, including donations from several small companies and actress Angelina Jolie.

By December 2020, nine Ugandan school projects received new energy-efficient stoves and solar panels they needed.

At Butega Primary School in Mityana, Uganda, there had been no electricity prior to the installation of the solar panels—the batteries of which allow classes to be held during the rainy season and evenings.

“It’s had a very big impact,”

notes Butega Primary School assistant head teacher Watulo Moses. “Now, parents and children are comfortable because there are lights now.”

Nakate and Reutemann hope to find a larger donor to upgrade the project to 100 schools in one year. Currently, there are 25,000 Ugandan schools in need of upgrades.

There is a lot on the line for Nakate, outside observers say.

“It can be challenging to create a balance between social media advocacy and being involved in projects happening on the ground, but I think it’s a good approach,” explains Landry Ninteretse, former Uganda res- ident and current Africa man- aging director of350.org, the climate awareness nonprofit.

He believes Nakate should work with faith leaders, NGOs, and other local groups to create long-term change.

“I’m proud how far the Rise Up movement has gone,” Nakate says. “Every person has a light in them and ability to cause change.

The trick is using your voice and platform, no matter how small they are.” ⁿ

“ Everything was always very tidy.

Then my family noticed how disorganized I had become.”

—Theresa, living with Alzheimer’s

When something feels different, it could be Alzheimer’s.

Now is the time to talk.

Visit

to learn more

alz.org/ourstories

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PROFILES OF INNOVATIVE WORK

Integrative Philanthropy

The Eastern Congo Initiative is transforming foreign aid by advocating for, investing in, and partnering with community organizations.

BY ABIGAIL HIGGINS

I

was astonished

t hat so ma ny people could be suffering and dy- ing,” Academy award-winning actor Ben Affleck recalls of first learning about the mag- nitude of problems affecting the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the early 2000s. Since then, the vast central African country’s troubles have continued, as has Affleck’s determination to do something about it.

DRC is experiencing the

second largest hunger crisis in the world, after Yemen. Civil conflict displaced approximately five million people between 2017 and 2019.

Last year, while the country contended with the COVID-19 pandemic, it was also suffering from its 11th Ebola outbreak; trying to curtail deadly measles and cholera epidemics; and grappling with perennial HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis infections.

The scale of the country’s problems stems in part from a war that started in 1996 and has dissipated but never fully ended, produ- cing a death toll in the millions. These many problems are rooted more deeply, however, in a staggering history of colonial brutality that started with the violent reign of Belgium’s King Leopold II at the turn of the 20th cen- tury, during which an estimated 10 million Congolese were killed. This set the stage for ongoing exploitation of the country’s mineral wealth, including the world’s largest supply of the black mineral ore coltan—an essential component of electronics.

In 2010, Affleck cofounded the Eastern Congo Initiative (ECI) with Whitney Williams, a businesswoman from a prominent Montana political family, to chip away at these problems. The organization gives grants and technical support to Congolese charities and has disbursed funds to 23 community-based organizations working on everything from child soldier rehabilitation to basic health- care access. The organization also facilitates public-private partnerships, including con- necting Congolese coffee and cacao farmers to corporations such as Starbucks, Nespresso, and Theo Chocolate.

ECI also does advocacy, and Affleck has testified in the US Congress multiple times in support of DRC. In 2012, for example, he implored the House Armed Services Com- mittee to influence the United Nations’ role in the fragile country’s stability. In 2014, he testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to ask representatives to pres- sure DRC’s government to hold free and fair

elections, increase US funding for economic development, and engage with then-President Joseph Kabila to reform the security sector.

The following year, he persuaded the US Con- gress to continue aiding the African region when he spoke in a US Senate Committee on Appropriations meeting about ECI’s work to revitalize Congo’s coffee sector.

It’s a scattered portfolio, but Affleck believes that as an outsider with deep pockets, he should have an investment strategy that is broad-based yet locally focused. “Rather than impose a model onto a community that we know little about, have little exposure to, and know almost nobody actually working in, the smaller, community-based organizations were doing much more effective work,” Affleck says. “Countries’ problems have rarely been solved by out- siders interposing themselves and insisting on those countries adopting their models.”

DRC has had more foreign intervention than most countries—the fail- ures of which Williams and Affleck were keen to avoid. The country hosts the world’s largest United Nations peacekeeping mission, and one of the most expensive, which, together with the well-funded aid sector that prolif- erated during the war, has produced such questionable results that nearly a third of Congolese say that the country would be bet- ter off without any foreign aid and half think the peacekeepers should just leave.

“You see these incredible, remarkable, resilient people. … Then you see this humanitarian apparatus that just doesn’t get it—it wasn’t investing in local folks; it was investing in big international NGOs that come and go,” says Williams.

It was clear to Affleck and Williams that the people who would solve DRC’s thorny problems in the long term would be the community leaders who called the country home—and that is exactly who ECI decided to support.

PHOTO COURTESY OF EASTERN CONGO INITIATIVE

Eastern Congo Initiative cofounder Ben Affleck (R) and a farmer inspect beans at a coffee processing center.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF THE FINANCIAL SOLUTIONS LAB

COLLABORATIVE GRANTMAKING

Williams and Affleck first met on an airstrip in neighboring Tanzania in 2006. Affleck was attending a press junket that Williams organized, performing the well-worn Hollywood narrative of turning to Africa to squeeze meaning out of a celebrity success that he felt was increasingly vacuous.

But Affleck’s approach to activism was more than just a publicity stunt. “Rather than being a dilettante and going to Congo and holding someone’s hand in a hospital and taking a picture, I thought I really needed to educate myself,” he explains. “I wasn’t sure that I could be of any help. I was certainly aware that just being a celebrity doesn’t make you a philanthropist, or even useful.”

This attitude led the pair to develop a more collaborative grantmaking approach.

Instead of deciding what they wanted to fund, they asked organizations what they needed.

This helped Affleck and Williams attract many of their first Congolese partners, including Chouchou Namegabe, a Congolese journalist who cofounded the South Kivu Women’s Media Association, which trains female Congolese journalists to report on women’s rights issues.

“There are a lot of donors who have a lot of money, and they want to come in without knowing what the priority needs of the people they’re working with are,” says Namegabe.

“What I really liked about ECI was that we worked like partners to get what we needed.

We had a dream of having a radio station for women, and they helped us realize it.”

Another early grantee was the Panzi Foun- dation, which was established by Congolese gynecologist and pastor Denis Mukwege, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for his work providing medical and legal services to survivors of sexual violence.

“The aid model that is often applied in places like DRC is a model that is designed to help in the here and now. It’s almost palliative care; it’s stopgap measures,” says Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, a writer and foreign policy analyst who met Affleck during ECI’s early days and now serves on its board. “It’s not designed to account for the agency of the local

ABIGAIL HIGGINS is a journalist in Washington, DC, covering health, climate change, and inequality.

populations; it doesn’t take into consideration that they probably know what will work for them and what the solutions are.”

The ability to execute these lofty ideals had a lot to do with the capital and press that Affleck’s celebrity and Williams’ high-profile connections afforded. Early donors to the organization included Cindy McCain, wife of the late Senator John McCain; Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen; and the Howard G.

Buffett Foundation, run by its namesake, the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

STRATEGIC MERGING

More than a half decade into operations, ECI realized that funding local organizations might not be substantive enough to create lasting change. It was at this time that Affleck considered merging ECI with a local organization to achieve its most ambitious aims.

In 2018, after visiting the community- owned enterprise Asili in the Kabare region, they knew that they had found the organization they were looking for. The water, agriculture, and health service business was created through a partnership by Alight (formerly the American Refugee Commit- tee), the nonprofit design studio IDEO.org, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and local residents where Asili planned to operate.

Asili was launched with an initial philanthropic donation that was disbursed by USAID and a group of religious donors called Asili Faith Partners to build clean water pipes and a health clinic. People living inside the surrounding zone pay a small fee each time they access these resources. The payments keep the system sustainable and accessible for those who can’t afford to pay. Today, 150,000 people spread across six zones are paying users of Asili’s water and health clinics.

Asili believes in providing high-quality services and in placing people’s needs first in how these services are designed and deliv- ered. “I firmly believe that a business men- tality that looks at people both as owners and customers creates a much more empowering environment than looking at them as beneficiaries,” says Abraham Leno, who was

the country director of Alight when it helped to create Asili.

Leno knows this personally. He was 16 when war broke out in his native Sierra Leone and his family had to flee to neighboring Guinea. They spent much of the 1990s in a refugee camp. He remembers food ra- tions being delayed for months at a time and one delivery that arrived infested with bugs, causing a diarrhea outbreak in the camp.

“I think the interpretation is that beggars have no choice, so you should take what we give you, even if it’s not the right thing for you, even if it is not the best thing for you,”

Leno observes. “I don’t want to be referred to as a beneficiary ever again in my life, because I know what that did to me.”

Leno believes that Asili can deliver a kind of philanthropy that is self-sustaining and provides world-class services. “The model is revolutionary,” Affleck says. “It reinvents humanitarian aid as start-up capital.”

In August 2020, Asili merged with ECI and installed Leno as ECI’s executive director. While ECI will continue its grantmaking work to other organizations, Affleck says that they’ll reserve most of their energy for Asili.

Their plans are to expand water and health- care services to half a million people across 10 zones over the next three years, all of which will be funded by user-fees money. New zones are already being built in the nearby South Kivu region, in the town of Minova, with Nespresso and USAID providing the start-up capital; another two will be built in the town of Uvira, with funding from the Caterpillar Foundation and USAID.

Leno points to the COVID-19 pandemic as proof of the system’s reliability. He says that no pipe has ruptured, nor has service been in- terrupted, since the pandemic started at the beginning of 2020. Leno and Affleck see the merger as an important moment for a small- scale social enterprise with a big idea in a country not at war, but certainly not at peace.

“How do we transition from protracted humanitarian aid to development?” Leno asks. “It’s this idea of dignity, of valuing the things that we do from the perspective of the person who receives them.” ⁿ

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n 2014, five years after the Great Recession ended, more than half of American adults were facing serious financial hardship: 58 percent struggled to cover expenses and pay bills, and 45 percent did not save any por- tion of their income. Part of this insecurity stemmed from income volatility in nearly one-third of US households, as reported by the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking.

In response to this crisis, Financial Health Network (FHN), a nonprofit financial services consultancy formerly known as the Center for Financial Services Innovation, partnered with JPMorgan Chase in 2014 to launch the Financial Solutions Lab (FSL), an initiative that helps cross-sector collaborations develop new strategies, products, and services to improve Americans’ financial health.

“Most Americans are not financially healthy, and there was a need for innovative solutions that could help Americans manage expenses, navigate financial shocks, and plan for the future,” says FHN president and CEO Jennifer Tescher. “The Financial Solutions Lab was founded to find and support innovators who were committed to building solutions that address the financial health needs, par- ticularly for low- to moderate-income individuals and underserved communities.”

JPMorgan Chase, which has provided

$50 million to FSL, decided to support the lab because it wanted to learn how new technologies could lower the cost of creating and deploying affordable and profitable financial solutions at scale.

“In recognition of the potential of technology to deliver scalable solutions that pro- mote financial health, we teamed up with the

Financial Health Network to launch FSL,” explains Colleen Briggs, JPMorgan Chase’s head of community development and financial health, who oversees the bank’s strategic partnership with FSL. “We needed a cross-sector platform to realize that potential.”

JPMorgan Chase and FHN co-developed a unique operating model for the lab. FSL brings capital, expertise in financial services, and national exposure to entrepreneurs building scalable products designed to address the biggest financial problems facing Americans.

FHN’s 2020 US Financial Health Pulse study, which tracks the changes in Americans’ financial health year over year, reports that more than two-thirds of Americans—167 million people—are not financially healthy. (FHN de- fines people as financially healthy if they “are spending, saving, borrowing, and planning in a way that will allow them to be resilient and pursue opportunities over time.”)

The innovations that FSL supports are designed to support not only low-income and

minority groups but also full-time employees, gig-economy workers, and college students who face financial duress as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the recession.

THREE CORE PRINCIPLES

FSL runs three complementary programs: the Accelerator, one of the few fintech accelera- tors in the United States focused on financial health; the Exchange, a meeting place for interested nonprofit and fintech providers to explore collaboration and swap insights on how to build effective partnerships; and the Collaborative, which explores innovative solutions to unmet financial health needs.

FSL finds candidates for its Accelerator program by hosting an annual challenge to identify solutions to a specific financial problem and inviting start-ups and nonprofits to apply to the program. FSL reviews each appli- cant’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion principles; the viability of the pro- posed product’s solution; and the product’s scalability. The selected organizations—the number of which ranges between four and seven per year—have received up to $250,000 in capital, professional services assistance from industry leaders, and mentorship from FHN’s and FSL’s partners.

The 2020 cohort worked to enhance the financial health of workers and students

Frugal Solutions

A pioneering initiative is showing how traditional financial organizations can cocreate with nonprofits and entrepreneurs to improve the financial health of all Americans.

BY NAVI RADJOU

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE FINANCIAL SOLUTIONS LAB

Companies that partici- pate in the Financial Solutions Lab's Accelerator receive expert advice from partners.

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affected by COVID-19, while the challenge for the 2021 cohort is to help fragile communities improve their financial resilience and long-term stability in the midst of COVID-19.

Fintech start-ups and nonprofits choose FSL because of its social purpose. “Insti- tutionalized empathy is FSL’s biggest dif- ferentiating advantage,” explains Hannah Calhoon, FHN’s vice president of innovation, who oversees FSL. “When we select fintechs to work with us, we look for founders who share our purpose and are genuinely motiv- ated to improve the lives of the financially underserved,” she adds.

Some of the FSL-supported companies that have built solutions to boost the financial health of all Americans include HoneyBee, a certified B Corporation that enables employees, regardless of credit history, to access an extra week’s pay at any time to deal with an emergency; Alice, an AI start-up funded by Melinda Gates that allows employees to automate pretax spending, thus maximizing paychecks and minimizing paperwork; and Summer, another B Corporation that helps student-loan borrowers save by enrolling them in the most cost-effective repayment and forgiveness programs.

“Through the Financial Solutions Lab’s partners,” HoneyBee cofounder Ennie Lim says, “we gained access to domain and regu- latory expertise needed to execute our mission focused on workforce financial health.”

FSL shows these entrepreneurs how to apply the three core principles of frugal innovation—the resourceful art of developing high-impact solutions faster with limited means—to create and scale their products and maximize their impact.

The first principle, “engage and iterate,”

uses FHN’s experiential learning program called FinX to help innovators experience their customers’ financial duress. The FinX participants go through multiple real-life challenges faced by people with financial difficulties on a daily basis, like having to walk miles to cash a check and pay a hefty fee for doing it. Equipped with these insights, entrepreneurs then rapidly experiment with multiple frugal solutions with customers

and use their constant feedback to refine their business model and product or service.

Rather than reinvent the wheel or invest in redundant resources, FSL’s second principle is to “flex all assets,” in which the fintechs fully leverage all assets readily available in FSL’s ecosystem, such as domain expertise, data, and customer access. These fintechs can co-design new products with large-scale nonprofits that are part of FSL’s Exchange program and gain access to a vast user base, thus saving in customer acquisition costs.

The third principle, “shaping frugal customer behavior,” encourages the FSL-backed entrepreneurs to design solutions that draw on behavioral economics and AI to gently nudge consumers toward healthier and more sustainable financial behavior.

Since 2014, more than 250 organizations have participated in FSL’s three programs.

These companies have reached more than five million low- to moderate-income consumers—and over 10 million consumers in total—and helped individuals save more than

$2 billion to date.

PURPOSE IN ENGAGEMENT

JPMorgan Chase gets a lot out of its investment of domain expertise and mentorship in FSL and its fintech enterprises and nonprofits.

“By working with FSL and its start-ups, our bankers deepen their understanding of what kinds of new products, business models, and partnerships could improve the financial health of all Americans,” Briggs explains.

Briggs says that brick-and-mortar banks like JPMorgan Chase have learned three valuable lessons from these relationships.

First, new technologies can significantly drive down the cost of creating and deliv- ering affordable and profitable financial solutions at scale. Second, user-friendly technologies provide actionable insights to customers, empowering them to make wise decisions to more easily improve their financial health. And third, a hybrid high-tech/

high-touch customer engagement model is viable and can be used to serve the 167 million financially challenged Americans profitably and at scale.

In June 2020, Prudential Financial joined FSL with a $10 million commitment over the next five years. Aware of growing economic inequality, the insurance company is partnering with organizations across sectors to find new ways to help put financially vulnerable Americans on the path to financial wellness.

“Through cross-sector collaboration with initiatives like FSL, we can find new ways to help put financially vulnerable people on the path to financial wellness with the necessary tools, support, and capital they need to get on a path to economic and social mobility,”

says Sarah Keh, vice president of inclusive solutions at Prudential Financial, “and in doing so we advance Prudential’s mission of solving the financial challenges of our changing world.”

Since 2014, FSL has faced several challenges in scaling. For instance, some fintechs supported by FSL developed effective technology solutions, but their market adoption was limited because these innovators didn’t build strategic partnerships with grassroots organizations that work closely with low- and moderate-income populations. During COVID-19, FSL faced the logistical challenge of running a cohort and community- building projects virtually. It had to quickly shift its budget to affected areas as well as widen, rather than deepen, exposure and programming.

The pandemic has also highlighted the continued lack of gender and racial diversity among founders and leadership teams of fintechs. In coming years, FSL is focused on recruiting more women and people of color to join its Accelerator cohorts. When the pool of innovators is more diverse, the range of possible solutions becomes both more diverse and more effective.

The entire financial services sector must rise to the challenge of rebuilding America. Big banks, nonprofits, and fintech firms all need to adopt frugal innovation and forge partnerships to co-develop affordable, tech-powered solutions that improve the financial health for all Americans. In doing so, they can cocreate an inclusive economy. ⁿ

NAVI RADJOU is an innovation and leadership scholar and advisor based in New York. He is coauthor of Frugal Innovation: How to Do More with Less.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JUERGEN JUNG