Each quarter, this section of the Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal brings you a selection of recent news reports and other publications featuring topics and trends related to social innovation, disruptive innovation, and social entrepreneurship. These “tidbits” offer brief summaries of stories and articles from around the country and the world, and fall under themes such as social media, technology, leadership, “what works,” evolving trends, philanthropy, and others. If you come across something you think is worth highlighting here, please send it to Caroline Ridgway at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

The story of People’s Grocery, a nonprofit group dedicated to bringing fresh food to the underserved neighborhood of West Oakland, California, mirrors the narrative of a growing national movement to create a healthier and more sustainable food system. People’s Grocery was one of many grassroots organizations to spring up in the last decade, starting urban gardens, opening farmers’ markets and educating people about healthy food choices. As those efforts were gaining footholds in communities around the country, broad issues of health, the environment and the economy as they relate to what Americans produce and eat bubbled to the surface of national consciousness and media attention.

Each quarter, this section of the Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal brings you a selection of recent news reports and other publications featuring topics and trends related to social innovation, disruptive innovation and social entrepreneurship. These “tidbits” offer brief summaries of stories and articles from around the country and the world, and fall under themes such as social media, technology, leadership, “what works,” evolving trends, philanthropy and others. If you come across something you think is worth highlighting here, please send it to Caroline Ridgway at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Our common perception of long-term care has remained static for many years. Decades after Congress signed its first law providing federal assistance to the elderly and disabled, “long-term care” still evokes stale images: small rooms with bare walls, the constant hum and beeping of medical machines, and the pervasive atmosphere of isolation. To be part of a long-term care system, according to the ordinary understanding, means to be institutionalized.

“Food desert” is no longer a jargon term for nutrition experts or urban planners. The general population is becoming more aware of the issues around access to healthy foods, particularly in the low-income communities. Leaders in Philadelphia are seeing how this issue affects the city’s poorest neighborhoods, where people suffer from a lack of access to fruits and vegetables and, subsequently, a number of health issues including hunger, obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Five years after Hurricane Katrina violently struck the Gulf Coast in late August 2005, New Orleans is now seen as social justice ground zero. A young person new to the city can join many different networks and interact with a diverse population. But this was not always the case. This article shows how diverse networks can be created, what kind of networks exist in the city today, and how other cities can emulate the convergence of these types of networks. Despite the magnitude of the destruction, Katrina also forced the city and its residents to re-imagine themselves. It brought hundreds of young people to New Orleans, disappointed by the lack of effective federal and state government reaction to the situation and wanting to help.

The Community Design Collaborative serves as a supportive intermediary between Philadelphia-area nonprofits with specific building needs and skilled volunteers with the expertise to evaluate project ideas and craft the initial designs, a role filled by no other local organization and few others nationally. This formal pro bono intermediary model is relatively uncommon, particularly in the areas of design and building support. But increasing use of such a paradigm could help nonprofit organizations take advantage of professional skills in their communities, and contribute to higher rates of and appreciation for skills-based volunteering by both nonprofit and for-profit entities.

Adverse social conditions make people vulnerable to poor health, and poor health makes people even more vulnerable to adverse social conditions. This cycle of vulnerability drives health disparities in the United States: Low-income individuals and racial/ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected by a range of acute and chronic medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes and hypertension, and suffer worse health outcomes. In urban centers like Philadelphia, there is significant overlap between these two populations, resulting in concentration of risk in medically underserved communities.

According to the 2007 World Development Report, “early difficulties in finding employment can have long-lasting effects on employment later in life” (World Bank 2007: 99) Emerging research shows that “the ability to understand and respond to market information is central to the success of youth workforce and enterprise development” (Macaulay and Meissner 2009: 5).

Frontline staff people are largely untapped resources as potential social innovators. This article describes how one staff person strengthened the ability of low-income clients to become more self-sufficient by adapting a cost-effective and capacity-building educational strategy to her daily work environment. The same educational strategy can lead to “microdemocracy” in which individuals use essential democratic skills in ordinary encounters with public agencies. The article concludes by presenting several criteria that must be met in order to make it possible for frontline staff to become social innovators.

In the business world, the old adage “innovate or die” will always stand the test of time. Every company needs to keep its eye on what will come around the corner and anticipate fast market changes. New regulation could impact a business, or, worse, Google could decide to take over the market — and then you are in real trouble.

Sustaining the work of nonprofit organizations requires continued funding, and most nonprofits rely heavily on membership and donor-based models to support their work. However, as individual giving has declined, especially in the present economic climate, nonprofits are looking for other fundraising approaches, and many are exploring the potential of cause marketing. Cause marketing provides the missing link between corporate support and societal needs, but the real power of cause marketing lies in its ability to engage individual consumers in the support of an initiative.

Question: What’s worse than a nonprofit that lacks what it needs to be effective? Answer: A nonprofit that wastes its meager resources because of poor process design.

Language access plays a role in the high rate of disproportionate minority contact experienced by foreign language youth in Philadelphia’s juvenile justice system. As Philadelphia’s immigrant population expands, thousands of parents send their children to English-speaking schools, while the parents themselves have limited English skills. Without innovative approaches to reach foreign language speaking parents, we risk losing important allies who can help to keep young people in classrooms and out of courtrooms.

Disruptive innovation helps social innovators and entrepreneurs to breathe new life into old ideas. Proven business models, products and services draw value from being reliable, established and consistent. But our needs as consumers and priorities as individuals evolve over time, typically triggering a market response. In some cases, however, a more substantial push is needed to create meaningful change in an industry. Health care is an industry that has, for many Americans, ceased to be practically useful, because of issues related to cost and access. On the other hand, it is a service that we all need; even pediatricians’ children get ear infections on a weekend and would, prior to the advent of retail-based health care, typically wind up in the emergency room.

These are anxious times for the nonprofit sector. Organizational leaders are being forced to implement layoffs and eliminate programs and services. Staff members of all rank continue to work despite salary reductions and widespread job insecurity. Public funding is locked up at the local, state and federal levels. As I write this, in Philadelphia, where I work, a budget impasse at the state level is forcing nonprofits to take out lines of credit to keep their doors open. And now, even the available credit is drying up. Nonprofit organizations continue to operate without the promise of their funding being restored to previous levels. They take these risks because the people who do this work are driven by both their personal and organizational missions.

Resources for Human Development was created as an experiment nearly 40 years ago, and by any measure this unique and innovative experiment has worked marvelously. All nonprofits are by definition mission-driven to some degree, but the idea behind RHD was, to quote board chairperson Bertram Wolfson, “to create an organization that from the beginning is based upon ideals.” RHD is a values-driven corporation that strives foremost to create healthy workplace communities. As RHD’s CEO and founder, I believed such an enterprise could pursue diverse paths, better serve people in need and also be financially viable.