Good reads related to the poverty-relief sector

Presented here are the overview and full report of the UN Millennium Project. The overview is available here in six languages in pdf format; the English overview is available in html format using the navigation at the left. The task force reports are also available in pdf format.

Muhammad Yunus Grameen Bank started out with a tiny initiative in the village of Jobra in 1976. In 1983 it became a formal bank. Now in 2014 it has over 8.5 million borrowers. Right from the beginning we paid attention to two things: 1) borrowers build the habit of savings by putting money every week in a savings account.

In our second partnership with One Acre Fund, we'll be following David and Zipporah, smallholder farmers from Kenya, for a whole growing season. From planting to harvest, we will check in every month to see what life is really like for a family making a living from agriculture in rural Kenya.

BILL GATES, in his foundation's annual letter, declared that "the terms 'developing countries' and 'developed countries' have outlived their usefulness." He's right. If we want to understand the modern global economy, we need a better vocabulary. Mr. Gates was making a point about improvements in income and gross domestic product; unfortunately, these formal measures generate categories that tend to obscure obvious distinctions.

I'm a card-carrying member of the capitalism fan club. Capitalism is the best system ever devised for harnessing self-interest to drive innovation and fuel economic growth. But let's face it: Capitalism is not good at meeting the needs of the very poor.

Looking for a global-themed summer read? Many colleges around the country require all incoming freshmen to read a specific book over the summer before the fall semester begins. It's usually part of a school's "common reading" program. We took a look at schools with ONE chapters to find out what their incoming freshmen will be reading.

We are entering an Age of Complexity characterized by intensified economic unpredictability, tectonic demographic and technological shifts, and accelerating resource scarcity. Adversity has become the New Normal. When you face adversity you either throw in the towel quickly or keep on fighting the issue. But what if you could transcend [...]

Your business helps society, so you should call yourself a social entrepreneur, right? Ask Bill Drayton--the man who coined the phrase. While he didn't spawn the movement, Bill Drayton has been called the godfather of social entrepreneurship and first coined the phrase "social entrepreneur" in writing more than 40 years ago.

The Rockefeller Foundation is hosting a global conversation on resilience and selecting 100 Resilient Cities, ready to withstand disasters and bounce back.

A couple of days ago, the European Commission chose the ten finalists of the second Social Innovation Competition, a contest launched last year in memory of Portuguese computer scientist and politician Diogo Vasconcelos. The contest was set up to encourage and reward social innovations that have a real impact on [...]

Give us #6seconds of your Time SIX is building the online resource of global knowledge on social innovation. Find out how #6seconds of your time could make a global impact.

How clearly defining measures, and keeping them simple and meaningful, has helped World Vision increase access to clean water. It's a truism that what gets measured gets done. But in the case of international NGOs seeking to measure the effectiveness of their programs, the doing is often in the hands of local communities, and the funding that fuels the doing comes from donors on another continent.

A look at impact investor and capacity development provider measurement practices, and some innovative new approaches to metrics. We recently proposed a vision for how we think measurement needs to develop in the entrepreneurial support sector.

Presenters at the second-annual Social Media on Purpose conference discuss the power of one in generating global support. "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will."

Read the best bcg.perspectives of the last quarter of the year

In ordinary times, the opening of a gym in Lower Manhattan might not occasion much reflection, but these, as it happens, are not ordinary times. We are in a moment of class warfare, of punishing the rich for their triumphs of asset management, or so the right labors to convince us.

Social impact bonds are all the rage in the non-profit sector, but do they actually work? In the non-profit and social sector the "new, new thing" is social impact bonds, also known as pay for success contracts.

Sam Mazzeo and I founded Wilkinson Mazzeo, a law practice dedicated to providing legal support to causes and creative businesses, after recently leaving our posts as in-house legal counsel at the nonprofit Invisible Children. The experience and insight we gained while working together at IC prepared us to advise clients on business and nonprofit formation, intellectual property, contracts, labor and employment, board-building, and general counsel.