What does a more thoughtful disaster response look like?

The economic growth along the West coast has been huge, but the population increase has also increased housing costs, pushing thousands onto the streets. In response, the non-profit Panza has developed a novel approach to sheltering the homeless. With an affordable land lease from the county, and financial support from the state and local community organizations, Panza has created a "tiny-house village" that has offered space, safety and support for individuals to overcome their financial hardships and find jobs and housing on their own.

After learning her home city of Austin, Texas ranked the 48th most charitable city in the country despite its strong economy, Patsy Woods Martin launched I Live Here I Give Here (ILHIGH) in 2007 to encourage Austinites to better meet the needs of their community. In other words, she wanted her neighbors and community members to give locally. To get Austinites to be more charitable, ILHIGH uses games, competitions, clever marketing, and a sense of community.

Padua Project is an innovative program that has a goal of getting poor people out of poverty in three years with a job, three months’ savings and off government assistance. Its unusual success involved a collaboration with other social services organizations. Overcoming the big challenge of this collaboration is an important learning tool to scale similar initiatives.

Largely unbeknownst to the public eye, Cleveland has been battling human trafficking in various forms for many years. Recently, the city has become a leader in trying to eradicate this longstanding problem. Thanks to a small group of activists and nonprofits, using billboards and gift bags as well as other creative methods, these groups are raising awareness, conducting strip club outreach, and creating a victim support network to help make human trafficking an issue of the past.

Frequent deployments and relocations create career hurdles for military spouses and pull families away from their support networks. Blue Star Families, a nonprofit founded in 2009, is working with volunteers in 35 chapters around the world to help military families connect and communicate their experiences to policymakers and the American public. More than half of surveyed families say that they would not recommend military service to their children, a potentially serious issue for the all-volunteer force which recruits heavily from families with histories of service.

For most well-meaning donors, it can be difficult to calculate which charities are most effective with their funding - that is those that aim to solve the most serious problems, use interventions that work, employ cost-effective strategies, are competent and honest, and can make good use of each additional dollar. Organizations like GiveWell are part of a new and welcome trend toward rigorous evaluation of social change programs, and helps people best decide where to donate based on what causes matter to them most.

After piloting anti-violence initiatives across the city, leaders in Kansas City, Missouri, are re-evaluating their approach. While the steps taken to curb gun violence were similar to others across the country, here, they yielded few successes. Leaders in the community cite a lack of collaboration and responses that don’t take into consideration root causes like mental health, poverty, education, or police/community mistrust.

From city-wide efforts to faith-based interventions to public health approaches, the city of Birmingham, Alabama is taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to ending gun violence in the city. The city has been deeply affected by structural violence, racism, and disinvestment, and is applying multiple approaches, like deploying “peacemakers” that talk to residents to figure out why violence is happening in the first place. The city has also increased the number of detectives covering homicides and area nonprofits are developing counseling, rehabilitation, and job training programs for young men.

Nine philanthropic organizations, including Plan International and Comic Relief, make up the With and For Girls Collective, which asks teenage girls worldwide to select girl-led initiatives to fund, a process known as participatory philanthropy. Since 2014, the collective has funded 60 organizations across 41 countries for nearly $3 million.

Shortly following the 2018 Midterm elections in the U.S. House of Representatives, a group of legislators known as the Problem Solvers Caucus used their numbers to change House rules easing the passage of bipartisan legislation. After working to build consensus on issues like health care, infrastructure, gun control, and immigration since 2013, the congressional membership organization noticed that their bipartisan bills often did not receive a fair chance due to the significant power that Speaker and committee chairs held in deciding which bills advanced. Their "Break the Gridlock" reforms changed that.