This article is one of a series The Chronicle is featuring this month about leaders who are pushing unorthodox ideas to give philanthropy more power to do good.
Some of the biggest innovators of the “new philanthropy” have achieved acclaim for their innovations, including a nonprofit incubator, cash transfers directly to the poor, venture philanthropy, Giving Tuesday, and much more.
Deval Patrick
The former Massachusetts governor — who backed social-impact bonds while in office — leads Double Impact, an investment arm of Bain Capital focused on social-change companies.
Clara Miller
She has doubled down on the Heron Foundation’s impact investing with a plan to direct its entire endowment toward fighting poverty.
Paul Niehaus
An economist, he’s president and co-founder of the international aid group Give Directly, which is pioneering the practice of using cash transfers to help the poor.
Lisa Phillips
As director of New York’s City’s New Museum, she launched a museum-run incubator to help artists, designers, and others develop as entrepreneurs.
Nancy Roob
The president of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation has orchestrated several “growth-capital aggregation” efforts — most recently Blue Meridian Partners, which is targeting child and youth development. These efforts pool philanthropic cash to expand data-proven
effective charities.
Yvon Chouinard
The Patagonia founder made his company one of the first and best-known B Corporations, a certification awarded to businesses that demonstrate altruism through data and policies.
William Draper, Robin Richards Donohoe, and Robert Kaplan
The foundation led by these Wall Street venture- capital pros is a frontrunner in venture philanthropy. One early bet that paid off:
microfinance trailblazer Kiva.
Dean Karlan
The Yale economist founded Innovations for Poverty Action to measure the impact of international-poverty programs through randomized, controlled trials. He’s now promoting “impact audits” of charities to help guide donors’ giving.
Kat Taylor
Among the ventures of this California philanthropist and her husband, Tom Steyer: a bank owned by a private foundation that makes loans to social-good organizations and businesses and plows profits back into underserved communities, often through nonprofit grants.
Henry Timms
The creator of Giving Tuesday promotes a “new power” theory of doing good in which nonprofits build virtual communities of passionate supporters.
Liesel Pritzker
Simmons
The Hyatt hotel heiress is using her name and fortune to promote and practice impact investing.
Cari Tuna
She and husband Dustin Moskovitz, a Facebook co-founder, have formed the Open Philanthropy Project to identify effective, underfunded causes where relatively small donations can have a big impact.
Cheryl Dorsey
She leads Echoing Green, which nurtures leaders of enterprises for social change, including for-profit ventures.
Mauricio Lim Miller
The MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant winner has created a new antipoverty approach: Rather than offer financial help with professionals directing how the support is used, his organization, Family Independence Initiative, offers small stipends contingent upon low-income families meeting goals developed with help from friends, family, and neighbors.
Pierre Omidyar
The eBay co-founder and his wife, Pam, helped pioneer the idea that mixing charitable giving with for-profit investments through a limited-liability corporation could be the best blend for doing good.
Charles Best
Before there was Kickstarter or Indiegogo, there was DonorsChoose.org, which Mr. Best launched as a way for teachers to raise money for classroom projects. Sixteen years and a half-billion dollars later, crowdfunding is a fixture in fundraising culture.
