We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Those words from the Declaration of Independence were written in 1776 by a team...

It was a wonderful night in my neighborhood after the election results came in last Tuesday.  I live in the U Street neighborhood of Washington, DC -- the old center of African American culture and business.  Duke Ellington was born just a couple of blocks away.  Now the neighborhood is...

JoAnna Schull from SYPartners sent me a link to some work by Jane McGonigal.

She pointed out (and I agree) that the following was particularly compelling:

What humans crave:

1. Satisfying work to do
2. The experience of being good at something
3. Time spent...

For two strikingly different takes on the current economic situation, see the following:

1) A presentation by Sequoia , a VC firm, to the CEOs of its portfolio companies at a mandatory meeting last week.  The basic message:  Sell.  Be afraid; be very afraid. This is the worst crisis since...

"I was wrong."

Those words are rarely heard, especially in Washington. But earlier this year, I attended a breakfast meeting with Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and President of Harvard University. The title of his talk was something along the lines of "Three Significant Areas Where I Was...

Poverty is bad. How's that for over-simplification of a complex issue?

She goes on to say:

When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared...

There are a thousand ways to skin the eco cat; and many of them are full of contradictions. We have to try to be comfortable with this complexity and realise that it is a moving feast.

Ten years ago, Mari Kuraishi and I launched the first-ever Innovation Marketplace at the World Bank. The idea was that any team of staff, without regard to rank or title, could submit an idea for doing good, and that we would award $3 milion to the most promising ideas. There...

Food isn't about Nutrition

Clothes aren't about Comfort

Bedrooms aren't about Sleep

Marriage isn't about Romance
...

And Politics is not about policy

That is from a post by the very smart and always provocative Robin Hanson.

He goes on to say:

"We care about...

In 2001 I went to Budapest to attend a conference of excited people exploring new ways of doing philanthropy and international aid. The commercial dot-com boom had already gone bust, but the possibilities in the do-good sector were only just coming into view.

For...

Each year as we mark the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, people wonder what they, as individuals, can do to mitigate the consequences of terrorism.

Conventional thinking encourages us to rely on our government to respond to terrorism and extremist acts - though foreign policy,...

Yesterday the Center for Global Development (CGD) invited me to a meeting with the World Bank to give some remarks on the Bank's forthcoming Climate Change Strategy.

The previous World Bank president nearly forbade the mention of the term "global warming." But Bob Zoellick is now encouraging the Bank to...

David Wheeler from CGD sent me a link to this video of a short talk by Daniel Gilbert at PopTech! on why we are so slow to respond to global warming. I highly recommend it.

The Slow Food Movement is gaining momentum, and I have greatly enjoyed the revival of farmers markets around the Washington, DC area.

I ran into a guy a while...

The traditional philanthropic model revolves around money...Money is important, but it's not everything... When I talk to friends and colleagues in the nonprofit sector, what I hear again and again is a desire for knowledge.

There are a lot of reasons why nonprofit executives are hungry...

Recently we launched GlobalGiving Green - a new part of the site that highlights projects that BOTH fight global warming AND improve local economic, social, or environmental conditions.

In 1995 Clayton Christensen coined the terms "disruptive technology" and "disruptive innovations" to describe technological innovations, products or services that use a "disruptive" strategy rather than "revolutionary" or "sustaining" strategies to overturn dominant or status quo products in a market.

My grandmother ("Mood") turned 99 this past week, and Mari and I went to visit her at the nursing home in Manchester, NH. For several years, Mood has suffered from dementia, and she doesn't recognize her family members.

We've gotten used to it, though at the beginning it was...