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Had the proto-green architect Frank Lloyd Wright lived in the 21st century, he might have built something like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) offices in Santa Monica, Calif. Although framed by a century-old structure, the retrofitted downtown site now includes the latest and best eco-friendly features. Reflective roofing and hanging plants cool its surface. Light wells suffuse the interior. Sensors allow artificial illumination only when rooms have occupants. A smart air conditioning system ignores areas that are already cool. Solar panels generate a fifth of the building’s energy, and wind farms provide the rest. As a result, the building’s total energy costs are 44 percent lower than those of a comparable 15,000-square-foot office space. As befits the NRDC’s mission to protect the planet, its headquarters’ materials are also of the greenest caliber. Named the Robert Redford Building, its wood comes from forestry operations that meet the highest sustainability standards. Its paint and other materials emit almost no toxins. And its renovators recycled all but 2 percent of the waste they generated during construction. For these many environmentally friendly specs, the nrdc headquarters received a platinum rating—the highest possible—by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. Created by…

In his recent remarks at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Conference, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan focused on chronically underperforming schools. “They’re often unsafe, underfunded, poorly run, crumbling, and challenged in so many ways that the situation can feel hopeless,” he said. And they’re a full 5 percent of our nation’s schools — some 5,000 in total. Education reformers offer two strategies for redeeming these schools: turnaround and fresh start. Turnaround strategies keep the same students and site, but change many of the school’s core elements, such as staff, programs, partnerships, and buildings. In contrast, fresh start strategies open a new school from scratch — often with new students, staff, and programs. In most cases, fresh start schools are charter schools — that is, independent public schools that a state board of education, school district, nonprofit, or other authorizing entity creates. Both turnaround and fresh start strategies assume that the school is the critical unit of change, so both rely heavily on school leaders. Both strategies also require a compelling vision and the ability to make it operational. And both demand substantial initial investment. Because these two strategies have much in common, many school-change organizations — EdisonLearning,…

Why is inequality so bad? It’s not just that the poorest people in highly unequal societies may go without food, shelter, or other basic subsistence goods. It’s not just that extreme inequality makes it difficult for the less fortunate to participate fully in their country’s social institutions. It’s not just that lavishing mansions, cars, and jewels on a few lucky people violates some primitive sense of justice and what’s fair. Although inequality may well be problematic for these conventional reasons, The Spirit Level tells us that it’s mainly bad because it makes status differences more extreme and salient and thus generates insecurity about our worth and where we stand in the social hierarchy. We should dislike inequality, in other words, because it produces anxiety and because such anxiety in turn leads to chronic stress, health problems, and other undesirable outcomes. The great achievement of The Spirit Level is documenting that this inequality-induced anxiety has so many bad effects. It makes humans feel stressed and deprived and more likely to get depressed, smoke, overeat, or engage in violent behavior. It also leads to conspicuous displays of consumption, such as buying fancy cars, big houses, and luxury clothes, all of which serve…

The fundamental tenets of strategic philanthropy are that funders and their grantees should have clear goals, strategies based on sound theories of change, and robust methods for assessing progress toward their goals. Although these ideas are gaining traction, some prominent philanthropic thinkers continue to express reservations about how they may affect the balance of power between funders and the organizations they support. For example, former Ford Foundation president Susan Berresford expresses concerns about “funder-led strategic planning that imposes wearying and unnecessary demands on applicants and grantees,” and wistfully asks, “Has the role of the quiet, patient, and responsive funder become less appealing?” 1 She quotes the Indian social entrepreneur Sheela Patel’s complaint about funders’ imposition of logic models and their demand “that in a period of two years, we can implement perfect strategies and produce complete solutions.” Similarly, Sean Stannard-Stockton, the founder and CEO of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors and philanthropic blogger, argues that the idea of a theory of change makes sense in a “static landscape, where you can learn more and more about what works and what doesn’t and finally craft the perfect theory,” but “fails in a dynamic landscape, such as social change, where what you learned on…