When it comes to online giving market places, the adage is: If you build it, few will come. So how do you drive enough people to such online spaces to make them work? In this talk, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, William Meehan, McKinsey senior director, talks about the opportunities and challenges in making online giving marketplaces successful, and what lies ahead in this area for organizations dedicated to making a genuine sustained impact in communities.

Given current tax laws, $300 billion in charitable dollars can end up costing the U.S. Treasury $50 billion in lost income. Should taxable income exclude charitable contributions? In this talk, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Stanford political philosopher Rob Reich asks some tough questions, ultimately proposing a new way of looking at tax incentives to support the nonprofit sector.

At its worst, program evaluation is a useless activity that generates lots of boring data and irrelevant conclusions. But at its best, argues Mark Kramer in a talk he gave at the 2008 Nonprofit Management Institute, it can be a strategic tool for the genuine improvement of a nonprofit. He offers exemplars of organizations that have used evaluation effectively to advance their missions.

The Business Roundtable announced an official collaboration between its Partnership for Disaster Response and the American Red Cross in September, 2007. Neal Denton, Senior VP of Government Relations and Strategic Partnerships at the American Red Cross discusses the value of this relationship to the Red Cross, the role of the private sector in disaster response, and plans for strengthening this relationship.

Research shows that spending time and money on others makes people happy--so why don't more people donate to or volunteer for nonprofits? In this talk, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Stanford marketing professor Jennifer Aaker offers insights into the phenomenon. She then turns those insights into lessons nonprofits can use to create compelling ways for more people to give financially and personally to the causes they care about.

Fraser Nelson, a consultant to nonprofits, gives an entertaining lesson on the why and how of nonprofit lobbying. Most nonprofits do not lobby government for a variety of reasons, but Nelson explains that it is legal, effective, and powerful. In this Stanford Social Innovation Review sponsored talk, Nelson concludes with ways to get the most out of your lobbying efforts and five rules to follow.

Businesses are not the only organizations rocked by financial scandals. Nonprofits such as the Red Cross, United Way, and many others have been hit as well. In this Stanford Social Innovation Review sponsored talk, Deborah Rhode discusses the need for an ethics upgrade in the nonprofit sector, which by its do-good nature is expected to take the moral high ground. She considers typical pitfalls that nonprofits are vulnerable to, and calls for clearer rules governing transparency and accountability.

If you haven't bought a flat-screen TV yet, chances are you're waiting for the prices to drop. Technologies get cheaper by virtue of the "experience curve," a phenomenon where, as companies get better at what they do, costs become lower. In this Stanford Social Innovation Review sponsored talk; Robert Searle argues that nonprofits also can have experience curves, achieving a greater volume of outcomes for the same cost. He discusses the types of outcome metrics on which nonprofits should focus.

What fuels the creation of a nonprofit organization? In this discussion, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, panelists talk about their experiences founding an education-related nonprofit in the United States and a microenterprise in Africa. They explore how they came up with the ideas for their enterprises, how they focused and manifested those ideas, and what smart and not-so-smart choices they made along the way. A portfolio manager adds her insights on what elements make a startup appealing to potential funders.

Over the last decade, social entrepreneurship seems to have exploded on the international scene; there's a tremendous interest in setting up funds to support social ventures. While there's a whole spectrum of services to support the financial industry, the same isn't true of the nonprofit sector. This experienced panel discusses the need for addressing the talent gap in the social, nonprofit segment along with ways to lure talented youngsters to bridge this gap.