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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.

Neither markets nor charity alone are sufficient to help the world's poorest people. In this interview with host Sheela Sethuraman, Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of the Acumen Fund, describes how a combination of patient capital plus management support is making a difference in tackling poverty in Africa and Asia. Novogratz shares experiences and anecdotes from her recently published book, "The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World."

How do we create an efficient capital market for philanthropy? What are the best ways to marry program evaluation with powerful dynamics among online giving places? What role should public policy take in all this? In this free-ranging talk, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Randy Komisar offers a venture capitalist's perspective on these questions and more.

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.

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.

Moira Gunn interviews Ed Humes, Pulitzer Prize winning author, about his book Eco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet. The book features profiles of visionaries who have dedicated their lives and their fortunes to saving the planet from ecological destruction.

A food crisis is upon us. Prices of food commodities have risen dramatically. Shrinking supply, due to weather and the production of biofuels, combined with spiking petroleum prices, has lead to rising demand and instability in countries the world over. Robert Hormats, Helene Gayle, and Jacqueline Novogratz discuss the roles that the financial sector, NGOs, and small farmers around the world play as well as what they can, and must do, to reverse this alarming situation.

Financing the growth of operations to achieve major scale is undoubtedly the biggest challenge facing social entrepreneurs. This panel explores the current challenges and constraints in mobilizing capital flow to compelling social enterprises. Also discussed are a range of strategies and channels available to social entrepreneurs for financing growth plans, including emerging alternatives to create new asset classes (hybrid, for-profit, and for-benefit models).

Marc Koska talks about his involvement with Star Syringe, the 2008 Tech Awards Health Award winner. Star Syringe designed and licensed the K1 auto-disable syringe, which prevents syringe reuse. In this interview with host Sheela Sethuraman, Koska explains how focusing on the needs of the syringe manufacturers, instead of the end users, was an important success factor. He discusses how single-use syringe adoption is progressing in India as well as the activities and aims of his charity SafePoint Trust.