Opinion: Smart Nonprofits Are Making Progress on Poverty

A contributor to The New York Times online Fixes column highlights “thoughtful and systematic” strategies he says are helping organizations achieve small victories in the national War on Poverty declared 50 years ago by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Author David Bornstein cites three ways smaller anti-poverty, education, and social-service groups “may be getting smarter”: more rigorously examining their own impact, in both successes and failures; “paying for success” through new funding models such as social-impact bonds that also put a focus on preventing rather than just treating social ills; and “getting change into the water supply” by partnering with bigger charities, government agencies, and corporations.

Read a Chronicle of Philanthropy opinion column on the legacy of the War on Poverty in empowering minorities and the poor.