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2022-01-13
Morrison & Foerster LLP;
Achieving rapid, large-scale improvements in social, environmental, and economic outcomes for people and business in all countries around the world is an imperative that requires an "all hands on deck" approach. It is not enough to leave it to governmental and non-governmental organizations to do the hard work of addressing climate change, environmental degradation, and inequalities in health outcomes, education, and social welfare. On the other hand, while many businesses have also taken steps to address these problems, we cannot rely on the goodwill of business interests at large to reform economic systems to promote sustainable growth. Social enterprises therefore have a vital role to play in bridging this gap. Social enterprises integrate social, environmental, and other impact objectives with traditional business practices and techniques to seek profitable, and therefore self-sustaining, operations while serving the common good. Although social enterprises can be found in all corners of the world, most jurisdictions suffer from a dearth of laws and policies that support them, and in some cases, requirements that may be an actual hindrance to their proliferation.Accordingly, we have produced this social enterprise law and policy report (this "Report") to identify legal structures and policies that nations can adopt to catalyze the advancement of social enterprises around the world. The recommendations and observations included in this Report have been derived from our review of laws and policies that help social enterprises flourish in 83 jurisdictions around the world, covering every inhabited continent and every major legal structure.
2022-06-03
Kresge Foundation;
This publication, "Promoting Equity through ARPA Implementation," illustrates how select cities are using their SLFRF to address the disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on low- and moderate-income people and communities of color with explicit attention to several core values:Leveraging federal aid to achieve equitable investment in underserved areas and to address systemic inequities;Integrating non-profits and the private sector meaningfully in the deployment of funds; andPursuing the use of ARPA in tandem with a wider set of public finance, community investment, and social investment strategies, that further address economic disparities among underserved and underrepresented residents and enable transformative investments in equity to have sustained continuity.
2022-06-13
Bipartisan Policy Center;
As a long-standing immigration destination, the United States has depended on the entrepreneurial contributions of immigrants as an economic driver. While much of the current immigrant entrepreneurship discussion centers on high-tech start-ups and Fortune 500 companies 1, immigrants create businesses of all sizes that help fuel American economic growth. The U.S. Census' 2007 and 2012 Survey of Business Owners (SBO) found that immigrants had formed about 25% of new businesses in the United States, with rates surpassing 40% in some states. Immigrants are also 10% more likely to own their own business than U.S. natives. Simply put, the United States' economic success story would not exist without immigrant entrepreneurs with a range of backgrounds and skill levels who were willing to launch their business ideas here. This report shows a consistent set of drivers and barriers that impact immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States, and outlines recommendations for policymakers at all levels of government to better support these entrepreneurs and enable a more robust U.S. economy.
2022-06-01
GBAO;
Global Strategy Group conducted public opinion surveys among a sample of 998 registered voters from May 19-May 23, 2022. 102 additional interviews were conducted among Hispanic voters. 62 additional interviews were conducted among Asian American and Pacific Islander voters. 105 additional interviews were conducted among African American voters. 102 additional interviews were conducted among independent voters. The survey was conducted online, recruiting respondents from an opt-in online panel vendor. Respondents were verified against a voter file and special care was taken to ensure the demographic composition of our sample matched that of the national registered voter population across a variety of demographic variables.Key takeawaysThe vast majority of Americans remain pessimistic about the national economy, while unease about their personal financial situation has hit an all-time high since the beginning of Biden's presidency.Growing majorities of Americans show concerns about inflation broadly and feel the costs of gas and groceries have increased"significantly" or "a lot" recently.An overwhelming and growing majority of Americans blame inflation on corporations being greedy and raising prices to make record profits.
2022-06-01
Bridgespan Group;
A decade ago, a Muslim religious scholar named Hussain Khan was a vocal critic of the Mahila Mandal Federation (MMF), a Mumbai-based grassroots women's group, which has been nurtured by an NGO called CORO for the past 20 years. He questioned MMF's efforts to help women take on leadership roles in their communities in urban informal settlements. But instead of viewing Khan as an adversary, MMF believed he might one day become an ally.Today, Khan hosts MMF meetings at his madrassa (school), which traditionally excludes women. And he has developed a course, "Quran and the Constitution," which builds community members' awareness of their constitutional rights and their moral responsibility to help neighbours in need.What prompted Khan's change of heart?Along with MMF, CORO spent three years conversing with Khan about the challenges women living in urban informal settlements encounter, including domestic violence and low access to education. CORO was well-positioned to engage in those meetings, since it is largely led by Dalit and Muslim people who live in the communities in which they work. Khan was later selected into CORO's Samta Fellowship, where he spent a full year reflecting on the values enshrined in the Indian constitution and acquiring leadership and movement-building skills that he took back to his community.It is not an accident that Khan now champions the work of a grassroots group that he formerly opposed. It is an outgrowth of CORO's core approach to supporting community-driven change: to meet people where they are and earn their trust. The idea is to unlock their "power within" to advocate for the rights of Dalits, Muslims, and other historically marginalised communities to have an equal opportunity to advance their lives.To learn more about how this kind of ground up, community-driven change comes to life, a Bridgespan Group team spent several months researching and interviewing CORO as well as three other NGOs in the Global South: Mumbai-based Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA); Kenya's Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO); and Ubuntu Pathways (UP), which works in South Africa's Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) townships.Our research reaffirmed that community-driven change is challenging to execute. Multifaceted power dynamics related to gender, caste, class, and religion often pose significant barriers to change. However, we also learned that, despite all of this, the four NGOs pushed past those challenges to build long track records of success by playing a supporting role as community groups built their own solutions. Tightly focusing on a few NGOs, rather than on many, gave us a close-up look at on-the-ground approaches to working with community members as they take steps towards leading their own change. One of our main insights was the similarities in how community-driven organisations think. Specifically, we identified five mutually reinforcing mindsets that help orient these NGOs around community members' priorities and lived experience.Â
2022-06-03
American Immigration Council;
New research from the American Immigration Council underscores the crucial role Hispanic Texans play in the metro area's labor force, population growth, and economy. This new fact sheet was prepared in partnership with the Rio Grande Valley Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Texans for Economic Growth.
2022-03-21
Become;
As Chicago works to come back from the pandemic, years of disinvestment and structural racism have made economic recovery harder for some communities than others. To have a truly equitable recovery, it's important to understand the on-going impact the pandemic has had on Black and Latinx communities hit hard by job loss, sickness, and death. In collaboration with The Chicago Community Trust and We Rise Together: For an Equitable and Just Recovery, New America Chicago commissioned a report from BECOME to learn more about how these communities were recovering and what is still needed from local and federal policymakers for these communities to not just recover but thrive.We Rise Together is a coalition of corporate and philanthropic funders working with the community to accelerate equitable economic recovery in the Chicago region. Housed at The Chicago Community Trust, We Rise Together is increasing employment opportunities for Black and Latinx workers, strengthening businesses of color, and spurring investment in disinvested neighborhoods. Because We Rise Together is committed to grounding the initiative's efforts in the lived experiences of Chicago's most marginalized communities, the decision was made to host Community Conversations across Chicago neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by the pandemic.  A team from BECOME worked with New America Chicago, The Trust, and We Rise Together to plan seven Community Conversations in collaboration with nonprofits from each neighborhood. Participants had strong recommendations for support and resources to help their neighborhoods recover economically from the pandemic. Consistently, across all neighborhoods, we heard that people struggled and continue to struggle economically and emotionally as a result of the pandemic. Still, most found unexpected positives in the midst of the pandemic.
2022-04-05
CGIAR;
CGIAR has considerable experience with private sector engagement in the context of its mission to create sustainable and resilient food, land and water systems, and there is continuing interest and dialogue on this theme within CGIAR and the international development community more generally. The on-going CGIAR reform provides an opportunity to capture those experiences and harmonize strategies under the new structure, as has been acknowledged in the new 'CGIAR 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy'. Commissioned by the NL-CGIAR Strategic Partnership, this report aims to identify, discuss and evaluate pathways for strengthening collaboration between CGIAR and the private sector to stimulate innovation and the scaling of these innovations in food, land and water systems. The objective is to advance private sector engagement in the CGIAR, based on transparent CGIAR system-wide mechanisms and processes.
2022-06-02
Brookings Institution;
Inflation has recently emerged as the top economic concern in the U.S. The Federal Reserve is now raising interest rates in an attempt to curb inflation, but their job would be easier, and the risk of a recession reduced, if we could directly address some of the job market bottlenecks that are contributing to inflation. This phenomenon has been called "the Great Resignation" – where there are too few workers to fill currently available jobs – because some have left the labor market, while others are reluctant to accept or keep jobs there. The aging of the U.S. population and a recent decline in immigration compound these effects.In his Wall Street Journal op-ed on May 31, President Biden listed a number of ways to reduce inflation – and one of them was cutting the cost of child care to families, so that the parents of small children could more easily enter the workforce. Indeed, his Build Back Better (BBB) agenda included policies such as greater access to child care and universal pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds, policies with the potential to boost labor supply and potentially reduce inflation. That legislation remains in limbo because of the opposition of Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV). But if it had been enacted a year ago, it could have made a difference – not just to the well-being of families and children but even to the inflationary pressures that have now emerged, pressures fueled in part by a lack of workers to produce the products and services people want.
2022-05-26
Atlantic Council of the United States;
The Atlantic Council's Freedom and Prosperity Center aims to increase the prosperity of the poor and marginalized in developing countries—and to explore the nature of the relationship between freedom and prosperity in both developing and developed nations. To aid in this task, this report introduces the new Atlantic Council Freedom and Prosperity Indexes.The Freedom Index measures economic, political, and legal freedom for nearly every country in the world, using the latest available data when the index was constructed at the end of 2021. The Prosperity Index measures economic wellbeing and human flourishing for the same countries and time period. In addition, we collected historical data to allow us to track and analyze change over time. We constructed the same indexes going back in five-year increments for the years 2006, 2011, and 2016; 2006 is the earliest date for which data on our indicators are available.To be sure, there are limits to any data-collection effort. The world changes quickly, and the data we collected at the end of 2021 may not still represent current realities in every case. Russia, for example, is less free today than when we collected the data, due to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and his related crackdowns at home. In addition, we needed to choose indicators that could be applied across all countries and over time, but these generalized measures may not always fit neatly with the unique circumstances in every country. Still, despite these limitations, we believe that these indexes provide new and valuable information on global freedom and prosperity.Going forward, we plan to update the indexes annually. The methodology to produce the indexes is straightforward and transparent, and is described in detail in the appendix.
2022-04-28
London School of Economics and Political Science;
Key to building a new economic strategy which can revitalise the UK economy after a decade of stagnation is understanding our current strengths, how these strengths evolve, and the trade-offs they present.The report uses global data on trade in goods and services and patenting to uncover where the UK's relative strengths lie; we study the extent to which these strengths have changed over time and compare with international peers; and undertake several deep dives into the areas in which the UK has developed a specialism. Finally we consider what the UK's mix of specialisms means for a wider economic strategy.
2022-05-16
ReThink Health;
What will it take to live up to our potential to be good stewards of an equitable and thriving future? The 2021 Pulse Check on Shared Stewardship for Thriving Together Across America surveyed more than three hundred leaders who are well-positioned to act as stewards in communities across the U.S. The results track the diffusion of shared stewardship and explore the extent to which the values, priorities, and practices of stewardship are taking hold nationwide.Fielded from October 2020 to July 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the survey provides rare and timely insights about stewarding well-being in a period of significant threat and opportunity. The 2021 Pulse Check was led by ReThink Health, the flagship initiative of the Rippel Foundation, in partnership with the RAND Corporation and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Rippel. It sought to learn:To what extent do changemakers across America endorse stewardship values?What are their priorities for investment and action?How fully are stewardship practices incorporated as organizational norms?What kinds of obstacles and momentum builders are shaping the path forward?
