As foundations and other philanthropic institutions assess where they can maximize the social return on their charitable investments, many are looking at issues of gender norms and gender equity. Gender transformative programs and policies highlight, challenge and ultimately change harmful norms of masculinity and femininity.

Evaluation findings and lessons learned by the wide array of public and community-based organizations that participated in The Colorado Trust’s Partnerships for Health Initiative offer important lessons to help health care organizations better coordinate and align their services and systems and, in turn, to improve health outcomes.

Philanthropy and the Social Economy: Blueprint 2013 is an annual industry forecast written by leading philanthropy scholar Lucy Bernholz about the social economy — private capital used for public good. The Foundation Center and the European Foundation Centre are pleased to partner with Lucy to offer the Blueprint as a GrantCraft guide. The Blueprint provides an overview of the current landscape, points to major trends, and directs your attention to horizons where you can expect some important breakthroughs in the coming year.

When it comes to strategizing around technology, it’s important to distinguish the trendy from the truly useful. This is particularly true for nonprofit and association leaders who need to show funders their dollars are working. Just in time for budgets and planning, we’ve identified ten technology trends worth adopting in 2013.

Effective management is critical to the development of strong nonprofit organizations, and funders are well-positioned to support good management practices among their grantees and across their fields. But our experience suggests that funders often miss opportunities to help grantees build management strength. What’s more, funders sometimes undermine their own efforts to drive impact by focusing on misleading measures of organizational effectiveness and offering assistance in well-intentioned but misdirected ways.

The term impact investing has been gaining brand value over the past five years. The precursors of community investing and socially responsible investing are ironically being dropped from the conversation as if to imply that impact investing is a brand new phenomenon. While there is innovation inherent in impact investing, it is important to leverage the histories – good and bad – from community development, socially responsible investing, and venture philanthropy in order to support the success, sustainability and scale of the larger social benefit marketplace. -