Charity focuses on eliminating the suffering caused by social problem. As a result social problems are managed, not eliminated. Small nonprofits and social investors champion social issues with caring interventions that address immediate needs. Yet, alongside their care of vulnerable communities, increases in social challenges prevail.

The root cause of ongoing and increasing social problems is the continuous use and funding of traditional interventions primarily designed as short-term relief mechanisms but not to make the social issues obsolete.

For example, philanthropists ask nonprofits to describe the effects of social problems, not how a nonprofit proposes to end them. A typical solution is to increase access to social services to serve more people because of escalating community needs—this practice results in short-term interventions with incremental progress.

Social solutions that eliminate and lessen social problems hold the promise of stopping increases in social challenges.

Rethinking Social Solutions

Examine and catalog global best practices for preventing and ending social problems.
Secure investors willing to finance the multi-year incubation and scale of solutions that work laying the groundwork for adaption and replication.
Teach urban leaders how to develop, take a risk, modify, evaluate, and implement straightforward solutions owned and operated by their consistencies with an eye on eliminating social concerns.
Overlay each solution with evidenced-based evaluations to provide communities of color seeking to solve social issues in the hardest to reach communities with training, toolkits, and advisors.