A handful of impact investors have begun to create products, raise capital, and make new investments that directly target progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, a report from the Global Impact Investing Network finds. The report, Financing the Sustainable Development Goals: Impact Investing in Action (28 pages, PDF), found that these...

Only two-thirds (69 percent) of schools globally had basic drinking water service in 2016, with nearly 570 million school children having no access to drinking water at all, a report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization’s Joint Monitoring Programme finds. According to the report, Drinking Water,...

Fifty years after the publication of the Kerner Commission report on urban unrest and fifty-three years after California’s McCone Commission report on the 1965 Watts riots, racial disparities in education, housing, employment, and wealth remain pervasive in Los Angeles, a report from Duke University, the New School, and the University of...

An interactive toolkit from the Integrating Technology in Early Literacy (InTEL) project at the New America Foundation and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop provides a snapshot of initiatives across the United States that use technology to connect with vulnerable families and improve educational outcomes. Early Learning in the...

Interest in impact investing is high, and many impact investors would like to see more product options and increase the amount they invest, a report from Calvert Impact Capital finds. Based on a survey of impact investors — 54 percent of whom were current and former investors in Calvert’s Community Investment Note — the report, Translating...

Improvements in contraceptive use were a key factor in the decline in pregnancy risk among adolescent women in the United States between 2007 and 2014, a report from the Guttmacher Institute finds. The report, Changing Patterns of Contraceptive Use and the Decline in Rates of Pregnancy and Birth Among U.S. Adolescents, 2007–2014, estimated...

Native-serving nonprofits often are not evaluated by charity watchdog organizations such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB) Wise Giving Alliance, Charity Navigator, GuideStar, and CharityWatch — a lack of presence that perpetuates information gaps between groups serving Native communities and potential donors, a report from the First Nations...

Successful school improvement networks — groups of schools working in partnership with an intermediary organization to boost student outcomes — rest on a strong foundation of relational trust and use accessible and timely evidence from early outcomes to make improvements and strengthen the solutions-testing process, a literature review from...

The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Equity Conversation Guides for Young Leaders and Partners provides meeting materials and step-by-step instructions for holding facilitated conversations with young people about dismantling structural racism. The four guides — Understanding the Basics: Core Concepts and Terms, Digging Deep: Historical Context of...

Despite being eligible to have court-appointed attorneys at no cost, indigent juvenile defendants and their families are often charged for "free" counsel, a report from the Juvenile Law Center finds. Funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the report, The Price of Justice: The High Cost of 'Free' Counsel for Youth in the Juvenile Justice...

Although African-American households hold lower levels of debt on average ($30,800) than white households ($73,800), more than a quarter of African-American households report struggling with debt payment, compared with 15 percent of white households, a report from Prosperity Now and the MetLife Foundation finds. Based on a literature review and...

While the concept of creative placemaking — the integration of arts, culture, and community engaged-design in community development and urban planning — is gaining momentum, critical gaps must be addressed if it is to flourish and become an integral part of the field of community development, a white paper from the Kresge Foundation finds....

A four-year initiative to focus the role of principal supervisors on supporting and developing principals with the goal of improving instruction is showing promising early outcomes, a report from the Wallace Foundation finds. The report, A New Role Emerges for Principal Supervisors: Evidence from Six Districts in the Principal Supervisor...

Although the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 eliminated the financial penalty for ignoring the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, states looking to encourage health insurance enrollment to ensure that healthcare costs are shared and marketplaces are stabilized can reinstate their own penalties, a report from the Urban Institute finds. The...