The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has a $500 million plan to ease the Bay Area housing crisis

Water:Charity assumed that money and celebrity exposure would be able to solve the world’s access-to-clean-water crisis. But this approach often led to more abandoned water pumps. Charities – and journalists who cover them – are now working to concentrate on making their solutions sustainable.

Some problems are simply too complex to solve with any single approach. The “collective impact” strategy of creating alliances of civic and business leaders is being applied to social problems across the nation.

Nongovernmental groups – especially ones that depend on donations – hate to fail, and never make their failures public. But at new conferences, social activists share and learn from failure.

In Jakarta’s slums, families can’t buy their children nutritious food. So Mercy Corps started a for-profit chain of food carts selling healthy kids’ meals. A second column highlights the challenges NGOs face when they try to start for-profit businesses.

The philanthropic practice of buy-one-give-one can be ineffective if communities are given ill-fitting donations or if the donations supplant local markets. The company Warby Parker ensures lasting change by financing the means of local production of a pair of glasses for every pair bought.

Foreclosure affects millions of homeowners and millions more owe more on their mortgages than what their homes are worth, but Empowering and Strengthening Ohio’s People (ESOP), offers assistance. As a free service to borrowers, ESOP holds lenders accountable with fair lending agreements, creates constructive communication, and ultimately saves homes.

New crowdfunding options can help even the smallest donor's contributions to have a meaningful impact, bolstering a sense of personal involvement, maximizing knowledge about causes, and inspiring greater participation.

To address the increasing unaffordability of housing in Berlin, the city introduced a new rent control law to prevent rates from exponential growth. The city has also outlawed vacation rentals in certain zones of the city and created a program that aims to have 30,000 new rental properties available over the next decade.

For most well-meaning donors, it can be difficult to calculate which charities are most effective with their funding - that is those that aim to solve the most serious problems, use interventions that work, employ cost-effective strategies, are competent and honest, and can make good use of each additional dollar. Organizations like GiveWell are part of a new and welcome trend toward rigorous evaluation of social change programs, and helps people best decide where to donate based on what causes matter to them most.

Ecological toilets that use natural composting to break down waste are simple to construct, waterless and are easy to fix. But as philanthropists are finding, getting these to those that need it most is harder than anticipated.