Philadelphia has many emergency response teams, but until recently, pets weren’t part of that response. Red Paw Emergency Relief Team, in partnership with the Red Cross, provides emergency transportation, shelter, long-term foster care and emergency, follow-up and ongoing veterinarian care to foster and rescue pets. The program is spearheaded by Philadelphia firefighter and Red Cross emergency responder Jennifer Leary and began service on July 25, 2011. Since then, Red Paw has responded to nearly 200 calls in Philadelphia, Delaware, Montgomery, Bucks and Chester Counties.

Practitioners in the public sector and funding communities often note the proliferation of new nonprofit organizations. Certainly, formally establishing a 501(c)(3) organization is often an appropriate step to addressing a service need or gap within our social system. But this is not the only option available to start-up projects, nor is it always the best or most appropriate course. Indeed, for those initiatives that truly seek to disrupt the current system and innovate the way services are delivered, the intense and often burdensome administrative demands associated with establishing a nonprofit can be prohibitive to achieving the mission and goals of the program or project. In other cases, the innovation in question might require urgency and flexibility on the front end that would be hampered by the often lengthy designation process. In still other cases, project or program leaders may need additional support, coaching and training before they are ready to make it on their own. In consideration of these possibilities, fiscal sponsorship can be an appropriate and ideal alternative to the wholesale creation of a new 501(c)(3) entity.

The sporting world at its best represents values to strive for—community, teamwork, commitment, sacrifice and self-discovery. The climate toward LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) inclusion in sports has been hostile or indifferent. The general concern has been that people who choose to share their entire selves with their teams will be met with hostility, thereby creating unsafe spaces for LGBT athletes to fully embrace the athletic experience. From collegiate to sponsorships, the exclusionary environment has led to outright hostility. From 1980 to 2007, Penn State women’s basketball coach Rene Portland kicked anyone off the team if she suspected she was a lesbian. Despite denying being a lesbian in 1981, Billie Jean King, professional tennis player, lost all commercial sponsorships when an ex-partner sued her. Based on these cases, any LGBT athlete who sought to feel wholly part of the team would surely have been greeted with animosity.

At a time when 40% of Philadelphia public high school students are struggling to find their way to graduation (Socolar 2012), an innovative approach to preparing these youth to face any obstacles they may encounter is not only appreciated, it’s needed.

Sink or Swim (SOS) follows in the footsteps of a growing number of crowdfunding platforms that mix philanthropy and social network participation to help individual donors best leverage their giving.  By pooling small to medium-sized funds and investing them into a project, cause or individual, donors are able to realize a far greater and more direct impact than might otherwise be possible (Ordanini et al. 2011). SOS uses this funding model to leverage the generosity of complete strangers to proactively connect with a featured recipient through donations to support medical costs.

For over 100 years, community art centers have supplemented or even replaced arts education in local schools.They help to provide a place where students can learn about the arts, where the community can be enriched, and where artists can work and perform.According to Jessica Hoffman Davis of Harvard University, local community-based art centers can help sustain the arts, particularly in communities where they are marginalized (2010). Especially over the past 20 years, as arts programs in schools have become more endangered, such community centers have helped to fill in gaps.

The Cultural Data Project (CDP) aspires to change the very way we discuss and justify the importance of the arts in our society. Traditionally, arts organizations have argued for public funding based on personal stories demonstrating the intrinsic value of arts to their communities, shying away from collecting data to support their arguments (Schuster 1997). According to Neville Vakharia, the director of the project, the CDP is “changing the argument of how we justify support for the arts from either/or to both/and.”

The Jazz Bridge Project is a nonprofit organization that brings jazz enthusiasts together with jazz vocalists and musicians in crisis. Founded by jazz musicians Suzanne Cloud and Wendy Simon, Jazz Bridge’s mission is to assist local jazz performers with emergencies involving personal and professional issues, while building neighborhood awareness of the local jazz community.

Slought Foundation fosters dialogue between artists and their wider communities as a strategy to bridge academic and public spheres. In doing so, they create new forums for intellectual engagement over a wide range of topics in public culture.

Through its Funsavers program, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance fills a gap in services for both cultural organizations and consumers.

Family instability, poor access to healthy food choices, and higher rates of nutrition-related illness. These are some of the manifestations of poverty and hunger in low-income neighborhoods that Sunday Suppers is trying to address in an innovative way. Founded in October 2010 by Linda Samost, the program’s mission is centered on the power of the family meal.

Breast cancer mortality remains the second leading cause of cancer death among women in America behind lung cancer (NPCR n.d.). Among Latinas, breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death and most commonly diagnosed cancer (Breast Cancer Resource Directory of North Carolina 2011). Implemented by the Health Promotion Council (HPC) in 2010, the Naveguemos con Salud Breast Health Partnership Project (NCS) provides education and patient navigation support to improve breast health screening outcomes among Philadelphia's Latina population.

“PolicyMap. Good Data. Good Decisions.” That tagline captures both the purpose of PolicyMap and what drives the team behind this innovative new tool. Everyone—from funders to the general public—is placing increasing pressure on public and nonprofit sector programs to make “data-driven” decisions. Good data, however, can be costly and time-consuming to gather, not to mention difficult to analyze and interpret.

Historically, behavioral health services have been delivered separately from medical care and often in physically unappealing settings. Additionally, the behavioral health field suffers from a high rate of staff turnover. Creative Health Services has addressed these issues through the integration of primary care, pharmacy, social work and behavioral health services; new headquarters that provide a pleasant environment for clients and employees; and a commitment to employee wellness and development.

Beth Dahle, co-President of the Philadelphia chapter of Impact100, is a passionate leader for charitable initiatives in Philadelphia and has volunteered extensively over the course of her career as a grantwriter and fundraiser. We spoke with Ms. Dahle to learn more about Impact100 and its unique model.

A local giving circle, Women for Social Innovation (WSI), provides seed funding to innovative nonprofit organizations and projects serving women, girls or families in Philadelphia. Lending the experience and expertise of its giving circle members to grantees through mentorship and support, WSI is working to usher in the next generation of social innovators in the city

Many middle and elementary schools in Philadelphia, and about 20 percent of high schools, have no library at all.  Library Build’s goal is to bring books, computers, and librarians to these schools;  Library Build is unique in its emphasis on the importance of librarians to the overall success of library programs. The program relies on individual donations but plans to partner with bookstores and publishing houses to secure donated and discounted books.

Tucked away in a cavernous corner of Benjamin Franklin High School sits a small office that buzzes with hope for America’s Latino youth.  Every other Friday afternoon, excited and eager voices bounce off the hard concrete walls, as students divvy up the work of producing the next issue of Motivos — a bilingual quarterly print publication that celebrates Latino culture while connecting youth with resources and role models.

Hydros Bottle, a young social enterprise located in West Philadelphia, is poised to fight the global water crisis. The business: selling innovative eco-friendly water bottles with integrated filters to reduce disposable bottle waste. Bottle sales finance Hydros Bottle’s water infrastructure project, Operation Hydros, and raise awareness of the global water challenge. The founders, Aakash Mathur and Jay Parekh, address this social problem through a for-profit business model and envision developing a standardized project evaluation framework so that their model can be replicated within the water infrastructure industry.