Our Approach

At Root Cause, we are driven by a passion for shaping the future of social problem solving. Since 2004, we have been on a journey to bring nonprofits, philanthropy, government, and business together to foster social innovation and invest in what works.

Our approach to our work is guided by four core ideas that we believe will lead to new ways of operating and produce greater progress on today’s pressing social issues. 

Spreading Social Innovation

Social innovation often starts with an individual idea, but it takes a vast community of stakeholders to spread the ideas that work. Nonprofits, foundations, businesses, and government agencies are most successful in creating lasting social impact when they work together to advance social innovations through the stages of early development, proliferation, proven outcomes, and widespread impact.  

Information Alignment

Organizations working together to achieve systemic social impact require common terminology and data about the social issue they are addressing and the populations they are serving. Information alignment starts with an understanding of the target social issue and the approaches that have demonstrated the best results to date.  

Public Innovation

Although no one sector of today’s economy has the knowledge or resources to tackle today’s toughest social issues alone, government provides the vast majority of nonprofit funding, controls many of the systems that nonprofits seeks to access, and creates policies that determine how these nonprofits operate and are measured. Driving systemic change on any social issue is most successful when government leaders and their counterparts in foundations, nonprofits, and businesses form strategic partnerships.

Social Impact Markets

In the private sector, financial markets provide the infrastructure, information, and incentives to help move capital based on performance. Similarly, social impact markets are emerging as essential mechanisms to enable individuals or institutions to provide financial, volunteer, or in-kind resources with the expectation of those resources resulting in social impact.