Robert Searle, Katie Barnett, and Paul Carttar

Hunger, homelessness, illiteracy, environmental degradation. These are just some of the far-reaching issues that nonprofit organizations choose to take on every day. Given their limited resources, each must confront the question of how it can make real progress toward solving these major problems. Typically, the answer lies in narrowing the scope of the problem-often geographically-such that an organization can make at least some noticeable incremental gains.

But some problems do not lend themselves to uncoordinated, incremental solutions. These problems require a different approach, one that starts with the problem itself, its composition, causes and effects, and frames the work of any given organization in the context of the overall scale and type of interventions likely to be required to get the upper hand.

Global warming, or climate change, is such a problem. In late 2000, the management and board of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) formally established global warming as their main priority. In January 2001, NRDC retained the Bridgespan Group to help define its options and develop a comprehensive strategy that would position the organization to maximize its impact.

www.nrdc.org