Twenty years ago this spring, in the very first issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, then-Ford Foundation president Susan Berresford called for sweeping social change to address systems that were “unfair, needless, or simply out of date.”

During the decades since, social innovators have delivered on much of Berresford’s vision. Multilateral partnerships and widespread economic-development initiatives have cut global poverty in half. An additional 82 million girls across the Global South now attend school. Meanwhile, maternal deaths have decreased by more than 38 percent, saving millions of lives.

At the same time, transformations in our markets, environments, cultures, and institutions have radically altered the way we live and work together. The proportion of people with internet access globally has quintupled. And socially responsible investment in the United States has grown by more than $12 trillion.

And yet, for all that has changed, Berresford’s challenge remains urgent. Far too often, for far too long, advancing innovation has been accompanied by unfair, needless, and widening inequality. Take, for example, poverty. Although the number of people living in extreme poverty has dramatically shrunk, the gap between rich and poor is widening around the globe. Resources are increasingly consolidated in the hands of the few—primarily those who reside in the Global North.

As a result, hard-earned gains in global health and well-being are receding and the economic fallout of international conflict has thrust 345 million people into life-threatening food shortages. My own field of philanthropy is not immune. Despite philanthropy’s tremendous progress in devising new ways to deliver funding and identify grantees, the sector’s resources remain concentrated in white-led organizations headquartered in the Global North.

Innovation alone, it is clear, cannot close the gaps between those with resources and those without—between those prioritized by international decision-making and funding and those left off the global agenda. For those of us who have spent our lives in social change and social impact, this is a monumental turning point.

Read the full article about social innovation and equality by Hilary Pennington at Stanford Social Innovation Review.