Mal Warwick began writing his blog, Mal Warwick on Books, in January 2010. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Northern California Book Reviewers and serves on the board of directors of the Bay Area Book Festival. He is also a member of the Author’s Guild and has been a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America since the 1970s.

Mal’s most recent book is Hell on Earth: What We Can Learn from Dystopian Fiction (July 2017). He is the author, co-author, or editor of 20 other books, including The Business Solution to Poverty: Designing Products and Services for Three Billion New Customers and the best-selling fundraising text, How to Write Successful Fundraising Appeals, Third Edition.

Mal is a principal in two businesses: a fundraising agency for nonprofits named Mal Warwick Donordigital, which he founded in 1979, and the One World Play Project, manufacturers of a virtually indestructible soccer ball that benefits more than 50 million children in 176 countries. The One World Play Project is a B Corporation and a California Benefit Corporation. Mal serves on the board of directors.

For three decades—the 1980s, 90s, and 00s—Mal focused on the nonprofit sector as an author, consultant, and public speaker on marketing and fundraising for nonprofit organizations and on the private sector as an advocate for socially and environmentally responsible business policies and practices. He is the founder of Mal Warwick Donordigital, which maintains offices in Berkeley, California and Washington, DC. The firm has served nonprofit organizations nationwide since 1979. MWD is a Founding B Corporation and a California Benefit Corporation and is now employee-owned. Mal remains as chair of the board.

A serial entrepreneur, Mal has been active in promoting social and environmental responsibility in the business community nationwide for more than two decades. He is the co-author of Values-Driven Business: How to Change the World, Make Money, and Have Fun with Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s. Along with Cohen and others, Mal was a co-founder of Business for Social Responsibility in 1992 and served on its board during its inaugural year. In 2001, after more than a decade as an active member of Social Venture Network, he began a six-year stretch (2001-7) on its board, serving as Chair for four years. He also was a member of the Founding Advisory Board of the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002-3.

Among the hundreds of nonprofits Mal and his colleagues served over the years are many of the nation’s largest and most distinguished charities as well as six Democratic Presidential candidates and scores of small, local, and regional organizations. Collectively, Mal and his associates have been responsible for raising more than one billion dollars in the form of small gifts, all of them from individuals.

From 1965 to 1969, Mal was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Michigan.

Paul Polak is founder of Colorado-based non-profits International Development enterprises (IDe) and D-Rev: Design for the Other 90% For the past 25 years, Paul has worked with thousands of farmers in countries around the world'including Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, ethiopia, Maynmar, Nepal, vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe'to help design and produce low-cost, income generating products that have already moved 17 million people out of poverty.

Before establishing IDE in 1981, Paul practiced psychiatry for 23 years in Colorado. to better understand the

environments influencing his patients, Paul would visit their homes and workplaces. After a trip he

made to Bangladesh, he was inspired to use the skills he had honed while working with homeless veterans and mentally ill patients in Denver to serve the 800 million people living on a dollar a day around the world. employing the same tactics he pioneered as a psychiatrist, Paul spent time 'walking with farmers through their one-acre farms and enjoying a cup of tea with their families, sitting on a stool in front of their thatched-roof mud-and-wattle homes.'