Andrew Wolk

A New Role for Government … and Foundations

Posted on 28. May, 2010 in Public Innovation, Role of Government, Social Innovation

Yesterday, I was at the White House to attend First Lady Michelle Obama’s announcement of the first round of philanthropic commitments Social Innovation Fund.  By now, especially for those of us working to bring the sectors together to invest in what works, the Social Innovation Fund is not news.  But it was hard not to feel the thrill of the new opportunities signaled by Ms. Obama’s remarks.

To start, there was the Obama Administration’s commitment forging a new role for government, which was evident in her words.  As Ms. Obama put it at one point: “With a little nudge from government and a lot of private investment, we can create a powerful new model for making change in our communities.”  This is the vision that many of us, including Root Cause through its Public Innovators initiative, have been working to realize in recent years.  We are finding a middle path between the two ideologies that have dominated political rhetoric over the past several decades: that of the FDR-styled ‘government-as-service-provider’ on the one-hand and the Reagan-inspired ‘government-is-the-problem’ on the other.  That new way of operating – in which government plays a role in orchestrating cross-sector approaches to creating social impact – is still taking shape.  But initiatives like the Social Innovation Fund are providing hopeful glimpses of what it will look like.

In addition, yesterday’s event helped to reveal a new path forward for another key stakeholder in the future of social problem solving: our nation’s foundations. Ms. Obama’s remarks called attention to two important and complementary roles that government and foundations can play by partnering together.  While government can help to facilitate collaboration from the top down, foundations can help ensure that the ideas we encourage and ultimately spread come from our local communities. Deeply entrenched in the communities in which they operate, foundations already know the needs and some of the best solutions to addressing them.  By recognizing the need to direct resources based on results and fostering the continual creation of new ideas in their communities, foundations can play an essential role in bringing about healthy social impact market that fosters innovation and directs resources for solving social problems based on performance.

It was clear yesterday that a new generation of leaders at our nation’s foundations is poised to meet this challenge. A letter of support submitted immediately after the First Lady’s remarks by the Council on Foundations on behalf of many of our country’s community foundations impressively summarized the opportunity: “We know that to make progress on our challenges, we need to find and support the best, most promising ideas and enlist all parts of our communities in implementing these solutions. We also know that with the right resources, the right partnerships, and the right collaborations, we can develop new solutions that can be replicated and moved to other communities to address their needs.”

Yesterday’s event at the White House, I believe, brought us one step closer on our journey toward a more effective, twenty-first century approach to today’s social challenges. We are beginning to speak the same language about finding and spreading solutions and making investments based on results.  We are beginning to see the variety of roles that need to be played in order to align and amplify existing efforts to solve social problems. Of course, the road ahead is still long, but yesterday left me feeling hopeful and energized for what will come next.

Tags: michelle obama, social innovation fund, white house office of social innovation