Monthly Archive for March, 2009

The Importance of the Serve America Act: Part II

Published
by
Andrew
on March 27, 2009
in public innovation, role of government and social innovation
. Comments

The Serve America Act passed 78-20 in the Senate yesterday!

In addition to the importance of the social innovation funds remaining in the legislation, the expansion of opportunities for Americans of all ages and backgrounds to participate in national service is critical. This expansion is key not only as a policy on its own, but as a coordinated effort in concert with the social innovation fund to drive national service toward scaled social impact.

Volunteerism is at the heart of a majority of scaled social innovations − Little League, Girl Scouts, Red Cross, and Habitat for Humanity come to mind. The power of this human capital to scale social innovations is only in its early stages of being understood. What we need to do now is to harness this resource, not just through national service, but also at universities and other institutions in a much more strategic and leveraged manner.  If some of the investments from the social innovation fund were combined with human capital investments from this new legislation, the resulting social impact could be significantly compounded.

You can read a bit more about coordinating volunteer resources to scale solutions in my Root Cause-Aspen report.

The Importance of the Serve America Act: Part I

Published
by
Andrew
on March 26, 2009
in public innovation, role of government, social capital markets, social entrepreneurship and social innovation
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As I get ready to head back to Washington for another trip to Capitol Hill, this time I can’t help but feel a sense of promise ahead. This week the Serve America Act makes its way to the Senate floor for debate.  Judging by the email alerts I get (sometimes on an hourly basis), there are two coalitions that have stewarded this through, Voices for National Service and America Forward.  I urge you to visit their websites and find ways to help pass this legislation.

Why? For two reasons:

First of all, this is the only piece of legislation that I know of that has a critical social innovation agenda item in it − the establishment of what is called a “Community Solutions Funds Pilot Program.” As Shirley Sagawa, who is currently a Fellow at the Center for American Progress working on recommendations for a national service policy, said while testifying earlier in March, “When an organization takes an out-of-the-box approach to solving a problem, it often finds few sources available for sustainable funding…For this reason, it makes sense that Serve America includes funding to support a social innovation fund network, called the ‘Community Solutions Funds Pilot Program,’ [otherwise known as the social innovation fund] that will use federal dollars to leverage other public and private sector contributions to take our most innovative and effective organizations to scale.”

A social innovation fund is a critical element for advancing social innovation. By allocating some portion of federal dollars to focus specifically on investing in what works, we will begin to shift the way in which resources are allocated by the government − which is, in fact, where most of the resources are being allocated from.

We can expect countless discussions and opinions about how the fund should work, if it actually makes it through with funding. One critical point I would argue for is that some of the money should flow through the states. Each state would then be required to provide some sort of match in both public and private dollars. As I wrote in a report for the Aspen Institute, a model already exists to guide us: the SBA’s Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program. We do not have to recreate the wheel.

Stay tuned for the second reason…

Social Movement Innovation

Published
by
Andrew
on March 10, 2009
in social innovation
. Comments

I am sitting in a conference held by the Public Interest Projects, titled “Advancing Alliance Building Across Movements.” Over 75 people are in attendance and I know only three. Those present include the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Center for Community Change, and Miami Workers Center. Despite my working on the same issues as many of the people in this room − education equality, access to healthcare, and racial discrimination, to name a few − we have not crossed paths before. Yet I am starting to see a difference between our work, which uses an organization-building lens, and the work of others in the room, who use a movement-building lens.

Consider this: over the past 10 years we have seen tremendous growth in the number of nonprofit organizations throughout the country − at a growth rate of about 80% during that decade. One reference I’ve seen states that about 115 nonprofits were started per day before the economic downturn! Yet despite all this growth, how many nonprofits truly work together toward a common purpose?

In the private sector, a company generally wants to hold onto a monopoly for as long as it can. By contrast, in the nonprofit sector, no one organization can solve the social problem it is working on.

With this in mind, what are the unique roles of a direct service organization, an advocacy organization, a coalition, or the government? How do they all fit together to ensure lasting social impact?  What are the connections in education, for example, among Teach for America, Alliance for Excellent Education, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and the U.S. Department of Education?  Each organization is  concerned with its own sustainability and impact, but shouldn’t they also consider their role in a collective purpose: better education?

I am starting to see small examples of these worlds coming together.  Perhaps this will be the next great social innovation of the coming decade − social movement innovation.  For those organizations that cannot see themselves through this lens, they may be left outside of the next great advancement in social impact.

Data – Collecting, Reporting, and Using it!

Published
by
Andrew
on March 3, 2009
in social impact measurement and social innovation
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Good news: The Aspen Institute will host a series of gatherings to help the soon-to-be-established White House Office of Social Innovation engage in discussion about how best to proceed. This is a testament to Jane Wales, the Director of the Aspen Institute’s Program on Philanthropy and Social Innovation. Aspen has always been a great convener, so it is not surprising that they are taking a leadership role to help move the social innovation agenda forward. Last April, I co-published a report with Aspen providing recommendations for how government can advance social innovation and entrepreneurship. At that time, we also held a panel on the subject at Aspen.

Along those lines, a short time ago, Aspen invited me to a convening entitled “Barriers to Impact and Innovation: The Power of Statistical Data on the Nonprofit Sector.” I believe data may be the most critical issue for the Office of Social Innovation to prioritize.  If we are going to strive to advance a social innovation agenda…if we are going to invest in what works…we need to get a better handle on data − how we collect it, how we report it, and how we use it. Unfortunately, after attending the Aspen convening, I am more convinced than ever that we are not very good at any of these aspects of data right now.

The  Mott Foundation sponsored the recent Aspen gathering, which brought together an  excellent cross-section of people to discuss data. They included: Lester Salamon from Johns Hopkins University, who has been reporting on nonprofit data for decades; Rick Clayton and David Hiles from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; Darin McKeever from the Gates Foundation; Richard McGahey from the Ford Foundation; and Bob Ottenhoff, President and CEO of Guidestar, to name a few.

The discussion brought forth a mix of opinions about what the real data issues are. Clearly, more questions than answers exist.  My own conclusion for the near-term  is that we should break down the data issue into two fundamental challenges that we should tackle separately and collectively.

The “first challenge” is the better use of current data, including how and what we collect − something about which Lester Salamon and people from the Bureau of Labor Statistics had much to say. A great deal of data already exists from various agencies and surveys conducted, including the census. This data is waiting to be analyzed and reported, but we need the will to tap it. While it is no small task in terms of labor, it actually is not that complicated − at least according to Salamon.

The far more complex “second challenge” is the need to develop some type of taxonomy that lets us drive performance based on agreed-upon indicators for different social issues. Currently, we are judging performance based primarily on financial data, often reported on the IRS form 990. But this has no direct connection to the mission for which an organization originally applied to receive its 501c3 tax designation. All too often,  financial reporting is just “funny accounting” to make an organization look as though a majority of its money is going into direct programs.  Such a taxonomy does exist for the private sector. In fact, representatives of the private sector financial market have been meeting for almost a decade on developing a taxonomy standard in a consortium called RIXML.

If we are going to make real progress on the many societal challenges we face, it will be essential to work on both of these challenges. Without such progress, how will we ever know what really works?