New, Improved Social Innovation Fund Now Taking Applications

A few months ago, the much-ballyhooed Social Innovation Fund released a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) to solicit public comment. Many of us chose to make our comments public, with common themes including questions of how accessible the money would be and concerns about stringent impact measurement requirements. Now, the NOFA has been updated -- incorporating many of the public's comments -- and the Social Innovation Fund is open for business.

For the last two years, the Social Innovation Fund has been one of the most talked-about subjects in social entrepreneurship. The $50 million in funding was approved as part of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, and the goal was to use that money to match dollars put in by intermediary organizations, who would be charged with the responsibility of investing it in excellent social ventures.

When the original NOFA was released by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) for public comment, there was both excitement and concern. Excitement, of course, that the government was increasingly aiming to be a partner for social ventures. Concern that the processes for allocating the government dollars would end up being more burdensome and trouble than the project was worth.

One of the concerns was regarding the minimum 1-to-1 matching requirements. In the draft NOPA, only intermediaries who were able to match $5 million or more would be able to participate. Some noted that this would put participation out of the reach of many foundation intermediaries -- even large community foundations who otherwise would be great partners. Based on public comments, CNCS has revised the restrictions and now any groups who can match $1 million or more can apply to be intermediaries.

In addition to this change, CNCS also revised their previous expectation that intermediaries would have already had to have chosen subgrantees at the time of their application to the Fund. In other words, intermediaries can chose to whom they will distribute the funds after, not before, they apply to be an SIF intermediary.

This has direct implications on the last element of the public commentary to which the new NOFA responded, which is the question of impact measurement. The deepest skepticism across the sector about the Fund relates to its desire to fund "proven" organizations. "Proven" and "innovative" are often opposed forces, and what's more, the SIF is looking for particular approaches to proven -- including randomized trials -- that many in the sector think are dubious approaches to impact assessment at best.

While nothing has changed formally with regard to the SIF's position on assessment, they have added a section in their Frequently Asked Questions that says:

the Corporation expects subgrantees to demonstrate some level of impact in order to receive a grant, but does not expect that most initial subgrantees will have the strongest level of evidence.The SIF is designed to build the evidence-base of programs over time using rigorous evaluation tools that are appropriate for the intervention.The Corporation is committed to ongoing discussion about evidence moving forward through learning communities and other forums.

I could be wrong, but that statement, plus the fact that intermediary organizations don't need to have their subgrantees selected when they apply to the fund, suggests to me that this is SIF's way of providing for more flexibility in terms of where the dollars go while retaining the politically important appearance of "investing in what works." Whether that was the intention or not, it certainly creates an opening for intermediaries to be more creative than it seemed like they might have otherwise been able. I hope they take it.

All in all, I'm actually pretty pleased with the responsiveness of CNCS to the public comment process. Now all they have to do is actually allocate these dollars in a time-efficient manner!

Photo Credit: uhuru1701