Private Foundations Double Gov't Social Innovation Fund

This morning First Lady Michelle Obama announced that a coalition of private philanthropists and foundations including notables like the Skoll Foundation and the Omidyar Network will roughly double the $50 million the US Government has allocated to the first ever Social Innovation Fund.

The Social Innovation Fund is one of the most watched initiatives in the social entrepreneurship space. It is one of the cornerstones of the Obama White House's attempt to bridge the public and private sectors to invest in social problem solving solutions that actually work.

The $50 million initially allocated to the fund will be matched by intermediary partners who will actually be making the first round of grants. The idea of that requirement of the partners as well as the idea behind this new round of donations is to see how much leverage the Social Innovation Fund can create from the initial allocation.

The new donations total $45 million, and are coming from the Omidyar Network ($10m), Skoll Foundation ($10m), Eli and Edyth Broad Foundations ($10m), Open Social Foundation's Special Fund for Poverty Alleviation ($10) and John and Ann Doerr's Family Foundation ($5m). While not surprising, it is great to see some of the private sector social entrepreneurship's field leaders participating.

In addition to that $45m, a group of more than 20 regional and national funders have also combined forces to create a $5m initiative to help capture the lessons from the first round of Social Innovation Fund grantmaking as well as to make it easier for the funding intermediaries and participating nonprofits learn from one another.

I feel about all of these announcements more or less like I've felt about the initiative. I'm glad to see it happening. I think the impulse that the government should be looking for successful nonprofit and private sector initiatives to learn from, imitate, or scale when it comes to providing essential social services is a really good one. Certainly, I think having a bigger kitty for this first round increases the likelihood that something big comes out of it. And this is evidence of one of the White House's claims -- that a government funding mechanism can serve as a powerful convener for other actors.

That said, the proof will really be in the pudding. I'm reserving full judgment until I know 1) whether they actually make bets on innovative projects -- even those that are riskier than what the government is used to funding, and 2) whether there is a coherent pathway from the funding recipients to the departments in government that could be learning from their methods.

If the fund does both of those things effectively, I think it will be a total success.

Read more about the announcement on the White House blog.

Photo Credit: The U.S. Army