Three Common Questions About The Social Innovation Fund

For the past week or so, Sean Stannard-Stockton has been diligently chronicling the public commentary about the Social Innovation Fund's recent Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA). He's posted thoughts from people ranging from nonprofit consultants to social entrepreneurs, and while there is lots of excitement, there have been a few questions or concerns that seem to arise across the board:

1. The Problem With "Proven": Many people had problems with the strenuous approach to having "proven impact" be a part of the funding process. I thought Sean put it most compellingly, basically making an argument that there were almost no nonprofits who could actually point to conclusive evidence because what that conclusive evidence looks like is relatively subjective. The biggest problem is the idea of using random experiments to test effectiveness - only one of many methods that can be used to test effectiveness and frankly, one that most groups saw as relatively unimportant and flawed until these guidelines came out. If groups all suddenly begin lining up to design randomized trials and field tests now, it would demonstrate the power of funders to force nonprofits to conform to a theory of change (or rather, a theory of testing change), rather than offering up their own approaches.

2. The Challenge Of Intermediaries: A number of the people with published comments had concerns about the matching requirements that force the intermediate groups who will actually distribute the funding to come up with matching dollars. This instantly limits the playing field to extremely well-established groups - not always those on the vanguard of innovation. The president of the Northern Virginia Community Foundation wrote that while the guidelines initially suggested that the minimum disbursement to intermediaries would be $1m, the increase of minimum disbursement to $5m puts participation firmly out of reach of groups like hers.

3. Hoops: Michael Edwards pointed out something of the absurdity of the whole conversation when you put it in the context of the billions of bailout dollars going with basically no oversight to financial institutions while a flash in the pan $50 million makes nonprofits jump through strenuous hoops. I also think that those running the fund should be focusing on making this as streamlined and smooth as possible and fighting at every turn to limit the bureaucracy, although I am definitely willing to let them get it right before I claim they've gotten it wrong.

Photo Credit: KRSPO