White House Embraces Social Innovation
This is a guest-post by Tom Sheridan who works as a public policy strategist in Washington, DC, where The Hill newspaper has called him "A powerbroker for those without a voice."
President Obama’s promise for change continues to come to fruition with today’s release of regulations for the Social Innovation Fund, which gratefully starts moving the conversation from “change” as a campaign theme to “solutions” as a governing philosophy. I for one am grateful for the moment and for the shift.
The Social Innovation Fund, designed to identify proven solutions to some of the country’s greatest challenges partners government with philanthropy and the best non profits in the field in a groundbreaking way. Rather than continue to attempt to solve community problems from Washington down by frequently sustaining programs that have been failing to solve society’s problems for decades, the Social Innovation Fund will find programs working throughout the country that can actually show measurable results in their given field. The vision for this bold new idea is to rewrite the social contract in America by saying in effect that government will change its way of doing business (no more blank checks for broken initiatives) if community leaders and innovators step forward with their best ideas and commitment to service. The breakthrough idea here is to move government into the role of catalyst and out of the business of provider, offering real hope for the expansion of solutions-based programs. That’s change we can believe in.
At the moment our nation is struggling on many fronts but frequently we have seen in history that necessity is the mother of innovation. This transformative moment brings some opportunities and many serious challenges. With this economic crisis, we simply must raise the bar on accountability and effectiveness and deliver a greater return on investment for taxpayer dollars. Similarly, it is critical that government collaborate to drive our national assets and resources toward creating new innovations and expanding proven solutions to pressing social problems. Government investment alone is insufficient but a new, bolder partnership can be formed. The Social Innovation Fund will catalyze public/private collaboration to direct resources to results-driven organizations, providing them with the funding they need to expand their reach and the impact of their programs to communities across America.
Not only will the Social Innovation Fund be assisting the organizations which receive funding, it will be aiding the economy. By stimulating social innovation, the American taxpayer will see a double bottom line to their investment – services to help neighbors in need and jobs that spur economic prosperity. In identifying effective solutions with real time business metrics for success, these community programs are able to create business models that allow for job growth and creation in ways that traditional service organizations do not.
The Obama administration is wise to take the bureaucracy out of creating solutions to the myriad social problems our country faces today. They have enough other problems to try to solve and frankly don’t have the expertise many non profit leaders already possess. There are people in our country who are doing the work to solve these problems every day and they need our government’s support. The Social Innovation Fund delivers on the promise for change by investing in solutions– and not a moment too soon!
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