A New Role for Government?

Hi Charles. Thanks for bringing us together on this historic day.

I browsed the web site of Root Cause/Public Innovators and it looks like you have built a very successful consulting business. I have had many people offer consulting to me over the years and generally it involves them giving me good ideas that I need to find the resources to implement.

If I don't have the relationships and/or fund raising ability of my consultants, I'm still struggling to put their good ideas, and mine, to work.

Let me illustrate this:

Are you familiar with the Boston Innovation Hub at http://www.tbf.org/indicatorsProject/HubofInnovation/innovation.asp . I think this page is really important. It points everyone in Boston at a pie chart where they can choose what issue they want to get involved with.

When you click on a slice of the pie it opens a new page focused on that issue. You can learn more about the problem and more about organizations providing solutions. Everyone of these organizations needs operating revenue to do good work, and they probably all have fund raising teams to raise needed dollars. However, they may not be equally good at getting money.

I think we change the paradigm when the consultants, and the people who want to solve the problems these organizations are addressing, are also active in raising money, or connecting people they know, to these organizations. If that were happening on a large scale, it would lower the costs of acquiring resources, and raise the on-going impact of each organization.

I've looked at the Innovation Hub often since 2004, and one thing I don't find is maps. At http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com I demonstrate how maps can be used to show where poverty and poor schools are in a city. I focus on volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, and maintain a database of such programs. Thus, I can provide overlays showing where the different programs are located, even breaking this down by age group served. Each poverty neighborhood should have a sequence of programs from elementary school, to middle school, high school, college/vocational and then jobs. Thus my efforts go beyond helping these groups get good ideas. I'm trying to help them get the money they need to put good ideas to work.

If the Innovation Hub mapped each slice of the pie, to show where the problem was most severe, and mapped the organizations listed who address that specific problem, they probably would see that the organizations listed don't reach every neighborhood. If they opened this list up to others in Boston who may be serving each sector, maybe they would build a greater understanding of the current distribution of services, which then could lead to marketing innovations to help existing programs grow, while helping new programs fill voids.

My database has more than 200 different youth serving organizations, and thus each would be a potential client for consulting practices that and organization like Root Cause offers. Yet, this is redundant. If we can move to the other side, identify those who benefit from better schools, less violence, etc., which is the business community, insurance and health care providers, as well as youth and families, perhaps our consulting and marketing could focus on what they do to provide resources throughout the city on a more consistent basis.

Unless we find a way to reduce the variables and inconsistencies of non profit fund raising, and government funding, we won't increase the distribution or long-term impact of needed social benefit organizations.

What are you learning from your own work in this arena?

Hi Daniel:

Thanks for joining us - and congratulations to you and all Americans on this spectacularly moving day!

I hope Colleen will respond in greater depth to your comments, but I'd just like to say briefly that Public Innovators, which is the Root Cause program we're focusing on here, does indeed have an awards program.

The PI awards, unlike many other awards in the social entrepreneurial arena, is focused on government leaders who advance entrepreneurial solutions to today's toughest problems:

http://www.publicinnovators.com/PI-Awards

As I understand it, these awards provide an active spur to government officials, encouraging them to work closely with social entrepreneurs, to think of social entrepreneurs as their natural partners when considering approaches to tough issues, and best of all, to craft legislation that facilitates the role of social entrepreneurs in tackling social problems.

So the emphasis here is on facilitating working connections between government, the social or "third" sector, and business.

Hi Dan,

You said: Unless we find a way to reduce the variables and inconsistencies of non profit fund raising, and government funding, we won't increase the distribution or long-term impact of needed social benefit organizations.

We couldn't agree more. The issue of fundraising - and helping to free organizations from the perpetual business of seeking funds - is key. That's why, in Root Cause's consulting practice, we always bring key funders into the process along the way so that they have some ownership in the process and are committed to funding once the planning process is complete - so the business planning serves as fundraising in addition to planning rather than adding in an additional step.

And it also brings us back to our current question around government. Our vision at Root Cause is "a world in which the public, private, and nonprofit sectors work together to invest and re-invest in the most efficient, effective, and sustainable solutions to social problems, regardless of organizational structure, ego, or political agenda."

The key part here is "invest and reinvest". Too often right now, an organization that has "proven" itself is then seen by a funder to have "graduated" from needing them and now should become self-sufficient. This seems completely backwards to us. When something has proven itself successful, it should not have to be continuously dedicating so much time to fundraising. Of course, we want accountability and standards, and an organization should not be allowed to rest on its laurels. But as long as it continues to meet goals and continues to provide exceptional service for the money, funders (foundations, individuals, government) should continue to reinvest.

Hi Charles, This is a seminal moment indeed for social enterprise. In Barack Obama you have a President who sees the potential of microeconomic development. His presence along with the chairmanship of Joe Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, offered the ideal opportunity to pitch a national scale microeconomic strategy two years ago, in a country facing economic and social collapse.

We saw part of the response at the last World Economic Forum in Davos and In Ukraine, the government have since adopted 3 strategic recommendations as policy in childcare reform.

The detail, I can relate if there's any interest.

Jeff

Are folks here aware of that? It's not clear from the intro above. No need to try and promote it up. It's already there.

Hi, Terry -

and welcome!

QUOTE: President Obama already has social enterprise on his agenda. Are folks here aware of that? :UNQUOTE

Yup. The intro says "At the US federal level, President Obama has pledged to create a Social Entrepreneurship Agency and a Social Investment Fund Network." We're very glad of that, and in fact Patrick O'Heffernan blogged about it here in November:

http://www.socialedge.org/blogs/dr-o/archive/2008/11/12/obama-promises-social-entrepreneurship-agency

That's partly why we're opening this event on Inauguration Day, in fact. Hope is becoming possibility, even perhaps probability.

What a great day! I keep saying that.

Good to read you here!

My apologies. I missed that part. If I were writing it, it would be at the top. But, that's just me :)

It came AFAIK from a document code named Genesis eleven months ago. He and Biden got it, along with a dozen other recipients. Since then, Obama got the Dem nomination, Biden got the veep slot, and Genesis is underway.

Charles,

Let me fill you in on some of the background here, it relates very much to what is described above in influencing governments and corporations.

From Terry that came first in the form of a thesis, proposing how information technology and business based on a more inclusive people-centered model could be deployed to eradicate poverty. It was his contribution as an honorary researcher to Clinton’s re-election committee in 1996. A year later it was published on the web as a free to use model.

In 1999 was then able to persuade US government to invest in Russia at the microeconomic level where trickle down had failed. The concept was to use development aid funding as investment capital. Between 2000 and 2004, that created 10,000 businesses with the aid of microfinance in the city of Tomsk. Replicated elsewhere in Russia and then in Georgia it set the scene for the Russian Microfinance Centre.

In 2002 he then proposed to replicate for the Islamic group in Ukraine, known as the Crimean Tatars. US Government were persuaded that the cost of investing in a similar microfinance scheme might be compared against an equivalent spend on cruise missiles, should Crimea replicate the Balkans. The concept of an economic “smart bomb” was introduced to government.

He was obstructed at this point, refusing to compromise on non-transparent add-ins. He blocked his own project. Left standing alone against corruption, by his own government, he returned to the US and homelessness.

In the winter of 2003 he began a fast for economic rights in the US, living in a tent and blogging from a library in Chapel Hill NC. We’d already corresponded and met in Ukraine and I was one of two people that heard him. The other was Senator John Edwards who soon after created the Center for Poverty Work and Opportunity in that town.

P-CED UK began in 2004 and we resolved to make the case for ending poverty on a national scale. We would demonstrate that for the cost of what was being spent in Iraq each week, another country could be lifted from poverty to foster democracy. That case was made in Oct 2006 with a microeconomic ‘Marshall Plan’ delivered to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where a junior senator and the chair have since become the President and his VP.

In this paper were recommendations for radical childcare reforms intended to end the deplorable institutional conditions which exist in many parts of the former Soviet Union, Development would be catalysed by the national scale application of affordable broadband, microfinance and investment in social enterprise, such that the sum of all parts was a nil overall cost implementation.

At Davos 2008 one influence was the US government response in the launch of the East Europe Foundation, to fund sustainable community enterprise, the other in a piece of like minded thinking from the most successful capitalist in the US today when Bill Gates described what Terry had been doing since his 1996 paper as Creative Capitalism.

Genesis was a reminder, that in spite of all this influence when it comes to standing up against organized crime to speak out on behalf of children who have little hope, he and his British supporter stand alone - in spite of what might be presented by UK government, in particular.

Jeff

Jeff, Terry sounds like an awesome leader of great courage and vision. Charles, with the current economic situation showing us what bad credit and over-leveraging can do, it's been said the world is in "Goldilocks Recovery" where the solutions can't be too hot or cold but just right.The hope of change is in the new role of governments. In a world where transactions are used to being shroud in secrecy, the working connection between govts, social sector and businesses could lead not just to new infrastructures and governance structures but to much needed transparency in governments that cut unnecessary costs and innovate more productively with a culture of participation.

The prerequisites for real change through social innovation lie at the intersection between top-down and bottom-up, so that the job of collaborating produces more than just fractal effects. All change is a give-and-take process so businesses also have a responsibility to make the world a more compassionate place. But with the patience and zen-like attitudes of social entrepreneurs anything is possible.

Hi Jo,

Thanks for your comments. I think you're right on track. Amd I love your "Goldilocks Recovery" theory!

I'm curious whether you think that Obama's plan to put more government documents and the federal budget online represents a significant move toward shedding light on governmetn transactions which you say above are currently "shrouded in secrecy"? And does the grassroots nature of his campaign represent a new opportunity for governing that interacts with changemakers from the ground up...or is that likely to fall away now that he has taken on the presidency?

And how patient should social entrepreneurs be?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Colleen, I see the tipping point as the convergence of the 3 movements that have been building since post WW11- the women's, civil rights and environmental movements- so yeah a lot of patience has been required by a lot of people.

Like Obama said nothing can stop "the quiet force of progress" as the world transitions from industrial based economies to information based economies. The social forces of these 3 movements have put the world in a unique position to move forward. A new kind of political relationship with global society is needed now to break down all social and political divisions.

As far as the secrecy concept goes, the more transparency the better. I'm thinking of the last administration, so I'll quote a common Dr Phil mantra, that people "can't change what they don't acknowledge."

I think what is needed most is for public-private alliances to stimulate growth, not just economic but social too.

Hi Charles,

I encourage you to take a look at the maps in this blog article: http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com/2009/01/illinois-state-representative-district.html

These show an Illinois legislative district that cuts through high poverty, and high wealth, areas of Chicago. There are six maps, representing layers of information. They show poverty, poor schools and existing tutor/mentor programs who are SEs who need investment to constantly improve. It also indicates where no programs exist, and new ones are needed.

The real value is that the maps show assets, such as businesses, churches, hospitals, and universities in the district. Imagine if awards were given to leaders of any of these institutions recognizing what they did to bring people together and to focus resources to the SEs in the district who were working to overcome the obstacles of poverty?

Versions of these maps could be used to show the distribution of resources to different tutor/mentor programs, and awards could be given to which groups did the most to bring the most to the various programs in the district.

Imagine if voters were using such maps to decide how well their representatives were solving problems in the district, or if customers were using these to make purchasing decisions.

Dan - I love this idea!

One risk though - it reminds me of one of the criticisms of No Child Left Behind. People say that they may be penalized for teaching at a tough school where the graduation rate is already really low. Supposedly, if a teacher does make siginificant progress with a student...but they don't graduate nonetheless, that's treated as a failure, even though that student may still be better off than before. How would a mapping program like the one you suggest ensure that a representative of one district that perhaps has an increasing number of social issues arising during a particular period - but is working to lower the rate of increase - doesn't get penalized?

This could be powerful.

The one good think NCLB was intended to do was focus attention and resources on the places where most help is needed. I'm not sure how well that was executed, but I'm pretty confident to say that the resources have not flowed consistently to all of the neighborhoods where there is high poverty, causing poor schools. In fact I am reading a book right now with claims that the poorest schools have the least prepared teachers.

The point of the maps is to focus on-going resources at a very complex problem. The map is just one tool. We also use concept maps, like blue prints, to show all of the different sub contractors who need to be involved in helping kids grow up. Teachers are just one of many types of talented, committed adults needed in high poverty neighborhoods.

In addition, the maps, and concept maps, are just part of a library of information that people who work in these neighborhoods directly with kids, and people who serve as volunteers, donors, policy-makers, etc. should be using to benchmark good ideas, understand problems, and constantly innovate ways to improve upon what works, and fix what is not working.

If we can increase the flow of resources (not just dollars) into every neighborhood with poorly performing schools, and keep those resources flowing consistently for about 20 years, we might have some significant impact.

The map is a very useful tool in such a process, to assure a more even distribution of resources. Browse the sections at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net and you'll see a variety of ideas around this theme.

Hi all, and welcome, Terry!

I'd like to keep our attention pointed in the direction of what government can do to facilitate the work of social entrepreneurs, and conversely what social entrepreneurs can offer government by way of empowered assistance with intractable problems...

Terry and Jeff's work directly with governments is to the point here, as is Daniel's latest post, with his suggestions of ways that district mapping can help both government and social entrepreneurs find "gaps" and opportunities, district by district...

And are there any other blogs or web spaces we should extend this conversation to? If you host a blog where this topic would be timely - with Davos coming up - please feel free to link here. Let's get the conversation flowing all around!

There's a forum on the P-CED.com site, a group on Facebook called Obamanomics and a Linking group called Social Business and Creative Capitalism, all which I moderate if any here have preferences.

Blogs to me have a certain asymmetry between poster and comments, if discussion is the aim then a discussion forum is good for that.

Jeff

Quote: "I'd like to keep our attention pointed in the direction of what government can do to facilitate the work of social entrepreneurs, and conversely what social entrepreneurs can offer government by way of empowered assistance with intractable problems..."

In this context, intractable problems ~= entrenched bureaucrats.

From whom we have at least some temporary respite as the new administration coalesces.

In any case, the first thing that government can do with social entrepreneurs and vice-versa (SEs w/ govt.) is cooperate. Social entrepreneurs are the bleeding edge of progress. Progress --> progressive = the hottest word in the US political lexicon at this moment. It's suddenly all the rage, exquisitely stylish.

Understand that this forum for example was and is a forerunner of what is at this moment becoming US policy, foreign and domestic. That policy will in turn lead the world, because it has to. There are few if any other viable options on the table with such capacity for human compassion as social enterprise, regardless of boundaries of any kind.

That's where we are.

Hi all,

Sorry for the delay in chiming in. Let me start by saying that there is no more important time then now to engage the US in advancing social innovation and entrepreneurship. The US can become a leader much like it led in advancing entrepreneurship in the 50's. We need to find better ways to utlize resources to solve social problems and we have an administration that is open to it. In Obama's inauguaurl speech he spoke about the entreprenurial spirit and said " the question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works." For those of working on tough issues, we know that government is not working very well, but they also make the laws, have access to all the sytems, and provide the greatest amount of financial and human capital...so we must find a better way to engage with them.

The question is how...do we pick on social issue and go deep, do we work on state based strategies and go wide? There are many ways - perhaps the more the better?

Andrew, what I fear most is a bunch of new idealist coming in and starting from scratch, when there are already thousands of people throughout the country with deep experience and existing programs that may already be solutions, but are operating under the radar of local and national attention.

Thus, my first hope would be that the administration would use public funds to support projects that serve as intermediaries, and knowledge hubs, mapping where problems exist, and mapping existing service programs. I've pointed to examples of mapping, but encourage you to view http://mappingforjustice.blogspot.com to see how we can map geography of need, as well as potential assets in those same areas. Such maps can be used to support the growth of common purpose across business, non profit, education and political sectors.

Second, my hope would be that the President would use his visibility to provide daily encouragement for people to serve, pointing to intermediary hubs to help them learn where and how.

Third, he would use tax incentives, and targeted public funding, to encourage flexible, on-going private sector donations of time, talent and dollars (investment) in organizations that serve national priorities such as education, workforce development, energy, environment, poverty, etc. Encourage people to give 10% to a tutor/mentor program serving kids in poverty instead of 10% to their faith group. Wow! that would be a change. Make a greater priority on funds for National Service programs to be leveraged in generating local support that sustains projects beyond the term of national funding.

Fourth, use forums like Change.gov to get feedback, as they seem to be doing. But, look for "tipping points". What can the government do that would change the entire dynamic of what happens in any given priority sector? For instance in my sector, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, leadership is an issue. Getting good people and keeping good people, who have a broad range of skills to work with kids, volunteers, parents, donors, and network/learn from others all over the world, is a challenge for us and any industry. A tipping point would be funding for a university to set up a pipeline program that would recruit youth from high schools and provide a range of learning supports through graduate school, so they can start jobs in hundreds of places with 4 to 8 years of previous experience, and a network already in place to support them.

Finally, share what the government is learning at change.gov and other portals to encourage others to be owners and leaders. Encourage discussions of this information in many places, like Charles is trying to stimulate with this discussion. Foundations and corporations and alumni of universities can fund these tipping points just as well as the government can, and perhaps with greater flexibility and a longer vision.

"Andrew, what I fear most is a bunch of new idealist coming in and starting from scratch, when there are already thousands of people throughout the country with deep experience and existing programs that may already be solutions, but are operating under the radar of local and national attention."

Throughout the world. Therein, operating under radar is often the only way to get anything done.

By the same token, that same scenario opens to door to exactly what you're concerned about, "new idealist coming in and starting from scratch" to reinvent the wheel. I've written privately of that same concern this week. In the interest of actually getting something done, I consider that among worst-possible scenarios.

In the interest of time though not necessarily group comfort here, I'll sum it up like this: if a Kalashnikov is enough to put a social entrepreneur off, he or she will likely not understand what is required to get through enough barriers to have made the project they're "interloping" into an appealing idea to start with. If a new idealist, so to speak, enters the fray and finds the row much tougher to hoe than they had any idea about, there's the risk of them folding. If that happens, it should discourage funding for their activity, and thus reduce available funding to people who know what to do because they blazed the trail to begin with. The greatest risk along those lines are State Department/USAID hires who probably mean well, but also need to borrow existing project ideas and operational plans to make their own careers. The easiest path there is to just take over someone else's projeta and give it a try. If it works, they get credit. If they screw it up, it's just a matter of moving on to another try in similar fashion. Few if any of AID's projects originate with them, but their staffers get paid very well to carry them out or make the attempt.

There's a point to watch in the new administration's efforts

the question of how USAID will be managed and whether or not they finally give just due to the people who lay the groundwork for what they. The ones that aren't scared off by Kalashnikovs.

Bureaucracies are always a cost to society, or as Albert Einstein put it " bureaucracy is the death of all sound work." But I particularly like Richard Nixon's assessment. "Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist."

All i can say is :)

Well, that, and my academic background is organizational behavior. Bureaucracies are organized chaos that usually boil down to the Peter Principle.

Quote: "The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." While formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology", "inadvertently founded" by Peter, the principle has real validity. It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain. Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence"."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

(To no one in particular: this place needs something approaching modern forum software, BTW.)

Hi all,

Sorry for the delay in chiming in. Let me start by saying that there is no more important time then now to engage the US in advancing social innovation and entrepreneurship. The US can become a leader much like it led in advancing entrepreneurship in the 50's. We need to find better ways to utlize resources to solve social problems and we have an administration that is open to it. In Obama's inauguaurl speech he spoke about the entreprenurial spirit and said " the question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works." For those of working on tough issues, we know that government is not working very well, but they also make the laws, have access to all the sytems, and provide the greatest amount of financial and human capital...so we must find a better way to engage with them.

The question is how...do we pick on social issue and go deep, do we work on state based strategies and go wide? There are many ways - perhaps the more the better?

Andrew, Writing from the UK, I'm in no position to know how best this would work in the US, other than to say that the nationwide strategy Terry drafted for Ukraine, proposes an approach based on local community engagement, in each village or suburb. His earlier efforts in Tomsk set the scene for city wide deployment and returned all investment to create 10,000 businesses by 2004.

In the introduction there's mention of the UK Minister of the Third Sector, you will find my comments on his website forum. While Terry grapples with the tentacles of organised crime, I have just as great an adversary in the British government media, who at times have gone as far as open hostility to my approaches and tend generally toward exclusion. I hope to make it clear to the Minister that the sacrifices made and risks taken, particularly on Terry's behalf are not to advance anyone elses political careers. Terry acts on behalf of children, disabled, exploited and condemned to premature death. Those who attempt to dismiss or air brush us out of the picture, are no less culpable than the institutions in which this takes place.

In other countries, there are laws on the statute books but where poverty and greed flourish all that law should be, in codifying society's moral sense, has no meaning when the enforcers of law are corrupted. Governments agencies and businesses which also disregard local law in their host countries are no less culpable in this regard either.

When Prince Charles wrote a year ago, on behalf of business leaders saying that we needed new models of engagement to tackle poverty. I wrote to those same business leaders to explain how we we doing it. I wrote again when a representative came here to Social Edge to be informed that there was nobody she could think of to send it to. I live in the country which invented, not invented here.

Jeff

From last year:

http://www.socialedge.org/discussions/social-entrepreneurship/government-interference

The matter of government interference is evidently an ongoing, emerging issue.

As a matter of course, I find little if any distinction between corrupt local officials and stateside sweetheart dealers. Deals get made with a wink and a nod that future dealings must be a little cleaner. Future tends to remain future.

Meanwhile, kids are dying in barbaric circumstances and USAID finds excuses to ignore the matter. All that is just about to end, I suspect. Complicity in crimes against humanity is not as safe as it was just a few months ago.

Under the heading "Invest in the Nonprofit Sector" on his webpage, President Obama says he and Joe Biden plan to create a "Social Investment Fund Network" using federal seed money to leverage private sector funding" and a "Social Entrepreneurship Agency for Nonprofits" which will be designed to build "the capacity and effectiveness of the nonprofit sector."

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/service/

Despite the use of the words "Social Entrepreneurship" these plans seem to focus on government facilitation of non-profit - rather than multiple-bottom-line for-profit - social enterprises, when my understanding was that the issue of for- or -non-profit was a distinction we (under the label "social entrepreneurship") were trying to elide, viewing for-profit means of gaining social objectives as having just as much validity as non-profit means to the same end.

Prince Charles, in a speech to the International Business Leader's Forum that Jeff mentioned, called for "new models of engagement".

http://www.iblf.org/media_room/general.jsp?id=123989

It doesn't seem to be entirely clear as to what sorts of ventures we are asking government to facilitate, or, conversely, what sorts of ventures governments are facilitating or might aim to facilitate. In part, this simply means that the phrase "social entrepreneur" has a penumbra of meaning around its definition, and that the definition itself hasn't fully "caught on" - which is perhaps only to be expected. But from my POV, it does mean we (on the social entrepreneurial side) want to be careful in our use and explanation of terms, so that government doesn't wind up focusing entirely on the facilitation of non-profit approaches...

I'd be interested to know what people's experiences in the field are, in dealing with local and national governments. Do we still have a language gap, or is that just an artifact of Pres. Obama's phrasing?

Charles, There's certainly confusion, still, in defining what social enterprise actually is.

Here in the UK it's often used to wrap up the profit-for-purpose type of enterprise, such as the community interest company and the traditional cooperatives which are governed by different laws. To confuse matters more thare is now a cooperative CIC model. In a recent Times article, Kevin Brennan the UK Minister for the Third Sector, offers this:-

"What social enterprise has got to offer — making a profit to make a difference — at this point is quite an appealing and appropriate thing,” he says.

The US interpretation would appear to be even broader, encompassing the non-profit which draws at least part of its funding on trade.

In his microeconomic Marshall Plan for Ukraine, which bears resemblance to what Barack Obama has prescribed for the US, profit yielding broadband business, (in Yunus terminology more than full cost recovery) combined with microfinance (full cost recovery) offsets the investment in a social enterprise foundation and reform of institutional childcare (less than full cost recovety) for a nil overall cost outcome.

The paper includes an extract of Kim Alter's Social Enterprise Typology for illustration of various approaches.

http://www.p-ced.com/projects/ukraine/national/

In the end, one might conclude that all enterprise is social, varying in the degree to which it embraces and empowers, and we may find that by proving that these things are viable, we create influence which enlarges the extent to which traditional business commits to it.

http://www.p-ced.com/info/se/

Hi Jeff,

The way that we at Root Cause have attacked this question of “what is social entrepreneurship” (see full definition here: http://publicinnovators.com/se/definition) is by dividing organizations by the way they address market failures. Our three categories are:

No market - beneficiaries are unable to pay anything and, as a result, costs must be fully subsidized Limited market - beneficiaries have some ability to pay, and thus the social entrepreneur can rely on some earned revenues to sustain the initiative Low-profit market - beneficiaries have the capacity to pay the full cost and the social entrepreneur thus has the potential to generate a profit. However, the market may be underdeveloped or investments in this market may yield returns that are less than typical for for-profit ventures

I found your last comment especially interesting: “In the end, one might conclude that all enterprise is social…” Indeed this is one of the core questions of the definitional discussion – seeing the benefit of any sort of socially responsible/motivated business, but while at the same time acknowledging that there is something different about social entrepreneurship and not letting it be watered down to “just” CSR.

These are all great questions about what the proper type of organization should be in order to get support from government.

Hi Colleen,

I have to admit to never viewing SE in terms of market failure, or in terms of beneficiaries paying for a service. The P-CED model as Terry defined it and as we created it in the UK is to all extents ans purposes a conventional software development business which invests in social purpose rather than distribute its profit as dividend to shareholders.

This profit for social purpose model has been applied, for example in some community interest companies, such that profit is donated to charity. Our MO is to use this profit to fund a social mission which currently focusses on Ukraine. So it's difficult to see whether we'd fit in your definitions.

What we're doing is to modify the output of capitalism. I agree that what we've seen from CSR is very much a dilution of the ideal. If a corporation funds a charity initiative and at the same time lays waste to the environment or yields massive profit on the back of child labour, it is not by any definition socially responsible. I see it as a business whose entire purpose is to generate profit in as ethical way as possible and render that profit to serve a community, whether the community is the people living in your locality or in the wider context of an international community.

We're not asking for financial support from UK government, aside from those parts of government who we inherited as customers and who pay for our services. We'd like to government, corporations and even social enterprises to extend their CSR by procuring our services, and those of businesses like ours.

Jeff

Charles,

I think there are a lot of different ideas of what the words "Social Entrepreneurship" mean. As I've followed conversations here I take it to mean an innovative and persistent approach to solving social problems. How these ideas are funded is part of the process of innovation.

I think we're moving from a stage of information technology and leadership where a few leaders (e.g. Davos) get together and share their expertise with each other. Each of these leaders is the center of his/her own network and no matter how large that network is, many of the people who have ideas to share are left out. Jeff is a good example of someone with good ideas who seems to be constantly running into obstacles in getting his ideas heard and/or accepted. He's just one of thousands, or millions, who might have good ideas that won't be represented.

The change that is taking place is that Jeff, or me, or anyone else, can use the various technologies to share their ideas on a web site, blog or other forum, and to invite others to look at the information. If enough people take this step, and the information is important, and useful, they will bring their friends and the network will grow in size and influence. Over time this may get the attention of existing leaders, and pull the thinking of the crowd in a new direction.

Understanding our networks and using them is a key part of this thinking. Some people have been doing work in Social Network Analysis and I've been following that with interest, looking for people who would help me build a visual analysis of my own network that I could use strategically to expand the network, and to connect with key people who would help the network be successful in its mission.

I found an application on Facebook today that is a step forward. Take a look at http://tinyurl.com/ar3u6c and you'll see a map of about 175 of the people I'm connected to. This is interactive. If you click on a face, you see how they are connected to me, and who they are connected to. If all of the members of Social Edge were connected on Facebook, such a photo graphic could show how we are connected, and open connections for each of us to the extended network of every member of the group.

Their are a lot of entrepreneurial ideas in the creation of such a graphic, and its use. If the Devos folks, and others with wealth and influence, including governments, encourage the growth of such tools, they might also be encouraging the sharing of more good ideas and the resources to implement those ideas.

I'm going to spend a little time over the next month or two mapping different parts of my network using this tool to see how it might help in our own work.

Possibly I missed something, but I don't recall the Davos meetings producing anything substantial.

Brief note on CSR: so far, the CSR brand serves to legitimize organizations that are anything but social responsible. Antisocial enterprises whitewash themselves with the CSR brand and voila! They're suddenly respectable, not unlike don Al Capone's charity work.

I know Ukraine like the back of my hand, so I'll speak directly to what's going on here

with one caveat. It's not limited to Ukraine. This is just an example I know intimately, from the inside out. USAID funds Eastern Europe Foundation, which used to be Eurasia Foundation. Eurasia Foundation was an inside joke in Ukraine. Apply for money but don't worry about results. One failed project after another. After the Marshall Plan for Ukraine ran through channels and was then published, EF was replaced with EEF. EEF is aimed at CSR amongst Ukrainian business elites. That is, those who stole the most money from Ukrainian citizens and now need a whitewash and some respectability. EEF's listing of Ukrainian businesses on their own website is a who's who of UkrCosaNostra -- with the full force and blessing of US government, US State, and USAID.

So far.

Dear Colleen and Charles,

i am enjoying the discussion on the topic you have relevantly put up for brainstorming.

I donot know what is happening in the USA but surely i have some ideas about Asian situation and about previous international roles played by civil society. On that basis i would first share about lessons learnt:

Lessons Learnt : a) Till now NGOs role has been limited to policy consultations and govt. expects NGOs to support them when crisis takes place and don't expect them to criticize b) Govt. now shares some portion of budgets for NGOs / CSOs to implement model projects or services or to work overseas . c) Bureaucracy still have to accept NGOs as a stake holder in decision making d) Political establishments are yet to incorporate NGOs in their decision making structures e) NGOs are not uniform now and some works in advocacy spheres whereas some are interested in alternative models of dev/services/energy/sust development/environment regeneration etc f) Often lead NGOs who are often BIG NGOs , behave like the agents of state once they sit in a committee an forget the accountability factor to public.

Thus GO-NGO relations are in seedling stage in overall global orders .

The opportunity arising on 2009:

a) Current Financial crisis :failure of so called Corporate houses to maintain accountability towards their countrymen due to which Enron like incident took place.Besides, there will be slow growth and unemployment due to recession. the social sector can play meaningful role by doing micro-sustainable growth models and help in micro-enterprise and employment

b) current rise in terrorism ,wars, military regimes ; The issue also need social sector engagement

c) The social sector have very high level of think tank and can be assets in governance.

Therefore , i am not sure what can happen in this davos meetings but I am sure the people of the nation or the world shall be benefitted if the Govt works seriously with social sector a) economic development micro models b) inclusion in governance structures c) taking them in UNO and Security councils and taking them while resolving issues like wars, terrosism etc.

On the otherhand, a) Ngos should develop mechanism to share among themselves and donot caputure power like politicians. Ngos should develop culture and systems for accountability and trasparency and should show active interst in governance matters. b) NGOs should develop excelence and specialisations and communicate constantly with the public. Thsy should not side with any political party .

To sum up , there is great opportunity now for NPO- GO collaboration or i would say NPO-PO-GOvt, collaboration. Thanks an regards. lalit

I’d like to hear what people think about the various strategies that are being used by social entrepreneurs/social innovators to engage government support. To clarify, when I say “support”, I’m not necessarily talking about money – but rather, a broader definition of the ways in which government can be supportive. For example, we lay out 13 recommendations for government and these recommendations are organized into three categories, only one of which has to do with transfers of money.

http://www.publicinnovators.com/recommendations/13recommendations

There are lots of other ways that government can be supportive – by passing legislation that removes barriers and eases the way for social entrepreneurs to do their work; bringing greater attention to a particular solution by convening various stakeholders together and thereby raising the profile; etc.

So with that in mind, I invite everyone to look at the list of models that are being implemented in the various U.S. states and cities; check out the UK’s Minister for the Third Sector; and revisit Jeff’s comments about his interactions with the UK government and Terry’s with the Ukraine.

• What are you seeing as the common threads of these approaches? • What catches your eye and strikes you as being really smart and forward thinking? • What red flags are raised where you see potential risks and vulnerabilities? • Are these models replicable elsewhere and, if so, what does it take to spread them? • And if you are directly involved with any of these initiatives, why was this particular strategy chosen and what have you learned?

Colleen: As you know, a colleague and I have been working with city and state leaders in Oregon and Kentucky to try to show them the benefits of social innovation initiatives. We've borrowed many ideas from Public Innovator's 13 recommendations, and have boiled our "pitch" down to the following:

1) Social innovation can lead to significant cost savings to the government and to taxpayers. Social entrepreneurs generate “social profit.” When social entrepreneurs solve community problems, governments don’t need to. As a result, government resources that would otherwise be needed to address these problems can be used elsewhere.

2) Support for social entrepreneurship results in a more engaged citizenry. Social entrepreneurs are directly connected to their communities. They meet community needs in new ways, with sustaining strategies built in that minimize the need for charitable giving. Social-business incubators can turn average citizens into extraordinary change agents by providing them with the tools and know-how to identify and solve community needs in innovative ways.

3) Social innovation leads to economic development. Nearly every Tier 1 and Tier 2 city has at least one business incubator and one Small Business Administration office. Well-designed business incubators lead to successful new businesses, which ultimately produce jobs and tax revenues. Social entrepreneurs create jobs AND solve social problems, and yet no city in the country combines a social-business incubator combined with a funding mechanism (akin to the SBA) capable of providing social entrepreneurs with vital seed capital.

Cities need to design funding mechanisms that can direct the flow of seed funding towards early stage social enterprises as effectively as the SBA and venture capital firms have directed it towards businesses. After all, social innovation leads to improved quality of life for communities-- a critical factor impacting the overall economic vitality of cities.

We've also tried to convince city and state leaders of the importance of working closely together. Initiatives at the city level can achieve things not possible at the state level-- and vice versa. For example, cities can test new ideas and programs at the grassroots level, whereas states can look across the spectrum of cities experimenting with such ideas to identify and share best practices and models.

Hi, Nathan:

Thanks for the concise summary. I'm reminded of the finding that the human mind can carry roughly five to seven things in memory at one time

George Miller's "Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two

But that's human memory, and there's also the mega-memory of the web...

If anyone is interested in seeing the original 13 recommendations and models that Nathan's post is based on, they're on the PI site at:

http://www.publicinnovators.com/recommendations

Thanks again,

Charles

In the early 90’s micro-enterprise became all the rage. We even formed an association of micro-enterprise programs. The Gramen peer-lending model was held as the example. A union organizer asked, are we encouraging people to make a real living? Or simply accepting substandard wages and no benefits? Are we letting government off the hook by offering cheap solution?

While it is exciting to see convergence of various disciplines, economic development, social enterprise, nonprofit sector, social work, philanthropy, community organizing, etc. Based on our experience with the micro enterprise movement; I would say social enterprise needs to develop deeper roots. Deeper than government, philanthropists, and academics. Social enterprise needs to become part of our entrepreneurial culture if it is to have lasting effect and contribute to a livable planet. Otherwise it may just be the flavor of the day.

Social enterprise is developing broader and deeper roots across all sectors, with representatives from entrepreneurial nonprofits, microfinance, digital inclusion, fair trade, social capital, and other approaches. With government support over time we can see a level of social innovation like that which has flourished in the business sector. President Obama has committed to an innovation agenda to help address many of the problems facing our nation, and social enterprise is now part of the larger solution. Social enterprises provide jobs and job training, health care, education, financial services, environmental services and other things that help to build communities and families. The Social Enterprise Alliance's annual Summit will provide a forum to strategize how we can advance a national agenda. This year the Summit convenes leaders from across the field in New Orleans, April 15-17, and will feature a Policy Track highlighting the ways in which government and social enterprise can work together. The Policy Track will include conversations on state and local models, lessons from various legislative approaches, and partnerships between social enterprises and government, as well as new federal initiatives. There's a growing opportunity for social entrepreneurs to apply their expertise to help craft smart, multi-sector approaches to building a restoration economy and society, and the Social Enterprise Alliance is a forum for convening this leadership.

Kris writes:

QUOTE: This year the Summit convenes leaders from across the field in New Orleans, April 15-17, and will feature a Policy Track highlighting the ways in which government and social enterprise can work together. The Policy Track will include conversations on state and local models, lessons from various legislative approaches, and partnerships between social enterprises and government, as well as new federal initiatives. There's a growing opportunity for social entrepreneurs to apply their expertise to help craft smart, multi-sector approaches to building a restoration economy and society, and the Social Enterprise Alliance is a forum for convening this leadership. :UNQUOTE

That's excellent news, and very much in line with the discussion we're fostering here.

What can we do here, now, in this SocialEdge event and on the Public Innovators blog to get the ideas flowing?

What are your first reactions to Colleen's questions about the initiatives already under way in various US States and with the UK government?

• What are you seeing as the common threads of these approaches?

• What catches your eye and strikes you as being really smart and forward thinking?

• What red flags are raised where you see potential risks and vulnerabilities?

• Are these models replicable elsewhere and, if so, what does it take to spread them?

• And if you are directly involved with any of these initiatives, why was this particular strategy chosen and what have you learned?

Thanks Kris! And the link for the Summit is:

http://www.se-alliance.org/summit_09tracks.cfm

Glad to hear that there is so much uptake on the social enterprise idea. I did not intend to offend anyone with my remark.

In response to Charles: An important common thread is a whole systems view, be it indicators of quality of life, community investment strategies, mapping needs, building blocks, or the holy trinity social, economic, environment.

What would catch my eye? Multi-sector collaboration on common ground issues; Micro-economic community organizing to sustain a local living economy; Infecting our small business sector with social enterprise and local living economies thinking.

Forward thinking would be utilizing effective collective decision making/participation tools and community investment strategies. Using social capital to create a continuum of funding for social enterprise funding and investment transactions.

The red flag is that special dedicated funding tends to create funding fiefdoms and cottage industries based on that funding. How do we maintain a healthy framework for investment? Community control can also lead to special group fiefdoms, which can undermine the benefits we are seeking to create.

Examples of Models http://www.seattlefoundation.org/page28157.cfm

http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection/NH18-23-10E.pdf

http://www.calgaryhomeless.com/main/page.php?page_id=34

Thanks for these links. The graphic on the Seattle Foundation page is similar to the Boston Innovation hub at http://www.tbf.org/indicatorsProject/HubofInnovation/innovation.asp

I saw the Innovation Hub for the first time in 2004. Up till now I had not seen anyone doing something similar. In both cases, I'm not sure the pie slices go to all of the organizations in each city work in in each sector, or if there is marketing and advertising associated with the graphic that is intended to draw more volunteers and donors and citizens into the web site and into each cause area.

Do you know more of how they are using this?

Well it is interesting how things work. Seattle is blessed with a lot of people that want to make a difference. The city has neighborhood plans; there is an independent sustainable indicators initiative and the foundation’s healthy community framework.

I believe the Seattle Foundation uses its framework to guide investments and inform donors. It would be good if the neighborhood plans also included this approach, not just a planning perspective. Here are some links that could allow you compare to city approaches, Calgary and Seattle, both very wealthy cities.

Neighborhood Plans Seattle http://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/npi/

Sustainable Seattle Indicators http://www.sustainableseattle.org/Programs/RegionalIndicators/

Seattle Foundation Healthy Community Framework http://www.seattlefoundation.org/page28157.cfm

Sustainable Calgary http://www.sustainablecalgary.ca/Page-53.html

Vital Signs Calgary Foundation http://www.calgaryvitalsigns.ca/

Neighborhood Grants Calgary Foundation http://www.thecalgaryfoundation.org/gsa_neighbourgrants.htm

City of Calgary Neighborhood Department http://www.calgary.ca/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_0_780_237_0_43/http%3B/content.calgary.ca/CCA/City+Hall/Business+Units/Community+and+Neighbourhood+Services/index.htm

I noticed you posted the Boston's innovation hub, that is why posted the Seattle framework.

Good work!

Between 1995 and 2005 Seattle had quite a bit of community consultations and planning activity. The motives were various for example; The Marguerite Casey Foundation analyzed the neighborhood of White Center using a resident driven methodology, with local leadership. Another foundation did an analysis of the Tukwila area a suburb now being populated by immigrants. The Rainer Valley Community did it’s own analysis to define the social, economic and environmental impact of a light rail transit line.

Regardless of the methodology used all three community planning process arrived to same list of priorities; community safety; jobs; housing; education; transportation, health care; and recreation, almost in that order.

What I like about the Seattle’s Foundation Healthy Community Framework is that it visualizes the elements necessary for a healthy community. It is a good perspective and something everyone can relate too. It’s also presents some challenges, basic needs are a broad category, and how do you prioritize within that? That is where your mapping approach really helps fine-tune the investment decisions. The Calgary Homeless Foundation’s collaborative granting process allowed us to create accurate maps of needs and transactions available to meet those needs.

My use of the maps and concept maps is not only to help with planning, but to support an on-going communications program that gets more people to look at the information, and to use their understanding to inform decisions on where to contribute time, talent and dollars.

So if a plan for cleaning parks show a dozen parks, and a year 1, year 3, year 5 set of actions that not only clean the parks, but keep them clean, and use them to build community connections between different groups, etc, the marketing would be intended to draw volunteers and donors through the plan to the various organizations that need to be involved at each stage, around each park, to assure the long-term success of the strategy.

Do you know any communities where this type of leadership and communications is in place? I'd love to connect with places who are trying to think this through and model this type of leadership.

Daniel, sorry I am not aware of any. What you are suggesting is a very good approach. Developing a community investment strategy supported by a funder's table and collaborative granting process has a similar effect. However, I think such process would be improved by adopting the practice you suggest. Thanks for sharing!

So - I haven't heard - did anything at Davos this year move us forward, give us any new insights, open up fresh networking possibilities, etc?

Nothing. Davos came across as a morass of confusion. Nobody there has any idea what to do next. Watching coverage on BBC, I saw the main theme being whether or not capitalism can survive.

I humbly submit that the people who can answer such questions and confusion are people who don't see any point in attending the wealthy splendor of Davos.

Matthew Bishop has written an interesting post on the Huffington Post about his time at Davos and his call for the chief executives of the world's 500 biggest firms to commit $2 million or more to a fund to support social entrepreneurs:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-bishop/philanthrocapitalism-yes_b_163253.html

He says that six famous global leaders spoke about philanthrocapitialism can lead the world in this time of crisis, making three main points:

1. First, leaders need to demonstrate their personal commitment to give back. 2. Second, philanthrocapitalism is about innovation and risk taking in the name of social progress. 3. Third, philanthrocapitalism is about doing well by doing good.

As Bishop discusses innovation, he argues that:

"Both Clinton and Blair pointed out that government tends to be hopeless at innovation, unlike the private sector, both for-profit and non-profit. If there is to be change we can believe in, government must embrace these changemakers in new partnerships, especially social entrepreneurs. Yunus is the poster-child of social entrepreneurship, having won the Nobel peace prize for his role in developing microfinance (financial services for the poor)."

Do you agree that government is "hopeless at innovation". Do you have any examples that point to the contrary? Is partnering with social entrepreneurs the best way for government to get "all hands on deck"? Any other ideas?

To say that government is hopeless at innovation is a little too much. One could analyze and find the same lack of ability to innovate in for profit and nonprofit sectors, just look at the American automakers and housing industry. Perhaps a more apt description is that large institutions are hopeless at innovating. If government focused on hiring for competence then innovation would be easier.

Fortunately, I have had good experiences working with civil servants. I found that they were willing to consider alternatives and helped overcome obstacles to implement projects. Of course it is possible that civil servants I worked with were an exception.

Perhaps the premise should be, how do social entrepreneurs work with government to generate innovations? If we can't trust government to participate in creating a positive future of our community, then why bother having one?

Hi Carlos,

QUOTE: [If we can't trust government to participate in creating a positive future for our community, then why bother having one?]

I had to chuckle at that line and I agree with you that the "hopeless at innovation" line seems over the top to me. My guess is that Bishop was getting at a few things, some which you mention, that have to do with size, the level to which bureaucracy or protocol gets in the way of entrepreneurial and innovative thinking, etc. While government certainly has some challenges that the other sectors don't have to deal with, it also has strengths and assets to leverage that the other sectors may not have. Painting with such wide brush strokes that it's "hopeless", I think discourages people from looking to the many ways that government can and SHOULD play a role in creating a more positive future for our community.

We've posted about this on our PI blog and the question I've asked there is: http://www.publicinnovators.com/blog/government-hopeless-innovation-we-think-not

QUOTE: [But it clearly does take a convergence of a certain number of elements to spur an innovative approach by government. Can we start a list of what some of those factors might be? What would you add to it?]

Do you have any thoughts on how such a culture of innovation/entrepreneurship can be cultivated within government? Does it happen from the top - setting a model and expectations? Or from within - when several people decide to break the mold and act differently? Or in some other way? Would love to get a list going and hear your thoughts.

Best, Colleen

Dan Bassil has just written a great comment on our similar post over on the Public Innovators blog. You can read his full comment at http://www.publicinnovators.com/blog/government-hopeless-innovation-we-think-not

Here's an excerpt:

QUOTE: "Big government has even more money, but the problems that vex us remain pretty much the same. In fact, I posted a link on my web site recently to a book titled "So much reform, so little change" , written by Charles Payne and referring to school reform efforts.

"From reading Paynes book one of the problems is that we give up on good ideas too soon. It takes a long time to change a culture in a school and even longer to change the educational support system in a high poverty neighborhood. No matter how good the program, as poltical leaders change, the commitment, and funding to sustain such programs also seems to change.

"That can be true in the private sector, too. In fact, I feel that too much philanthropy is based on "random acts of kindness" and not enough long term commitment to make a difference in the problem being addressed.

"Thus, what might governmnt do to increase continuity across diffrent administrations, or to support long term private sector investments in helping innovations grow from good to great, and then stay great long enough to do good? What will it take for CEOs making $500k or more per year to not only donate 10% or more of their wealth, but to keep doing so for 10 or 20 years?" END QUOTE

I think Dan has hit on one of the big challenges - while politics is everywhere, it's especially hard to take it out of government, so will we always have a problem with short-sightedness/lack of commitment to sticking with something over the long term?

Can anyone provide an examples of a case in which government DID stick with a goal over the long term and made a significant difference. If so, what was it about the circumstances that allowed for that?

Dan, thanks for a great addition to the conversation.

Thanks Dan and Colleen, both.

I think it's an exciting moment when we start seeing cross-blog posts and comments. It seems to me that it's the seed of a far more extended web conversation that brings readers and participants from each event or blog together with those from others - and that's part of the purpose of joint events such as this one with SocialEdge and Public Innovators.

Onwards...

Thanks for you role in facilitating these discussions Charles.

Have you ever visited the on-line documentation system that I host at http://www.vattsystems.com/ohats/Home.aspx

In our mission page at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org/AboutTMC/Mission/tabid/482/Default.aspx you can see four action steps, such as a) collecting information; b) creating public awareness so more people look at the information; c) facilitating understanding; so d) the information people look at causes them to support tutor/mentor programs in one or more ways, in one or more places.

The OHATS is a documentation system which we launched in 2000 where people can record actions they take to influence one, or more of these categories. You can see that over 1200 actions have been documented. There is a discussion link next to each metric chart where people can ask what the chart is trying to show.

If you want to view the actions documented you can log in as user GUEST and password VISITOR where you can sort by name of recorder, date of action, goal, etc.

This system works better in Internet Explorer than other browsers.

The reason I mention this that many people say they want "CHANGE" yet most do not get up each day and say "what action can I take" that would result in the change I want. We've been documenting since 2000 things we started doing in 1993, and which I had been involved with since 1973. That's a long time. Yet as many SEs know, we often work in isolation for decades without being discovered. Many are never discovered. Maybe most.

So what do we do to bring more attention, and more support to social innovators?

Connecting with each other in Social Edge, and carrying this into other forums, is one action that any of us can take to increase the number of people who visit this conversation. People do not need to document that they took this action in the T/MC OHATS, but they need to be thinking of what intentional actions they might take which would lead to more support for the issues we're talking about.

Robert J. Herbold, former Microsoft Chief of Operations in his book “The Fiefdom Syndrome: The Turf Battles That Undermine Careers and Companies - And How to Overcome Them” describes what I feel are the biggest obstacles to long-term sustainable innovation. I believe it also echoes many of Daniel’s points. For more on Fiefdoms and nonprofit sector see: http://www.socialedge.org/discussions/responsibility/fiefdoms-freakonomics/

Although the common good is a central idea of democracy, I have observed that American culture is centered on individualism. The question then is how do we as group of individuals or government departments cultivate a collective innovation culture? Entrepreneurship usually is a spark within an individual. However, if robust protocols are implemented it could become a collective spark. (I have a gut feeling that as culture we need to learn how to think together)

Mr. Herbold suggests that there are seven types of disciplines to avoiding fiefdoms they are: process disciplines, discipline of inspection, a discipline of avoiding overconfidence, the discipline of avoiding fragmentation, the discipline of constantly learning new skills, and the discipline of avoiding bottlenecks. If civil servants in leadership positions applied these disciplines to their departments then we may have more innovative and responsive government. Note that a civil servant is not exactly the same as politician.

Here's another article that shows how organizational silos are barriers to innovation: http://blog.kitetail.com/2007/07/24/good-bad-and-ugly-organizational-silos/

Here's a link to articles on my blog that I've written that illustrate how we seek to reach out to people in different sectors, who see the problem through different experiential and self interest lenses. As each begins to get personally involved, our aim is to draw them more to the center where they network with others from different sectors and begin to converge on common actions and goals that would not only lead to a better distribution of tutor/mentor programs, but help each of those programs constantly improve their impact on kids and the volunteers who get involved.

Here's a concept map that illustrates this goal: http://cmapspublic.ihmc.us/servlet/SBReadResourceServlet?rid=1215092965858_379195929_14793&partName=actualhtmltext

Such groupings of organizations are present in any major city, thus anyone could be duplicating what I'm trying to do to draw together stakeholders in their community and point them to places throughout their region where social innovators are working to solve important problems.

If we can connect such groups and innovators in forums like this, and also attract donors and investors, we can create a market economy where these resource providers are customers and partners, shopping for where they want to invest time, talent and dollars.

If city government were to take this role, without creating a buraucracy of selection/accountability, such leadership could have a much larger impact on this process than what a small non profit like mine can achieve.

However, if city government chooses not to take this role, any group in the city can decide to fill the void.

In the late 1990’s early 2000’s the Government of Canada heard the municipalities clamor about the growing number of homeless people. Due to the winter weather Canada can’t afford to not to deal with the problem. In response politicians did what they usually do, react and formed a task force and appointed a minister of homelessness.

As civil servants examined the problem they learned that in fact it was quite a battle of turfs between sectors. There was the provincial governments perspective, the municipality’s views and private sector versus nonprofits. They also learned that the causes of homelessness were diverse depending on the municipality. It was impossible to find a simple direct prescription to solve the problem.

Fortunately for Canadian municipalities and homeless people, Minister Bradshaw required a community investment strategy as a condition to receiving federal funding. Putting together a community investment strategy required the various sector fiefdoms to think together, collaborate and take risks. The result was collaborative granting process, which engaged all sectors in allocating resources. This process fostered community intellegence that lead to innovative solutions.

We've had a little over fifty posts here, on the fourth day of this event, and I'm thinking of putting together a summary of some of the points made.

What's your take-away, thus far? What points seem to be important, but somehow got lost in the shuffle? And what more needs to be said?

I suggest that you go through, compile points you think are pertinent, and put them to the committee (us) for review.

Please fill out the requisition form before distributing this information, in triplicate! thank you :)

Colleen, Andrew and Charles, thank you for hosting this discussion. Best regards, Carlos

Michele Jolin, co-chair of the Innovation and Civil Society subgroup of the Obama Presidential Transition's Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform Policy Working Group is interviewed on the Echoing Green site at:

http://campaign-archive.com/?u=1fb73ce0809dbef871f863239&id=3c86e25aef&e=bYr5C6B0Wu

Michelle is the author of "Innovating the White House: How the Next President Can Spur Social Entrepreneurship":

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/03/pdf/ssir_spring2008_jolin.pdf

Hat tip for the pointer on the Public Innovators blog at:

http://www.publicinnovators.com/blog/michele-jolin-obamas-social-innovation-agenda

We've been hearing some news about Obama's planned White House Office of Social Innovation. Sounds like there will be 4 pillars: - New media - Public-private partnerships - Service - Social Innovation Fund

Anyone have thoughts on these four pillars, whether you think this will work, what the Office should focus on or how to go about its business?

Also hearing that MTV's Ian Rowe will be heading it up. More updates at http://www.publicinnovators.com/blog/more-updates-obamas-social-innovation-agenda and http://andrewwolk.com/

Thanks for posting these links. I hope others read some of the posts on the publicinnovators.com blog and offer comments.

I hope that Mr Rowe will use the advertising principles of MTV and other industries to draw volunteers and donors directly to social innovators all over the country on a daily basis, rather than to some competitive fund pools which result in many proposals but few funded programs. I worked for Montgomery Ward between 1973 and 1990 and my job was to create corporate advertising that drew customers to 400 stores in 40 states. If we apply these concepts to the way we connect resources to non profits and social innovators the government, private sector leaders and blogs like this can be intermediaries connecting different groups and resource providers with each other, and with good ideas.

Few non profits have the advertising dollars it takes to compete for daily attention and the constant flow of flexible dollars they need to lead constantly improving organizations. If the Obama team finds a way to fill this role, with its leadership, and its example, this can be a tipping point in how well we support the organizations at the ground level of social change.

Another quick update on the Office of Social Innovation - still several possibile picks for heading the office.

http://andrewwolk.com/2009/02/17/well-welcome-to-the-blogosphere/

Hello , I am working with Local Councils Association of the punjab www.lcap.org.pk which is first ever association in punjab launched in July 2006 with the mission to promote and provide coordination and a unified approach among local governments in the Punjab Province to resolve common issues and develop participatory governance for the wellbeing of citizens. Increase the voices and effective participation of councilors and citizens in local governments. Encourage and facilitate joint actions to solve common issues. Provide training for elected officials and improve the operations of councils for better service to the people. Be the united voice and influence in representing the interests of Local Government to the Provincial and Federal Governments and other bodies. Provide various means for the sharing of expertise, information and resources. Develop relations and linkages of support with other Local Government Associations, and development agencies and institutions regionally and internationally.

But now we have the issue of survival of this association because of uncertainity in the goverment and non availability of funds , our major source is collection of fee from members but due to political issues members are not paying their fee. I wounder if i can get some help on this forum regarding current issue of our survival and betterment of it.

Shahnaz