Automatically Generated Summary:
There are many means other than funding nonprofits for the federal government to spur innovation in the innovation sectors, such as workforce development, education, and community development, in which it's a player. In our experience working with federal departments, most of them don't even understand the concept of social innovation, much less the tools they could use to advance it. So why not use the $50 million to create an across-the-board social innovation strategy for the federal government--leveraging the existing massive resources at play in the federal budget to advance innovation in multiple sectors simulatenously?
Government-Driven Social Innovation: Caution Advised
The White House wants money to help nonprofits spread innovations that work. Should social entrepreneurs embrace this idea?In Spain last summer at a conference of social innovators from around the world, we were struck—and somewhat troubled—by the participants easy acceptance of their national government’s role in funding and guiding social innovation. Perhaps eight years with the Bush administration’s indifference and incompetence had left me concerned about government doing anything well, so why let it muck up my chosen field? Or maybe, a colleague noted, we were reacting to the very different contexts for funding social innovation in the U.S. and the rest of the world. Here we have large philanthropic assets and robust philanthropic institutions that provide most of the innovation capital. In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, the foundation sector is much, much smaller, we learned, and has a conservative approach. So in...
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