Fixing the World Requires Disruptive, not Incremental, Change

The nonprofit sector has always been, at its core, about social disruption–some sort of disequilibrium exists in the market (poverty, unequal access to healthcare, segregation, homelessness, hunger) and a nonprofit organization is born to correct it. But somewhere along the way the big changes nonprofits sought to make in social norms, inadequate institutions, and unfair systems shrunk to small, incremental changes. Visions of disruption gave way to plans for the incremental. But we need to find our way back to disruption.

Incremental change is when a small portion of a problem is addressed.  It’s the idea that 10% of hungry children are fed, or 15% of at-risk youth go to college. Incremental change is small, endless steps toward solving a huge problem. At an incremental rate you begin to wonder if the problem will actually ever go away.

Disruptive change, on the other hand, is about reaching a tipping point where the solution, rather than the problem, becomes the norm.  It’s the vision of giving every kid a bright future. Or the goal of ending hunger.  Disruptive change is not just about the idea of scale, a key component of the social entrepreneurship movement where solutions are expanded to other cities or other people who could benefit. Disruption is in essence about reaching a point at which there is no going back. The old way yields to a new one.

A great example of disruptive change is the charter school movement. The American public education system is quite broken. But charter schools like Aspire, Green Dot, and KIPP have disrupted that broken system and are creating a new model of getting kids, who would otherwise drop out of the system, to college. None of these three charter school will ever reach all kids who need them, but rather these schools are demonstrating how to educate poor, at-risk kids. And the idea is that their model will be adopted as the norm by the American public education system. And given the Obama administration’s interest in these models, that could actually become a reality.

Or take homelessness, another seemingly intractable problem. The goal of  Common Ground, a nonprofit in New York City focusing on homelessness, is to “change the social and economic forces that undermine stability and health, and produce homelessness.” They want to completely end homelessness by changing the underlying systems that cause it. And it looks like they are doing just that in New York City. They have already reduced homelessness in Times Square by 87% and throughout the city by 47%.  Eradicating homelessness in the largest city in the country, that’s pretty disruptive.

But charter schools and Common Ground are the exceptions, rather than the rule in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofits are encouraged to think and act incrementally because they don’t often know where funding will come from year to year. It is difficult to make huge goals or attack big problems if the resources for execution are uncertain.  An undercapitalized, highly competitive market like the one in which nonprofits operate does not incent disruptive change.

But disruption, by its very nature, is uncertain and risky. More than anything else it involves a change in mindset. A commitment to disruption is a determination not to let fear and resource constraints hold you back from the disruption the market requires. The nonprofit sector needs to get back to its roots. Incremental change just doesn’t cut it anymore. Let’s get back to the disruption that defines the sector.

Photo Credit: tcpix

Tags: Aspire, Common Ground, Green Dot Public Schools, KIPP, Obama, Social Entrepreneurship

Innovation is the Answer

There’s a really great recent post on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog by Mario Marino, founder of Venture Philanthropy Partners, a venture philanthropy fund in Washington, DC. Mario’s post is the best attempt I’ve seen yet to frame the current state of America (deepening recession, crumbling institutions, etc.) as a tremendous opportunity to reinvent ourselves.  And although Mario set out to write a post about the new White House Office of Social Innovation, he realized that what is happening in America is a much larger need for innovation:

Instead of focusing on social innovation, I feel compelled to lift up a level and talk about innovation more broadly. I am convinced that, amid the many challenges facing our President, nothing is more important for the long-term strength of our nation than driving greater levels of innovation across all sectors of our economy, including the nonprofit sector.

Indeed, Mario points out that although we are a country of innovators, we have lost our urgency to innovate.  The current crisis we are in will force us as a country to find innovative solutions to all that ails us:

Through radical innovation in our commercial, nonprofit, and public sectors, we must break the status quo that is too often miring us in mediocrity—from how we manufacture our products to how we educate our children, from how we consume energy to how we provide health care. We have no choice but to discover and deliver new, different, and better ways of dealing with our most vexing challenges.

He suggests that three trends will enable us to seize the moment and innovate our way out of this mess:

1. Influx of Talent: The increased entrepreneurial spirit and drive of 20-40 somethings, the energy of the Baby Boom generation, and immigrant talent and expertise will create a large group of people with energy, interest and initiative to develop new solutions
2. New Mindset: The new generation of entrepreneurs is more interested in innovation for social good than innovation for individual gain (I wrote about this trend as well).
3. New Networking Technologies: Web 2.0 and social media have made coordinating and scaling innovation much easier and faster.

These three trends create a huge opportunity for America to take our crushing problems and innovate our way to solutions:

If necessity is the mother of invention, then this crisis, which has laid bare the depth of our needs, provides us the dramatic necessity to drive innovation and spur entrepreneurs of all types and sizes to find ways to deal with our challenges. The real change makers will be those throughout the land in small and big enterprises, the new and the old, the scientific innovator to the obsessively compelled entrepreneur, across all sectors, who take up this challenge.

And Mario tasks the Obama administration with leading this movement towards innovation :

So while I could not be more supportive of the Office of Social Innovation, I believe this is a chance for the President to systematically foster a mindset in America that is nothing short of a cultural and economic ground-shift. He must broaden the focus across and among the private, public, and nonprofit sectors—to seek and spark the most promising innovations whether they come from commercial or social entrepreneurs, executives or line workers, community leaders, public servants, researchers, or citizens who don’t fit into any of these categories. The real opportunity before the President is to supercharge innovators from all walks of life and make commercial and social innovation our national imperative.

However, I don’t think it is all up to the Obama administration.  Rather, this national need for innovation is up to all three sectors, not just the public sector, to lead.  Venture capitalists and angel investors can seek out and seed great solutions (for profit or not), nonprofits that have found solutions can create growth plans,  corporations can take a larger view of how they measure success to include social profit instead of just financial profit, foundations can harness their corpus towards innovation through mission-related investing, and the list goes on.   A White House Office of Social Innovation is a start and Obama encouraging a new spirit of innovation would be great.  But to truly become an innovative nation again we’ve all got to take the lead and explore how we can use our respective resources in new ways to encourage solutions.

Tags: innovation, Mario Marino, Obama, venture capital, Venture Philanthropy Parnters, White House Office of Social Innovation

A New Direction for American Public Education

I’ve written before about the potential for some serious education reform in America because of the Obama administration and their appointment of Arne Duncan, former Chicago Public Schools superintendent, as Secretary of Education.  Arne has a great track record and some exciting ideas and experience with education reform.  There is more insight into his ideas for how he will reform the American education system in his recent interview on Charlie Rose:

Tags: Arne Duncan, Chicago, education reform, Obama

Making Change Happen

There’s an interesting article by Michael Grunwald in Time Magazine about how Obama is using behavioral science to create the tremendous change he has promised and that America needs. Perhaps this approach can be useful to social entrepreneurs as well.

Grunwald illustrates that throughout the presidential campaign Obama used behavioral science to change voter and donor behaviors. Now, the administration is using it to take on healthcare reform, the economy and energy. During the campaign Obama relied on a advisory group of behavioral scientists which included authors Dan Ariely of MIT (Predictably Irrational), Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago (Nudge), and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman of Princeton. These advisors provided his team research to back up their recommendations on everything from voter turnout, to rumor control, to fundraising. Behavioral science (among other things) got Obama elected and now its charge is to change the behavior of Americans who eat too much, use too much gas, don’t save money, run up their credit cards, etc:

The latest science suggests that yes, we can [change]. Studies of all kinds of human frailties are revealing how to help people change — not only through mandates or financial incentives but also via subtler nudges that preserve our freedom to make choices while encouraging us to make better ones, from automatic-enrollment 401(k) plans that require us to opt out if we don’t want to save for retirement to smart meters that warn us about how much energy we’re using. These nudges can trigger huge changes; in a 2001 study, only 36% of women joined a 401(k) plan when they had to sign up for it, but when they had to opt out, 86% participated.

What behavioral science offers, the Obama administration believes, is a way to capitalize on the inherent imperfections of the human race, which were formerly ignored or denied:

Neoclassical economics…has ruled our world for decades. It’s the doctrine that markets know best: when government keeps its hands off free enterprise, capital migrates to its most productive uses and society prospers. But its elegant models rely on a bold assumption: rational decisions by self-interested individuals create efficient markets. Behavioral economics challenged this assumption, and the financial meltdown has just about shattered it; even former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan confessed his Chicago School worldview has been shaken. Behavioral economics doesn’t ignore the market forces that were all-powerful in Econ 101, but it harnesses forces traditionally consigned to Psych 101. Behaviorists have always known we don’t really act like the superrational Homo economicus of the neoclassical-model world. Years of studies of patients who don’t take their meds, grownups who have unsafe sex, and other flawed decision makers have chronicled the irrationality of Homo sapiens.

In order to curb human being’s natural imperfections (their desire to pick the bad option) four aspects in the better option must be present:

1. Knowledge about what the better choices are, which is why the Obama administration is so interested in information transparency.
2. Affordability–Change can’t be expensive or it becomes unattainable.
3. Ease–Default options on healthcare and automatic retirement plans make it more difficult to not participate, making the better option the easier option.
4. Normalization–If people think that everyone else is doing it, they’ll be more likely to do it.

It occurs to me in reading this article that in essence Obama is the ultimate social entrepreneur.  As Grunwald points out:

Obama is no therapist changing individuals one at a time. He’s an organizer trying to build community and inspire collective action through house parties and Facebook as well as rhetoric about shared values. In other words, he’s trying to create social norms — behavioral change’s killer app.

He is trying to scale change throughout the country, perhaps throughout the world, in not just one area, but several.  So isn’t there something to be learned from his behavioral science approach to creating change that could be translated to the field of social innovation?

For social entrepreneurs whose challenge is to change crumbling systems and institutions, perhaps a behavioral approach can make scale achievable, more effectively and quickly.  For those looking to create a social capital market and bring “dinosaur” philanthropists and traditional investors toward new financial vehicles, perhaps behavioral incentives could help.  Whatever the area, whatever the need, the end goal is to change old ways of doing things.  Perhaps there is something to be learned from this new approach. Instead of denying or overriding human imperfection, we could actually harness that imperfection in order to create change on a large scale.  Perhaps the very problems we seek to solve require such an approach.

Tags: behavioral science, change, Obama, social capital market, social entrepreneurs

Resetting the Capital Approach

There is concern lately about how much worse it is going to get for nonprofits because of Obama’s new budget proposal, which will limit the value of the tax break for wealthy donors, from 35% to 28%. Many nonprofits are even more worried than they were before about revenue, for example the nonprofit Executive Director whose comments to the Daily Dish caused a firestorm of replies:

A couple of our usual big donors have indicated we should be prepared for smaller donations this year, and possibly none in the next couple of years.  They are mentioning Obama’s tax plans and their need to save money now in anticipation of that.  A lot of my colleagues in the not-for-profit world are really scared right now, and we are not happy with Obama…Organizations are going to be killed under Obama’s plan…Frankly, this sucks.

All of this talk about a deepening poor revenue picture for nonprofits makes some, like Perla Ni, founding publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, think there will be a shift in how nonprofits raise money.  Perla wrote recently that nonprofits should shift their appeals away from metrics and towards emotion:

During these difficult economic times, when all of us know someone who has or is at risk of losing their job, it’s much easier for us to relate to the appeals to our conscience and our heart. That’s not to say that there is no room for “expert” evaluations and quantitative metrics. It’s about degree and balance of the heart and the head.

Seriously?  We’re going to squander this opportunity that the crisis in our financial system affords and go back to the tin-cup mentality of nonprofit revenue generation?  I completely disagree with this notion.  Nonprofits may think that appealing to emotion is the way to go, but that will only set them back.  To me, it is akin to Marty Linsky’s recent piece about hunkering down versus resetting in these difficult times.  As Linsky puts it, we have two choices and the “hunkering down” option looks like:

Stephanie Strom’s piece in the Times on Friday of last week showering sympathy on the well-intentioned charities going belly up, rather than seeing this moment as an opportunity to rethink their priorities, eliminate duplication, introduce good management practices, and get rid of programs and people who are not performing well.

Whereas resetting is about understanding how systems are changing and that we have to adapt to the longterm.  We must embrace the change and move with it:

Here’s what Reset might look like…(1) Funding risk-takers, creators, and inventors, small and large, in manufacturing, financial services, nonprofits, and even academia…(2) targeting…spending and investing now for the long term, like…supporting new faces and burgeoning success stories in education, people and ideas to help rescue the current school-age generation…

Focusing on emotion and heart-strings in order to try to keep a fledgling nonprofit operating might be appealing, but it is a hunkering down mentality. These times call for a complete resetting of how we do things.  Nonprofit fundraisers and Executive Directors don’t have the luxury of “appeal[ing] to our conscience and our heart.”

Nonprofit leaders and board members often tell me that XYZ nonprofit is easier to fundraise for because their cause is an “easier sell,” for example children and puppies.  I don’t think that a particular cause is inherently easier to sell because it has more of a pull on heartstrings. Rather, those organizations that can demonstrate, yes through metrics and outcomes, that they are positively impacting and reversing a disequilibrium will have much more success at appealing to donors.

But also, and more importantly, organizations that demonstrate their impact are better positioned to attract new kinds of revenue which this financial crisis will create.  I truly believe that the “resetting” that is occuring in our financial markets will create an opportunity and demand for more social impact capital, which is money that used to be channeled purely towards financial profit, but now is looking for a more complex blending of profit and social impact.  I don’t mean just social enterprises, I’m talking about a complete restructuring of capital markets that allows philanthropists, venture capitalists, angel investors, foundations, wealthy individuals, traditional nonprofit donors to be more innovative with their capital and invest in organizations that are proving social impact, again through metrics and outcomes, and are willing to understand, address and appeal to those who want to see more (social returns) done with their money.

By going back to the heart strings and the tin cup, social impact organizations miss out on the great opportunity that lies in this capital market restructuring and the greater resources that will follow.

Tags: angel investors, Foundations, nonprofit, Obama, Philanthropy, social capital, Social Enterprise, tin cup, venture capital

Change is Here

One of the criticisms of an otherwise very well received speech last night by President Obama was that it was “too ambitious.”  Last night he vowed to take on healthcare and education reform, the recession, global warming, 2 wars, among other things.  That is ambitious, but does he have a choice?  Do we have a choice?  You could actually argue that it wasn’t ambitious enough.

Our world is changing so quickly and the problems are becoming larger and more complex.  This complexity requires, and indeed demands, a completely different, and by previous standards “ambitious,” approach.  The very ways in which we live, work, play, communicate are all changing, and exponentially.  Take social media and the flood of information it provides; we’re all trying to figure out how to keep up.

Lucy Bernholz, president of Blueprint Research & Design (a philanthropy consulting firm) and a philanthropic thought leader, argued recently that what we are experiencing is not a recession, but a complete restructuring of our world.  Our institutions are crumbling, our environmental resources diminishing, our economy melting down.  We are charting completely new territory:

It doesn’t make sense to think of this as a dip in an otherwise upward trend. It is more like a turn off onto a different path. People born since 1990, all over the globe, have fundamentally different assumptions than those born before that year about where information lives, who controls it, where and how work gets done, what the “proper” role of government might be, where their friends live, how much personal privacy they have, want or value, what kind of resources will be needed to fuel their futures, what kind of innovation might fuel the economies in which they will live, and what their individual relationships to others – proximal and far away – are, could be, or might be.

And she suggests many ways in which this restructuring could take place.  Several on her list point to a growing convergence among public, private and nonprofit approaches (which I’ve talked about before):

Social enterprise begins to morph the philanthropic giving that exists to its left and the commercial enterprise that exists to its right (on a spectrum from giving to investing

Individuals’ daily contributions and activities are a deliberate and recognized mix of paid and unpaid – and successful enterprises build themselves to catalyze those inside/outside, professional/volunteer, expert/amateur, user/producer contributions

Philanthropic giving is really asked (read: required by regulators or purchased: in a marketplace) to prove its value in the funding food chain of producing social good. So are social investing, social enterprise, and socially responsible investing.

Enterprises and activities that generate economic, social and environmental benefits move from marginal to the middle – and innovation shifts elsewhere

We will no longer assume that nonprofit = social good, commercial enterprise = profit, rather we will think about what we need as a society (investigative reporters, an independent media, universal literacy, human rights) and figure out new forms of delivering those things

So financing, once separated into private and nonprofit buckets, merges into a results bucket that combines social impact and financial profit.  Problems are no longer addressed from a profit or nonprofit position, but rather from a solution position, which draws on both.  Activity that provides a blending of profit and social good is no longer marginalized, but is actually revered and becomes the norm.

What we are already seeing, and will continue to see more and more, is a convergence of private, public and nonprofit money; private and nonprofit operating principles; private, public and nonprofit goals and reasons for being; private, nonprofit and government approaches to problems.  We no longer exist in neat categories that inform our activity, funding, thought, approach, world-view.

The social entrepreneurship movement has taken off so dramatically in recent years in large part because of this growing convergence.  People are recognizing that the old separations no longer make sense or work.

Convergence is real and is happening everywhere.  Those who are not “ambitious” enough and continue to view the world in stale and unbending categories will be left behind.

Tags: Convergence, Lucy Bernholz, nonprofit, Obama, Philanthropy, Social Enterprise, Social Entrepreneurship

Here Comes Some Real Education Reform

As President Obama signs the economic stimulus bill into law today it is interesting to analyze what this means for nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, and crumbling American institutions like our education system.  I have written many times before about the opportunity that this financial crisis offers.  When systems are crumbling the time is right to build something stronger, better, more effective.  So it is today, particularly in the realm of American education.

Arne Duncan has taken over as Secretary of Education.  He is a young, bright, energetic innovative former superintendent of Chicago Public Schools.  He’s seen as a consensus-builder with a similar governing style to Obama’s, which has allowed him to push through some key reforms while keeping teacher’s unions happy.  In his 7+ years as CEO of CPS he:

• Increased elementary test scores in Chicago from 38 percent of students meeting the standards to 67 percent
• Increased the graduation rate by 6%
• Increased the number of master teachers who’ve completed a rigorous national certification process from 11 to 1,200
• Spearheaded merit-pay incentives rewarding school leaders and teachers for gains in student achievement
• Championed good charter schools
• Shut down failing schools and replaced their entire staffs
• Opened 53 new schools

Another less talked about thing that Arne Duncan has done is to encourage the success of the Chicago Public Education Fund.  This corporate-backed venture philanthropy fund is in its 9th year and has invested over $25 million in innovative programs in Chicago’s public schools.

The Fund invests significant capital and management expertise in a limited number of well-managed, high-impact programs that improve school leadership, drive policy change and make system-wide impact. The Fund has invested in programs like Teach for America and New Leaders for New Schools and only invests if Chicago Public Schools signs on as a co-investor.

It’s a fascinating model, much like a city-sized, education-focused version of the social investment fund that America Forward, the Obama administration and others have been discussing where government and private dollars are pooled and invested in high-impact social innovations.

So Duncan brings to the table success in education reform paired with an understanding and experience with new models of social innovation (both social entrepreneurship and venture philanthropy). Now, add to that the $100 billion in emergency aid for public schools that he will have at his fingertips with the stimulus plan, and you have a pretty exciting combination of factors that could mean a transformation of the public school system based on social innovation.  $54 billion of this money is largely at Duncan’s disposal. According to a New York Times article, Duncan said he intends to reward:

• “Islands of Excellence:” school districts, charter schools and nonprofit organizations that demonstrate success at raising student achievement
• Programs that tie teacher pay to classroom performance
• Training efforts that pair new instructors with veteran mentors
• After-school and weekend tutoring programs

So, perhaps what we are starting to see is the large-scale education reform that Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, argued last month wasn’t happening with social entrepreneurs.  As I argued in response to him,

Perhaps we needed social entrepreneurs like Teach for America and others to point out the problems within the system and offer a theory of change.  Now that they have demonstrated that there are programs that work and new ways to do things, we can now create policy around those ideas.  And with a new administration and a new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who has a history of reforming the Chicago Public Schools and implementing new models like Teach for America, perhaps policy reform has a chance.  It will be interesting to watch.

Yes it will.

Tags: American Forward, Arne Duncan, charter schools, Chicago Public Education Fund, Chicago Public Schools, Obama, Social Entrepreneurship, social innovation fund network, Venture Philanthropy

Reinvent Austin’s Social Sector

There is much talk lately about what the fallout of our deepening recession will be for the nonprofit sector.  Paul Light gives four future scenarios for the sector, others are pinning their hopes on the new Obama administration, a new economic stimulus plan, and/or the Serve America Act to revitalize and strengthen the sector.  Who really knows what the future will bring.  However, I firmly believe that if we realize the opportunity in these unknowns, we can fundamentally transform a fairly broken sector.  And let’s be honest, the sector is fairly broken:

• The sector is sorely undercapitalized.  It is very difficult to find capital to scale successful organizations, to take out an expansion loan, or to build capacity.  Nonprofits are forced into a continuous fundraising cycle that is difficult at best and nearly impossible in times like these.  And we tend to reward those organizations that keep their “administrative costs,” the very costs that will help them be more effective at what they do, to an absolute minimum.
• Because nonprofit organizations are undercapitalized they cannot pay competitive salaries to attract or keep top talent in their organizations.  That’s not to say there is not top talent in the sector, to the contrary there are incredibly talented people, but they are working much too hard, with very little resources (including adequate staffs) and are burning themselves out.
• Nonprofit boards of directors, the stewards of these organizations, are often not trained in their duties and are too strapped for time to help organizations achieve their missions, grow, and become financially stable.
• The process for becoming a 501(c) 3 is too easy and somewhat unregulated, creating incredible competition for very scarce resources.
• The high-dollar philanthropic funding for the sector comes from individuals and foundations who often have their own theories of change.  Grants tend to be direct-service, not infrastructure, focused and put too many strings on the money.
• Governments who contract with nonprofits increasingly push them to deliver the same or increased level of services for less and less money, creating a move towards rock-bottom priced services.
• There are no rewards in the sector for innovation or risk-taking, in fact innovation is disincentivized.

So, how could we seize the opportunity that the changing economic, social and political climate affords the social sector? What could we in Austin do to innovate out of this situation:

• Our city government could partner with local businesses and venture capital firms to fund a local version of the proposed federal social investment fund.  A pooled fund of government and private money could be invested to grow and build the capacity of nonprofits and social enterprises that deliver great solutions to our community.
• Philanthropists, both individuals and foundations, could make a commitment to fund the capacity and infrastructure of those nonprofit organizations that are demonstrating real results.  These investments would not be direct-service program investments, but rather investments in the high-quality capacity and infrastructure (technology, staff, consulting, etc.) these organizations need to be successful.
• Nonprofits could talk about the social return on investment they offer investors and how they are providing real solutions to the problems we face.  They could encourage their board members and funders to understand what it really costs to provide the high quality services they provide (both direct and indirect costs) and what it would really take to grow to meet the increasing need.

And finally, we could all start to recognize that we can no longer leave nonprofits alone to figure out how to serve more people with fewer resources while the problems that affect all of us get bigger and more complex. We need to recognize that things are changing.  Our economy is changing fundamentally; the government, private and nonprofit sectors are converging; a movement for social innovation is going on nationally.  There is real opportunity for Austin to get involved in, profit from (socially and economically), and potentially lead this movement.  Let’s start that conversation.

Tags: Austin, capacity, Obama, Paul Light, Serve America Act, social investment fund

An Historic Day

Changing Administration

Today marks the much-anticipated inauguration of our next President.  And to a country in the middle of two wars and a deepening recession, it is a moment of hope.  There is much speculation about what this new President will do for our country.  Particularly in the nonprofit sector, which always bears the brunt of any economic downturn, there is much anticipation about what tomorrow will bring for the sector.  As we watch the ceremony and festivities today, here are some thoughts about what the new administration might mean for the social sector.

Obama made many plans and promises about national service and social innovation during his campaign.  I wrote about that here.  Basically his ideas were:

1. Growth of current national service programs like AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps
2. $4,000 tax credits to college students in exchange for 100 hours of community service
3. Expanded programs for engaging retirees in community service
4. 50 hours of required community service from middle and high school students each year
5. Expansion of YouthBuild
6. Allocation of 25% of college work study funds to community service projects

And, indeed, many of these ideas are contained in the economic stimulus package currently in front of Congress.  The Chronicle of Philanthropy gives a great summary of the implications of that plan on the nonprofit sector.  But in essence, the plan includes:

• $200 million to expand AmeriCorps by 16,000 members
• $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts for grants to arts groups
• $50 million to Youth Build USA, a social entrepreneurial organization putting low-income young people to work building affordable housing.  You can see a video clip about this organization here.
• $87 billion to temporarily increase the federal portion of Medicaid
• $2.1 billion to Head Start to serve 110,000 additional children and create 50,000 jobs
• $1 billion for Community Services Block Grants, and $1 billion for Community Development Block Grants which help states provide social services and housing to low-income residents
• $1 billion for Child Care and Development Block Grants
• $1 billion to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program
• $1 billion to help community health centers renovate their facilities, and $500-million to help them provide care to uninsured and underinsured patients
• $120 million to the Community Service Employment for Older Americans program, which would allow charities and other groups to add 24,000 participants
• $100 million to the Compassion Capital Fund, which provides grants to religious and other charities to provide social services

However, these changes don’t go as far as many in the sector would like.  A coalition of several social entreprenurial groups, including America Forward, America’s Promise Alliance, Be the Change, and Citizen Schools, are urging Obama to create a “nonprofit stimulus package.”  The package would include a Social Investment Fund Network, a government and private venture philanthropy fund that invests growth capital in social entrepreneurs.

But before Obama has even been inaugurated, he has made a grand gesture towards the sector. Yesterday Colin Powell, founder of America’s Promise Alliance, lead Obama’s Renew America Together Initiative where unprecedented numbers of Americans spent MLK Day doing volunteer service.  Obama has pledged to make service a key part of his plan for getting America back on track.

This is an historic, exciting time.

Tags: America Forward, America's Promise Alliance, AmeriCorps, Be the Change, Citizen Schools, Colin Powell, Head Start, Obama, Renew America Together, social entrepreneur, YouthBuild