Social entrepreneurs play an important role in developing innovative approaches to address pressing social problems. Public policies designed to foster this effort can help move progress faster, experts say.
“Policies simply keep funding the same programs over and over without asking whether they are actually effective and whether they are actually achieving the desired outcomes for those who need them most. “There is a potential for restraint,” managing partner Deborah Smolover said. Executive director of New Profit and America Forward.
America Forward, a bipartisan initiative of the venture philanthropy fund New Profit, helps social entrepreneurs and policymakers find common ground and develop legislation that fosters the creation of effective and equitable solutions. Masu.
Smolová said government funding is “significantly greater and outpacing” private funding for social services, so how the government allocates that money is critical.
Furthermore, if policies focus on outcomes rather than outputs, they can hinder social innovation. For example, if a workforce development or economic mobility program measures the number of graduates, but not outcomes such as whether graduates get well-paying jobs that improve their living conditions, it may be difficult to measure the effectiveness of the program. It becomes difficult to do so. and the impact of government funding.
“We believe that the leaders closest to the community and closest to the problem have deep expertise and can significantly improve public policy by using that expertise to develop programs and policy solutions. ,” Smolover said. “Simply put, they know what works, and the power of this expertise is greatest when social innovators collaborate with each other in communities to create policy solutions together.”
The creation of America Forward is rooted in comments from David Gergen, a former White House adviser who served in presidential administrations of both major parties. Gergen said the potential impact of social entrepreneurs is being held back because those who are “deeply invested” in bringing about social change overlook the policies and institutions in which their work is being done. He said there was.
“Basically, social entrepreneurs were missing out on a huge opportunity to make an impact by not engaging with governments, and this really resonated with our social innovation community,” Smolová said. “I think what we’re seeing now is more and more social innovation, and organizations are very interested in policy and advocacy.”
Since its founding nearly 15 years ago, America Forward has grown to become a coalition of more than 120 social innovation organizations serving 9 million people in more than 15,000 communities across the United States. To date, the America Forward Network has leveraged nearly $2 billion and directed millions of federal resources to programs that are achieving tangible results for those who need it most.
In recent years, nonprofits have slowed down their efforts to lobby policymakers, Smolover said. Not because lobbying is considered less important, but because many nonprofits lack the resources, advocacy, training, support, and tools they need.
“That’s why we believe our work at the Coalition for American Progress is so important and so valued among social entrepreneurs. We can do a lot of activities,” Smolová said. “We’re increasing our efforts by providing more training through the America Forward Advocacy Institute, which is essentially about helping social entrepreneurs become better, bolder advocates. , we have strived to meet that need.”
The institute says it has received a record number of requests for training over the past year. The highly polarized political climate in the United States underscores the urgency of finding common ground to address social issues.
“We are a bipartisan initiative seeking bipartisan policy solutions, and we have a team that is very diverse in many aspects, including experience working on both sides of the aisle,” Smolover said. . “We know that in order to pass policy, we need to be able to cultivate a diverse group of constituencies across different ideologies and political viewpoints. We were able to do it over and over again in different configurations.”
America Forward’s successes include leading the creation of the Pay-for-Performance Social Impact Partnership Act, a $100 million pay-for-performance demonstration fund administered by the Department of the Treasury. We invest in innovative state and local partnerships that reward providers based on measurable improvements in people’s lives, from increasing worker incomes to reducing child abuse and neglect.
The coalition also helped create the Social Innovation Fund, which has invested more than $400 million in locally-led, evidence-based innovation in collaboration with intermediaries across the country.
Currently, America Forward is working with representatives on both sides of the aisle to rally support for key provisions of these bills, the Workforce Development and Innovation Fund, and the Reset for America’s Future Act, and to support the large-scale efforts to move forward. We are working on reauthorization.
“Not all mentoring and economic mobility organizations have the same perspective or propose the same solutions,” Smolover said. “We are very adept at leveraging different perspectives and working together within our coalition, and finding a set of common principles that all of our organizations can agree on, rather than the least common denominator. We work to find stories that we think will reach leaders of different political ideologies.”
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