Following up on the above post -- Bishop devoted a considerable amount of time yesterday to discussing philanthrocapitalism's nexus with government. When asked about the role that social innovation should play in the upcoming Obama administration, he cited three main areas:

1. Foreign policy - Building on current philanthrocapitalism-esque initiatives such as the Millennium Challenge Goals; the One Campaign; and the push for greater innovations in finding cures and treatments for diseases such as malaria and TB, Bishop argues that the strategies of philanthrocapitalists are already understood and generally accepted, and that it provides even greater opportunity for impact if partnered more directly with our foreign policy. (See his blog posting and San Francisco Chronicle article here.)
2. Social Entrepreneurship/Innovation Fund - Obama had proposed this during the campaign and Bishop sees big potential here to change the status quo in funding and capitalization for social impact work. He argues that it will be important to include many experienced people from the foundation world.
3. Public education - On this issue, Bishop said that Obama had been less than bold in embracing and spurring innovation. Still, there are dramatic inequities and failings within the public school system, and virtually all the innovation is currently coming from the philanthropic world (i.e. charter schools, Teach for America, New Leaders for New Schools, etc). The core question the Obama administration should be asking itself is how to bring the lessons learned from those innovations into the very heart of public education.

As the discussion continued, some in the audience raised the question of democracy -- does the rise of so many uber-wealthy donors hurt democracy, granting them disproportional influence over issues of public policy that are better left to private citizens voting as individuals? Or does it, as Bishop would say, enhance the democratic process by "rewarding" good governance and using wealth as a strategic lever to fundamentally change key public institutions and services?

What do you think?

Hi Nathan - 

Good question.  What he was referring to in "rewarding good governance" (and I'm not sure those were his exact words) was this: if philanthropy "partners" with government to get better results, presumably they're going to require some sort of accountability.  So they're probably going to look for government entities or leaders who they think have the greatest potential to make change/support change, as opposed to being satisfied with the status quo. In this sense, any support they give these governments could be seen as "rewarding" already-better-than-average governance.  A good thing.  A different interpretation is that people with lots of money are disproportionately influencing government - a bad thing, they would argue. See a more skeptical article about this approach in the Times Online.

Thanks for your comments - the realists in us say, as you do, that people with money already have disproportional influence. And kudos to those who take advantage of that for the public benefit.

Anyone have a different opinion?