One year ago, President Obama officially announced the upcoming launch of a Social Innovation Fund (SIF) that would call on “foundations, philanthropists, and others in the private sector to partner with the government to find and invest in innovative, high-impact solutions.” He went on, “Now more than ever, we need to build cross-sector partnerships to transform our schools, improve the health of Americans, and employ more people in clean energy and other emerging industries. These community solutions will help build the new foundation for the economy and the nation.” For more in depth information about this White House announcement read our blog post.

To commemorate this anniversary and in anticipation of the announcement this month of the intermediary organizations that will receive grants from the Corporation for National & Community Service, we have culled through the discussions that have taken place about the Fund over the past year – some congratulating strengths and others pointing out shortcomings or sounding a note of caution. The following viewpoints are a compilation of Nell Edgington, Pablo Eisenberg, Carla Javits, Jasmine McGinnis, Adin Miller, Sean Stannard-Stockton, and Andrew Wolk.

Areas seen as Strengths

• Promotes collaboration between all sectors. Signals a shift in which the government recognizes that real, long term solutions to complex social problems in the United States require collaboration between all sectors. (Javits, McGinnis, Miller, Wolk)

• Focus on evaluation. Establishes a culture where data collection is a necessary component of nonprofits and where foundations and the government make investments based on results. (Javits, McGinnis, Wolk)

• Use of intermediary grantmakers. Eliminates the bureaucratic red tape of using the government to distribute these funds and allows for grantmakers to exercise their expertise in a specialized focus area. (McGinnis)

• Supporting the whole nonprofit organization. Subtle but fundamental shift from foundations as designers of programs who contract execution out to nonprofits to foundations as providers of growth capital to the performance driven nonprofits. (Javits, Stannard-Stockton)

• Promotes a culture of knowledge sharing. The Corporation for National and Community Service will maintain a clearinghouse for information on best practices resulting from initiatives supported by the grantmakers and their grantees. (Stannard-Stockton)

According to Paul Carttar, the Corporation's Director of the Social Innovation Fund, the principals undergirding the SIF – government empowering communities to identify and drive solutions; collaboration across sectors being critical to success; rewarding results as a strategy to stimulate innovation and grow impact; government cannot and should not do it alone – is what makes the SIF innovative.

Areas seen as Shortcomings

• Not enough funding. $50 million (or even $150 million after the 2-1 match) is not enough to make a significant, lasting impact. (Eisenberg, Stannard-Stockton)

• The government is just another grantmaker. If there is recognition that in order to scale up nonprofits need access to sustainable equity capital, how is this fund any different than foundations who give grants that expire after a short specified period of time? (Edgington, Eisenberg, McGinnis)

• Funds might not get to organizations that need it the most or are the most innovative. It is likely the nonprofits who receive funds will be the larger, more established, more professionalized nonprofits that have the capacity to not only go through the administrative process of applying for grants, but also the financial and operational capacity to accept a large grant as opposed to activist or grassroots groups that make a difference at the local and regional levels and have innovative capacity. (Edgington, Eisenberg, McGinnis, Miller)

• Unclear standards of measurement. Need for clarification on what is being measured, how it will be measured, who will be consulted on evaluation, and will established metrics in the field be used or new ones created? (McGinnis)

• Overestimates the number of proven effective programs. Lack of availability of conclusive evidence within the social sector of nonprofits with programs that have been proven effective. The SIF should support organizations that actively collect information about the results of their programs, systematically analyze this information, adjust their activities in response to new information, and have an absolute focus on producing outcomes. (Edgington, Stannard-Stockton)

Watch here for the Corporation to post its decision.

And enjoy a safe and happy 4th of July weekend!

For further information on the bloggers above please visit the following sites:

• Nell Edgington is the founder of Social Velocity. She has 15+ years of experience in the nonprofit sector and holds an MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.

• Pablo Eisenberg is a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute’s Center for Public & Nonprofit Leadership. Eisenberg served for 23 years as Executive Director of the Center for Community Change and is a founder and Vice-Chair of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and President of Friends of VISTA.

• Carla Javits is the President of REDF (formerly The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund). Prior to joining REDF, Carla was with the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) for fifteen years, leading it for the last six. She has also worked as a policy and budget analyst for the State of California and as Director of Policy and Planning for the San Francisco Department of Social Services.

• Jasmine McGinnis is a second year Ph.D. student in a joint public policy program through the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University and the Ivan Allen College of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology.

• Adin Miller is the founder of Adin Miller Consulting. He has 15 years of experience in domestic and international organizations advancing social change. Prior to establishing his firm, Adin worked at the American Legacy Foundation and as a program officer with the AmeriCorps division of the Corporation for National and Community Service.

• Sean Stannard-Stockton is CEO of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors. Sean is the author of the Tactical Philanthropy blog and writes a monthly column for the Chronicle of Philanthropy. He is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Council on Philanthropy & Social Investing.

• Andrew Wolk is Founder and CEO of Root Cause, a senior lecturer in social entrepreneurship at MIT, and Gleitsman Visiting Practitioner in Social Innovation at Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership.