I applaud the FCC for successfully juggling many diverse interests when it created the National Broadband Plan last year. The plan, as presented to Congress, includes a roadmap for increasing broadband access and adoption throughout America. In October, the FCC announced a new public-private initiative to increase broadband adoption, Connect to Compete. Almost $4 billion has been pledged by the private sector to support this initiative. Next, the FCC will launch a Digital Literacy Corps that will start by helping 5.5 million households with children on free lunch programs and no broadband. This program, the National School Lunch Program, operated by the USDA, identifies students of households at or below 130 percent of the poverty level. Using this established metric, students from families who are part of this group are prioritized to receive discounted broadband and digital services through Connect to Compete. There is a strong identified correlation that households with students who are eligible for the National School Lunch Program do not have broadband at home. 

The Digital Literacy Corps is not a new concept. At Net Literacy (disclosure: I work at Net Literacy), thousands of students have participated in a statewide Digital Literacy Corps since 2003. In 2009, I co-authored an FCC filing with the US Internet Industry Association and later submitted a second filing, both recommending a Digital Literacy Corps. Our recommendation was incorporated into the National Broadband Plan, and we were one of two organizations credited for this suggestion.

These recent FCC announcements have received wide acclaim, but now the hard work begins. To meet the promise of the plan, here are four recommendations:

1. Students should comprise the bulk of the Digital Literacy Corps.
As a seasoned member of the statewide Digital Literacy Corps, I believe that we should tap into the 34 million digital natives—high school and college students—to form the volunteer base. Computer labs would not only reside inside schools and libraries as announced by the FCC; students would also remain inside the schools and libraries to serve as volunteers. The benefits of such programs are multifold. A Digital Literacy Corps comprised of student volunteers could match students to parents within the same school district, increasing efficiency and strengthening a sense of community. Students also will have a convenient and safe location to stay after school while volunteering. Through this service learning, student volunteers will learn important soft skills, including teamwork and mentoring, and hard skills such as computer refurbishing and tech support.

2. The FCC should establish a goal for Connect to Compete to connect 300,000 new households with students on free lunch programs to broadband by 2012 and a total of 1.5 million new households by 2014.
Today, no goals or milestones have been established for this initiative. Without them, how can we measure the initiative’s success or strategize efficiency? The first priority of the Digital Literacy Corps is to help the 5.5 million households with students on free lunch programs who are not already online. Connect to Compete has billions of dollars in commitments and a growing number of high-profile stakeholders that will provide free installs, training, computers with a starting price of $150, and $9.95 broadband services. As a first step, I would recommend connecting 300,000 new households with students on free lunch programs to broadband by 2012 and a total of 1.5 million new households by 2014. If at least 1.5 million of these highest-priority households cannot be installed by October 2014, then we should ask why. Furthermore, achieving this minimum goal still leaves more than 4 million of the prioritized households still disconnected.

3. This year, the FCC should develop a plan with goals and milestones to help the remaining 76.5 million Americans who are passed by broadband but remain offline.
I applaud the FCC for prioritizing the first 5.5 million households, but much good work remains to be done. The FCC should continue to show its leadership by developing programs that help rural Americans, senior citizens, ethnic and racial minorities, and the other populations with low broadband penetration as identified in the plan.

4. The FCC should increase the effectiveness and efficiency of this initiative.
Many groups with low broadband penetration have one thing in common: the misery of poverty. For the Digital Literacy Corps to be successful, it needs better tools. Offering a $150 computer is a good first step, but it is not the last step. At Net Literacy, we are able to donate computers to our constituents at an organizational cost of about $15 each because our public and private partners donate them to us. Executive Order 12999 encourages the federal government to donate computers to qualified nonprofits, but most federal computers are sold, often for scrap. Using surplus federal computers could lower the hardware cost to some of the poorest of Americans to under $100. This will help remove cost barriers to the poorest of families that this initiative targets, increasing the effectiveness of the Digital Literacy Corps.

Will the Digital Literacy Corps be a successful 21st Century Peace Corps? I’ll be checking in with some of the impoverished and marginalized families that this initiative aims to benefit, and report back in 2012…

Occupy Wall Street has done a great job of shining a light of truth on the failed leadership of our greedy, crony capitalist business sector. Inadvertently, it shines an equally unflattering light on what’s missing in the leadership of our nation’s social justice sector.

There’s no debate that our business culture has failed Americans. The last time this small number of people held this level of power and wealth while the average citizen felt powerless, we held a revolution to overthrow a monarchy.

Though its members have been lampooned as left wing nuts, OWS has garnered a majority of the American public’s support. However, lacking a clear plan of action, they risk forfeiting their ability to lead. Already, their most embarrassing participants define them. Their messages are lost to a turf war against liberal mayors who will shut them down as public opinion turns against them. They confuse awareness with actual real change, believing that rhetoric is action.

There’s no shortage of brilliant ideas to change our broken world, but there is a shortage of leadership skills to actually implement them.

Polarization makes things worse. Labeling each other as good vs. evil, profit vs. not for profit, the 99 percent vs. the 1 percent, or Republican vs. Democrat do not move us forward. It keeps us from finding common, complex solutions to difficult problems.

A rising new generation of social change agents will defy the labels as border-crossers, oxymorons, paradoxes, jacks-of-all-trades, and masters of none, speaking the language of the free market while giving voice to those suffering from crony capitalism. They will change the rules by collaborating across sectors, demonizing none, and accepting support from all. They will learn the rules, and then change them.

Where will we find this new generation of leaders? Try Wall Street.

Meet Bobby Shamsian, who can easily traverse the most profound teachings of spirituality, cutting-edge green technology, and the state of international markets in a single conversation. Having succeeded in the financial services industry over the past 10 years, Shamsian is using his knowledge to save the environment. Passionate about climate change, he helped launch TerraVerde Capital Management, one of the first hedge funds in the world dedicated to global change that invests in strategies across the entire supply chain of clean tech, renewable energy, and water.

“We are in the early stages of a technological revolution that will see the way in which we produce and consume energy dramatically,” says Shamsian. Harnessing the power of the free market, he believes that this new cycle will be marked with success and failure. “Many companies will survive while many simply won’t make, and TerraVerde can capitalize on both through a diversified portfolio of hedge fund strategies that focus on sustainability.” The more money prudently invested in this sector, the greater the chance that systems changing innovation will be real in our lives.

But Shamsian still faces challenges. He says, “Most socially conscious investors still do not understand how the terms hedge fund and sustainability can be used in the same sentence, and choose to do business the same old way by putting their money into companies that do nothing to improve sustainability. They don’t understand the markets, so they just rail against them. We can create a new model of capitalism to bring more value and benefit into the world, but it’s a hard sell.”

It may be a hard sell, but this boundary-crosser has an action plan, and it’s exactly the kind of new social sector leadership we need.

Back in American Politics 101, we studied the papers of the framers and discussed the danger of direct democracy—“tyranny of the majority” and the unmitigated power of factions. And we believed there was a societal commitment to representative democracy—direct election of representatives who, through discourse and a deliberative process, would make decisions in the interests of the whole and vote their consciences. Of course this system was biased from the beginning by sexism, racism and classism, excluding who could vote and be represented—but in my lifetime, based upon the struggles and victories of generations past, we had come close to real representative democracy and we took it for granted.

But taking representative democracy for granted was a mistake. Slowly, it’s been dismantled and replaced with an expectation of direct democracy. Our society increasingly replaced the nuance of deliberative process with the absolutism of initiative- and referendum-driven direct votes, poll-driven decision-making, and increased power of factions.

The Danger of Initiative Abuse

Initiative processes, which allowed citizens to put a measure on the ballot by filing petitions signed by an adequate number of fellow citizens, were introduced as progressive reform in the early 20th century. They were designed to have high hurdles that required widespread, diverse support to be feasible. Their design did not anticipate online or paid signature gathering we have today, which allows nearly any well-financed interest group to quickly place any policy issue on the ballot. We have seen initiatives used to radically reshape state tax policy across the US. Voter initiatives have passed “defense of marriage” laws and passed harsh anti-immigration laws—just two examples where the human rights of others are put to a vote codifying the tyranny of the majority. And often the use of the initiative or referendum process is used to overturn or reverse decisions of elected leaders, further solidifying the sense that representative democracy has no impact or power.

Votes of Conscience vs. Decision by Poll

Politicians have always been susceptible to public pressure. Campaign promises, appeasing their base and tracking public opinion are nothing new. However, the rapid shifts in policy stands, the use of polls as decision-making tools, and news-cycle drivers combine to erode the principle of representative democracy and to increase the power of factions. It is standard practice for political action committees, industry associations, and other interest groups to commission polling and invest millions in advertising–all to effectively tie the hands of lawmakers before they enter the hearing room.

While this approach may serve as a smart political strategy to shift power, it is a horrible governing strategy. It moves the deliberative process into a proxy initiative where only the most extreme, well-financed, or active interest groups get to vote. The media cycle horse race and the narrative created by commissioned polls (often designed to create the dramatic statistics that advance a proponent’s argument) act as a referendum to set parameters for policymakers.

Beware the Increasing Power of Faction

As demonstrated by the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, which allows corporate campaign expenditures in candidate elections, and the advent of Super PACs, which allows unlimited spending and little transparency, the rules of the game have changed, and factions are a force to be reckoned with. Unlimited spending by corporations and Super PACs places disproportional power with interest groups to influence who runs for office, what issues hit the public agenda, and how debate is framed. This is another challenge to representative democracy. By disproportionately amplifying the voices of a few and removing the limits of disproportionate economic power to influence elections, we make our elected officials beholden to a narrow array of interests and allow the same groups to determine media attention.

In the past 30 years, the disproportion of wealth has taken a quantum leap, with the top 1 percent in 2007 controlling approximately 35 percent of the wealth versus about 20 percent in 1979 (G. William Domhoff, UCSC). At the same time, the amount of money in politics has also created new thresholds for participation; according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the average spending of a congressional incumbent’s race in 1980 was less than $290,000, whereas in 2010 it was more than $2.5 million.

These changes further move decision-making power on who represents us from the voting public to factions and interests at the top of the economic ladder.

It’s Time to “Out” Representative Democracy

We need to reform initiative and referendum requirements in the context of the social media age to restore thresholds that limit their use, and to ensure that the issues that get to the ballot have widespread interest and are priority concerns.

We need to make veracity a household word. In the age of spin, Internet and social media rumor mills, and push polling, factions and interest groups are increasingly framing of issues and solutions. We must increase our collective demand for information integrity, funding transparency, and unbiased analysis of policy impacts before we sign a petition, repeat a narrative, or re-tweet a story.

We need to advocate campaign finance reforms for candidates and initiatives that provide full transparency, limit spending, and close loopholes exploited by Super PACs.

And ultimately, we must demand that our elected leaders engage in deliberative decision-making—the core of representative democracy. We need to reward and publicly acknowledge those who do and we need to hold them to account when they do not.

We live in a time where polarization and adherence to interest group absolutes is the norm. We need the leveling and reasoned influence of true representative democracy to develop solutions that address the complex needs of our states, nation and world. Protecting against the power of factions is part of our nation’s DNA, and it is time for a much broader set of voices to invoke the framers and to restore this critical feature of the great work in progress we call American democracy.

But how can higher education institutions raise desperately needed funds in this economic environment, especially when they’re competing with 1.6 million (and growing) US nonprofits vying for the same funds?

Education affects health, employment rates, civic participation, and self-esteem, but it takes money. Everyone supports more money for education, right? But, the truth is that most of us do not donate to our alma maters. Are we hypocrites? Distracted? Recovering from the recession? Converge Consulting conducted a national study of 2050 alumni to explore attitudes, motivations, and behavior associated with giving. The respondents were highly representative of the study population and statistically aligned with US census data in terms of gender (56 percent female), degree attainment (70 percent held an undergraduate degree), institutional type attended (65 percent public), marital status (59 percent married), employment status (50 percent full-time), ethnicity (87 percent white/Caucasian), mean household income ($74,285), and religious orientation (67 percent Christian). The guiding questions were:

• What motivates people to give?
• What differentiates those who give from those who do not?
• Where and how should higher education fundraising professionals expend limited resources to maximize efforts?

The study utilized six measures to segment alumni, examining how they felt about:

• The nature of their relationships with their institutions
• Their professional opportunities upon graduation
• Professional benefits resulting from institutional affiliation
• The importance of financially supporting their institutions
• Donating to charities
• Their lives since graduating (satisfaction)

These measures determined three donor types:

• Champions
• Friends
• Acquaintances

The following graphic depicts significant differences among the three groups in terms of attitudes, motivations, and behaviors associated with giving:

In terms of total donations to institutions within the last twelve months, the percentage of people across segments who have ever donated, and average donation size, this graphic indicates that institutions are simply not getting much support from alumni.

Fortunately, services derived from the findings enable fundraisers to administer a seven-question survey that will classify alumni into the three donor types, determine their preferred communication channels, and identify the organizations that they support. Thus, fundraising professionals can identify Acquaintances, who will likely never give, and reallocate those resources to Champions and Friends. Moreover, they can identify Champions and Friends who don’t give (or who give to other organizations), and reach out to them via their preferred channels, and with messages that are more likely to resonate and evoke response. Effective implementation of such practices could increase overall philanthropic support of our colleges and universities—institutions that need all of the help they can get.

The facts–as elegantly stated in a Congressional Research Service study, which came to the same conclusion–are these (emphasis mine):
The estimated effects of the cap and other elements of the budget package depend on whether the proposals are compared with the current tax rates of 33% and 35% or the rates scheduled for 2011, 36% and 39.6%. Compared with current rules, estimated effects are between one-half a percent and 1% decline in charitable giving….When compared with tax rate provisions in 2011, charitable deductions are estimated to fall by about 1.5% if only the cap is considered, but if income effects from the entire budget package are included contributions actually rise 2.5%. The relatively modest effects of the proposal arise because (1) the effect of caps on the subsidy value is limited, (2) only a fraction (about 16%) of charitable giving is affected, and (3) because evidence suggests that behavioral responses to changes in subsidies are relatively small.

To paraphrase: The tax subsidy isn’t much reduced; that small reduction doesn’t affect 84 percent of charitable giving; and, in fact, charitable giving isn’t all that tied to tax benefit.

So whether we accept the study’s findings that charitable giving is likely to decline modestly if these tax reforms are enacted, or the CRS findings that it might actually go up, we should realize that everyone who’s hyperventilating about the impact of these changes on their poor, struggling private school, museum, or hospital should just take a deep breath. Given that the reforms will support many of the social programs, environmental protections, educational institutions, and health care options the nonprofits themselves seek to provide, it’s about time for the community to stop whining and agree to pony up.

Founded 15 years ago by a group of Camden residents and technologists, including Robert Metcalfe (inventor of the Ethernet) and John Sculley (former CEO of Apple), PopTech has developed into a rare gathering. On the one hand, sure, 600 or so people listen to speakers, drink too much coffee, and exchange business cards. But because attendees hail from so many different fields—from science, technology, design, corporate and civic leadership, public health, social and ecological innovation, and the arts and humanities—there is what PopTech Curator Andrew Zolli calls a mashup effect, in which “genius is found in the white spaces.”

In another conference curator’s hands, PopTech would be a mess. How can you have Nils Gilman, whose latest book, Deviant Globalization, looks at the burgeoning global black market, on the same panel as marriage historian Stephanie Coontz and Aaron Shirley, the pioneering physician and health advocate from Mississippi? Because, argues Zolli, there are commonalities to problems. (And, if the commonalities aren’t obvious, Zolli, whose other job is a global foresight and innovation consultant, connects them.) Zolli’s and PopTech’s philosophy is that positive change remains locked in “silos of excellence,” and that innovation can come about better and quicker through interdisciplinary collaboration.

A good example of this is Sarah Fortune, an assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard University. She was a 2010 PopTech Science and Public Policy Fellow, who at last year’s conference explained that image analysis was a barrier to her tuberculosis research. The volume of analysis she needed went well beyond what her lab or budget could handle. Josh Nesbit, CEO of Medic Mobile and a 2009 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow, heard Fortune’s call and connected her to Lukas Biewald, cofounder of CrowdFlower. Innovation found. CrowdFlower breaks large digital projects into small tasks and distributes them to workers around the world. Now Fortune’s image analysis process is faster, underscoring the potential of crowdsourcing scientific research.

This year’s theme at PopTech was “The World Rebalancing,” a highfalutin phrase that would make a firm cynic snicker. But no one disagreed with Zolli’s contention that “the first decade of the 21st century, if not the crappiest, has been a major contender. Really what we’re in is an in-between time, a transition from one phase to another.” This is happening not just in the United States, said Zolli, with its engulfment by terrorism, war, financial calamity, and political dysfunction, but around the world. He listed the economic rise of China, India, and Brazil as part of this rebalancing, as well as the environmental crises on the horizon.

There were too many fascinating people and their presentations at PopTech 2011 to mention in this article (81 in all), but here is a sample:

Ólafur Grímsson, Iceland’s president, took the stage to talk about his country’s period of rebalancing after the October 2008 banking meltdown and two consecutive volcanic eruptions. “Three years later,” said Grímsson, “our economic recovery is on its way. How did Iceland do it? What are the lessons?” Answer: comprehensive political and governmental reform, along with investment in clean energy. Not only did Iceland not pump public money into private banks, it underwent a complete overhaul of the country’s power structure, from government to banking to academia. “It was the will of the people,” said Grímsson, who credited social media for strengthening Icelanders’ reformist demands. As for the rest of the world, President Grímsson had this to say: “We are seeing a tectonic shift in the nature of our societies, transforming the balance between the market on one hand and democracy on the other ... The question now is: Which shall predominate?”

Aidan Dwyer, a 13-year-old from Wisconsin, presented the results of his nine-month after-school and weekend science experiment: a new approach to solar panels that earned him a 2011 Young Naturalist Award and Facebook requests from venture capitalists. Dwyer explained that the shapes of oak tree branches got him thinking about how light is absorbed, which led him to the number sequencing theory of Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci, which led him to believe that a solar design modeled on the Fibonacci pattern would be better than a flat panel. So far, many people believe he is right. Dwyer’s tree-like solar arrays have the potential to gather more light when the sun is at low angles, they take up less room in urban areas, they are not as affected by shadows, and they do not collect dust and dirt as easily as the current flat panels.

Simon Hauger, an engineer turned inner city teacher, gave an inspiring talk about the power of project learning. Thirteen years ago, he founded an after-school program, called the Hybrid X Team, at West Philadelphia High School to engage students in science, math, and engineering. Not only did the team build hybrid vehicles, their cars outperformed similar vehicles from top universities and corporations. Since that time, Hauger has launched the Workshop School, a project-learning high school premised on the belief that most kids find school insanely boring. (Dwyer confirmed this was true.) Hauger’s faith in the curiosity and agility of young minds – and his insistence that education be interesting and fun – continues to pay off. Now the school has been tasked by the city of Philadelphia to figure out how to reduce energy use in buildings by 30 percent.

Amy Sun, a founding member of MIT’s Fab Lab program and director of its Jalalabad, Afghanistan branch, showed some amazing photographs of how Jalabad citizens created a WiFi network from junk: wire, a plastic tub, wood, and the like. The idea is to use found objects, or things that are reasonably available, instead of specialty made items. The Fab Lab program is a worldwide initiative now in its ninth year that brings volunteers like Sun (who has expertise in robotics, computer science, communications, energy, and “inane fun toys”) to places far from the technological cutting edge. Sun said one of the best things about the Fab labs is that people in very different places share their solutions. In the case of the Jalalabad WiFi network, it has been exported to other places in the country. “We are seeing village-to-village innovation,” said Sun.

US Navy Capt. Wayne Porter and Marines Col. Mark Mykleby wowed the PopTech 2011 audience with a summary of their groundbreaking article “A National Strategic Initiative”—but not before Mykleby made clear that none of their statements represented the views of the US military or government. Why the disclaimer? Porter and Mykleby explained that when it comes to American foreign policy, Washington has developed “institutional autism.” “We have strategies coming out the wazoo,” said Mykleby, “but we don’t have any overarching strategy. We wrote this because we want to talk about threat and risk, and stop talking about the past.” The officers argue that the United States has to move away from “containment”—the post-World War II strategy developed to contain the spread of communism—to what they call “sustainment” or “sustainability.” That will require an engagement with the world, not so much through military force but through the strength of the US’s educational system, social policies, international diplomacy, and commitment to sustainability practices in energy and agriculture.

Basically, PopTech was a feast for the intellect. Throughout, Zolli, a kind of Willy Wonka in the innovation factory, praised the presenters and plugged his organization’s yearlong efforts: its social innovation and science and public policy mentorship programs; its two labs, the Climate Resilience Lab and the Ecomaterials Innovation Lab; and its latest initiatives, such as PeaceTXT, a collaboration to use mobile technology to end violence. Next year, PopTech is taking its show on the road: In February, it will convene its Climate Resilience Lab in Nairobi, Kenya, and in June, it will hold a conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, to explore “resilience.” “PopTech,” said Zolli, “is a machine to change the world.”



Of course, the key issue of our day is what is the “public responsibility?” Libertarians such as Ron Paul argue that the list of public responsibilities should be as small as possible—smaller government is what we need, and we should leave business to do as much as possible. For example, today’s NY Times reports that Paul wants to do away with the TSA and have airlines provide security. He believes that market pressures would induce the competing airlines to provide just enough security screening to be safe but not so much as to be intrusive. Given that security is a present day operating cost balanced against a potential future threat, I’d argue that the airlines would cut, slice, and eventually abandon security measures as quickly as possible, as they incur costs against the bottom line.



Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed suggesting that philanthropists start building bridges and investing in the nation’s physical infrastructure. Just a few weeks ago I had a conversation with two colleagues about the “minimal viable role” of government. Defense spending was in there. So were roads. I guess I overestimated. 



How about loans for businesses? Starbucks is working with Community Development Institutions (CDFIs) to launch what could become a significant loan program for small businesses. The “create jobs” plan is good—it has good leverage, gives everyday people a chance to engage, and could actually provide meaningful resources. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that a $5 donation to your coffee vendor is going to save the economy. CDFIs grew out of the mutual aid efforts of immigrant communities a century ago, they were boosted significantly by government support in the 1960s and have drawn significant private capital ever since. Their existence reflects a relationship between government, private capital, communities, and philanthropy. They’ve become core parts of the nation’s commitment to communities and small businesses (even if Howard Schultz had not ever heard of them until recently). Starbucks’ philanthropy can expand this, build on it, and engage everyday people in it—that’s all good. But it can only do so because of the base of institutions that government itself helped build and the regulations that require banks to pay some attention to communities. 



Philanthropy has a role in the ecosystem of funding for public goods. It is one key way that we use private resources for public goods—volunteering and impact investing are two others. Claims that philanthropy can replace public funding fail to understand its actual scope and potential. Counting on it to provide core public services is, among other things, simply undemocratic.

AID for Africa is a partnership of 80 nonprofits addressing a wide range of issues in sub-Saharan Africa.  All of the member organizations are based in Africa, but they must be registered in the U.S. To become a member, the organizations must also meet specific tests of governance, programmatic impact, and fiscal accountability—including commissioning an annual audit. Barbara explained to me how this alliance has allowed the nonprofits to use a powerful US funding opportunity: the U.S. government’s Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). The CFC is the federal government’s annual workplace charity campaign, a program that was established by President John Kennedy in 1961.

The federal government has about four million employees, said Barbara, and over one million employees use payroll deductions for charitable giving. They choose from about 4,000 organizations, and last year gave close to $300 million. AID for Africa is the only network of African nonprofits that are part of the CFC, according to Barbara. The financial benefit of being part of the CFC is a powerful draw for members, who also benefit from being grouped together on the AID for Africa website with its online donation facility. AID for Africa takes a small percentage of the donations, making the organization financially sustainable. Barbara also works with AID for Africa members to help them find ways to collaborate and draw on each others’ strengths.

AID for Africa’s model seems like a smart way to bring nonprofits together where they can leverage their combined presence. What are some other examples of nonprofits that pull groups of nonprofits together in innovative ways?

Read a related post, “What Are You Doing on World Poverty Eradication Day?.”

With 100,000 Homes, any organization can enroll its community in the campaign, as long as it is committed to the shared aim of finding and housing the most vulnerable homeless people in their community. We recruit and work closely with leaders from all four sectors—nonprofits, local government, business, and philanthropy.

We have been curious, though, about the extent to which having representation on the local 100,000 Homes Campaign impacts the results that the team is able to achieve. Recently, our partners at the National Alliance to End Homelessness worked with us to create a survey of 100,000 Homes Campaign teams. We wanted to find out which sector led each local team and which sectors comprised them, as well as the extent to which they worked effectively with local Veterans Affairs offices and local public housing authorities (two tremendous sources of housing supply).

Nineteen out of ninety-five communities (20 percent) responded to the survey. We screened out communities that had not yet completed their “Registry Week”, in which volunteers canvass the streets for three mornings to create a by-name list of everyone experiencing homelessness and to administer a survey (called the Vulnerability Index) to determine the fragility of their health.

Of the remaining twelve communities, we created a “collective impact score,” which gives one point for each of the following sectors represented on their campaign leadership team: Veterans Administration, public housing authority, local government, Continuum of Care (a coordinating body for federal homeless grant applications), Business Improvement District, nonprofits, and philanthropists. A total of 7 points is possible on the collective impact score. We weighted it to allow additional points for inclusion of the Veterans Administration and public housing authority, because we believe that their participation is critical to large-scale systems change in solving chronic homelessness. We then compared the collective impact score to the communities’ monthly housing placement rate—that is, the average number of vulnerable people they move into permanent housing each month.

The chart below demonstrates a modest positive correlation between the collective impact score and the community’s housing placement rate.

Note that no communities with a collective impact score below 4 had a placement rate above the average of 5 vulnerable people per month; however, there were two outlier communities with more than 4 sectors on their local campaign team that were under-achieving in terms of housing placement and impact. One of those communities is early in their involvement in the 100,000 Homes Campaign and currently in the process of significant community dialogue toward an even deeper collective impact approach. The other community is struggling with securing full alignment with their nonprofit partners. Clearly there are factors beyond simply having the right sectors at the table for creating significant impact in ending homelessness; however, this early look at the data indicates that if a community wants to have the best chance at truly achieving something breathtaking, getting the right sectors to the table and actively engaged is a great place to start.

I launched Innov8Social a few months ago to explore social innovation, with special interest in its intersection with law and policy. The timing coincided with the progress of AB 361 through various stages at the California State Senate and State Assembly. After connecting with the B Lab Policy team, attending a few of the hearings in Sacramento, and writing about the legislation, I began to see things from a unique perspective. The legislation, rather than being stand-alone happenings in the field, seemed to be part of a broader evolution of social innovation. The following walks through one view of that evolution.

A Social Entrepreneur by Any Other Name…
Bill Drayton’s furthered the concept of a “social entrepreneur” in the 1970’s. In 1980, he started Ashoka, which has helped define the term, the field, and the relevance of social entrepreneurship.

Against the backdrop of an ending war, a stock market crash and an uncertain economy, periods of high unemployment and inflation, the resignation of a President, the rise of the Peace Corps, and the beginnings of the Internet as we know it—it makes sense that there was an emerging need to connect the dots in new ways. And it makes sense that it would take a luminary such as Drayton to recognize a unique way to engage the social sector with entrepreneurship.

Technology, Out of the Box
Drayton’s concept of transforming society through engaging and expanding the citizen sector began to take shape. And it was happening at a time of profound technological revolution responsible for personal computers, mobile phones, smart phones, tablets, and the rapid expansion and development of the Internet.

In the past few decades, technology has astounded, mesmerized, challenged, sometimes-disappointed, and often amazed us. More than anything, it has served to connect all of us in a way unparalleled to any other period of history. As tech entrepreneurs developed new technologies that shot to fame, social entrepreneurs began to find new ways to harness those technologies to connect business with cause.

Not Business as Usual
Social innovation took another leap forward when Muhammed Yunus introduced the concept of microfinance, slowly shifting the paradigm from philanthropic donation to impact investment. Investing in change connects the investor and beneficiary in a sustained relationship. It builds communities and it enables new kinds of businesses to emerge. Yunus’ 2006 Nobel Peace prize for his innovative approach for creating change inspired broad-scale efforts in microfinance through organizations such as Kiva.org.

The need to see beyond a singular bottom line began to take shape. And new reporting standards began developing ways to account for a triple bottom line—a way to recognize a broader view of stakeholders including as stock-holding shareholders, but also including other sectors impacted by business such as the community and the environment. Those efforts have culminated in development of systems such as the Global Impact Ratings System (GIIRS).

Academia, Governance, and Fellowship
Social innovation continued to evolve and blend into traditional fields. New fellowship programs emerged to try to capture and rising interest in social entrepreneurship. Ashoka, Acumen, Skoll, Echoing Green fellows joined many others participating in and furthering social innovation. Universities followed closely behind with the establishment of courses on social entrepreneurship and centers on social innovation. The rise in interest even reached the White House, with the establishment of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.

Evolving to Policy and Law
Perhaps, then, the logical next chapter of the social innovation story is law and policy. Existing laws tend to draw lines between for-profit and non-profit businesses. Early cases such as Dodge v. Ford made clear that the businesses exist to benefit shareholders. The starkness of that notion and its sometimes unintended consequences gave way to the development of the Business Judgment Rule and state constituency statutes.

And now, in a handful of states, there is a new option for how companies can incorporate, lending a distinct legal structure to recognize social ventures. This type of incorporation can effectively blend social and environmental missions with entrepreneurial motivation. Benefit corporations have become an option in 6 states and have been in existence for over a year in Maryland.

California is the first state to introduce two options for social ventures. Corporations can opt to incorporate as benefit corporations or flexible purpose corporations—a form of social venture unique to California.

Forging a Path
When forging a path, the road ahead is always unknown. Similarly, though we’ll have to wait and see how companies engage with the new legislation—the fact that there is legislation is not the feat of a single effort, but the culmination of an evolving story of social innovation.