Opinion: Give Social Entrepreneurs More Resources to Solve Problems

Innovative nonprofit leaders take a different tack from their predecessors, writes David Brooks in an opinion piece in The New York Times.

Instead of looking to government to identify social problems and develop programs to solve them, they believe thousands of private groups need to try different approaches. After they undertake sophisticated efforts to measure what works, they seek to spread ideas nationwide.

“Their problem now is scalability,” he writes. “How do the social entrepreneurs replicate successful programs so that they can be big enough to make a national difference?”

Mr. Brooks says that the group America Forward, a consortium of social entrepreneurs, may represent the future of social innovation as a network of semipublic social-investment funds. In this new approach, “the government would not operate these social-welfare programs, but it would in essence create a network of semipublic Gates Foundations that would pick winners based on stiff competition.”

He says he hopes government will put more money into efforts to help social entrepreneurs.

He writes, “These are some of the smartest and most creative people in the country. Even if we don’t know how to reduce poverty, it’s probably worth investing in these people and letting them figure it out.”

See The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s special report on efforts by nonprofit leaders to spread effective programs nationwide.

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