A New Era of Nonprofit Engagement?

As President-elect Barack Obama pulls together his administration, nonprofit leaders are floating ideas to help the Democratic victor fulfill his campaign pledges to expand national service and work with charities to solve the country’s social problems.

While some worry that the country’s ever-worsening economic crunch will hinder the next president’s ability to create new programs, others are optimistic that he will tap innovative charities to help get the country back on track.

“At a time when otherwise there might be despair, there’s a great deal of enthusiasm,” says Michelle Nunn, president of the Points of Light Institute, in Atlanta, which promotes civic engagement and volunteering. She says she and many of her nonprofit colleagues are hoping that Mr. Obama will inspire the millions of enthusiastic supporters he mobilized for his campaign to stay involved in social causes.

If Mr. Obama fulfills his campaign promises, he will greatly expand programs like AmeriCorps, which provides money to charities that operate national-service programs; create new service opportunities for young people and older people; establish a Social Entrepreneurship Agency to coordinate federal programs that help innovative charities; and secure new funds to stimulate entrepreneurial social projects.

Aiding the Transition

The president-elect’s transition aides are setting up committees to advise him on such issues before the handover of power on January 20, but information about the groups is sketchy. Several nonprofit experts who are involved in the transition said they were asked not to speak to reporters.

However, many nonprofit leaders expect the Obama administration to usher in a sort of golden era for national service, with a push from the future first lady. Michelle Obama — who in 1993 opened the Chicago office of Public Allies, a group that trains young people for nonprofit or public-service work — has said that she will adopt the issue as a personal cause. (“Michelle looks forward to continuing her work on the issues close to her heart — supporting military families, helping working women balance work and family, and encouraging national service,” says an entry on Senator Obama’s transition Web site.)

The Obama transition project has released the names of people who are leading committees to review specific government agencies and offer advice about policy, budget, and personnel matters. More than 20 are representatives of nonprofit groups, foundations, and think tanks. Two of the members — Michele Jolin and Shirley Sagawa — have made public recommendations about ways to promote nonprofit work.

Ms. Jolin is a senior fellow and Ms. Sagawa a visiting fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington that has close ties to Mr. Obama. Both women wrote chapters for a “progressive blueprint” for reorganizing the federal government that the center’s advocacy arm, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, published this month.

Ms. Jolin — a former vice president of Ashoka, in Arlington, Va., which provides assistance to nonprofit leaders — wrote a chapter that called on the new administration to create a White House Office of Social Entrepreneurship, to give innovative nonprofit leaders a “greater voice in the public policy debates of the day.”

It suggested that the office, for example, ensure that all relevant federal agencies spend money to help successful social projects expand; create an “impact fund” at the Corporation for National and Community Service to help nonprofit groups collect data and better evaluate their success; create a multimillion-dollar prize for creative, high-impact solutions to a defined social problem; and explore changes in the tax code to encourage partnerships between nonprofit groups and businesses.

(Mr. Obama proposed placing a Social Entrepreneurship Agency within the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that operates service programs, rather than creating a White House office as recommended by Ms. Jolin.)

Ms. Sagawa, who is also a nonprofit-strategy consultant, wrote a chapter for the “progressive blueprint” urging the new president to push legislation to expand the country’s national-service programs within his first 100 days in office. He should also issue an executive order creating a Commission on Cross-Sector Solutions to America’s Problems, which would propose ways to improve relationships among nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, business, and the federal government with a view to solving critical national problems, she wrote.

A Top Priority

Ms. Sagawa is not alone in urging the president-elect to move quickly on national service.

“Our hope is that this will become one of the 100-day priorities, and potentially be part of the economic-stimulus package,” says Alan Khazei, founder of Be the Change, in Cambridge, Mass., a group that promotes civic engagement and national service, referring to measures Mr. Obama plans to propose to try to recharge the sagging economy.

“You’re putting people to work and the work they’re doing is on the most pressing needs, which is also a stimulus,” he says.

Mr. Khazei — a leader of ServiceNation, a coalition of more than 120 groups that seeks to get citizens more involved in solving social problems — says the 100-day goal should be easy to accomplish, since legislation has already been drafted that has bipartisan support: the Serve America Act, which Mr. Obama co-sponsored as senator. That bill, S 3487, introduced in September by Sens. Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, would expand the number of participants in full-time national-service programs like AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000 by 2013, creating new “corps” to work on clean energy, health care, education, and poverty.

The legislation, which would cost $5-billion over five years, would also create new funds to promote the work of innovative nonprofit groups and help charities recruit volunteers. Because it requires matching funds from private sources, it would also help direct philanthropy to the country’s greatest needs, Mr. Khazei said.

Offering Advice

The Serve America Act, as well as Mr. Obama’s proposals for promoting social entrepreneurship, were heavily influenced by proposals drawn up by America Forward, a coalition of more than 70 nonprofit groups promoting innovative approaches to tough social issues.

Those members are now standing by to offer advice as needed, says Kim Syman, managing partner of New Profit, a group in Boston that organized the coalition. “At this point we want to let the dust settle and be a resource as we can,” she says.

The coalition has, however, drawn up a variety of options for creating a new federal office or agency and new “social investment funds.” For example, the new entity could be part of the White House, part of an existing agency, or part of a broader office on innovation, she says. The new funds could be used to solve problems within a particular geographic area, or they could be directed toward a specific issue such as developing a 21st-century work force.

“We’re excited to be in a moment to play with what any or all of [the options] might look like,” she says. However, she adds, the coalition’s ultimate goal is to create a “fundamental shift” in the way the country solves its problems. “We’re just at the beginning of what we think will be a long process.”

Some nonprofit leaders are hoping Mr. Obama’s January 20 inauguration will give an early boost to community service. It takes place one day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when volunteers across the country traditionally engage in community-service activities. “We’ll have literally tens of thousands of volunteers,” says Ms. Nunn of the Points of Light Institute. “It could be millions if we leverage Senator Obama’s bully pulpit.”