Blog

White House social innovation office takes form

2009-07-07T18:02:00-08:00

FY 2010 budget proposes $50 million social innovation fund

This past April, Congress passed the Serve America Act, a summary of whose provisions is available here. As philanthropic adviser Sean Stannard-Stockton outlines in his Tactical Philanthropy blog, the Serve America Act was a key policy recommendation of America Forward, a coalition of more than 70 nonprofit organizations, organized in part by New Profit, a venture philanthropy funder.

While the primary provisions of the bill concerned expansion of government service programs, such as the Corporation for National and Community Service, the bill also included a provision authorizing the creation of a Social Innovation Fund. If Congress appropriates the $50 million the Obama administration has requested, this would involve the first explicit federal effort to support the nation’s growing social enterprise movement of nonprofits that operate businesses both to raise revenue and to further the social missions of their organizations.

Mondragon co-op model gains U.S. adherents

2009-07-06T17:49:01-08:00

Midwest groups seek to emulate Mondragon worker co-op design

Among a narrow band of U.S. academics and activists, the worker cooperative model provided by the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation has long been attractive. See, for instance, this report from David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance dating from 1992. The story of Mondragón is told well by the late Vermont sociologist George Benello here. Some basic highlights: In 1943, Don José María de Arizmendi-Arrieta, a Spanish priest (better known as Father Arizmendi) who had narrowly missed being put to death by Franco as a result of his support of the Republican side in the Spanish civil war, founded a technical school in the small Basque city of Mondragón. In 1956, five graduates of that school helped found a worker cooperative, Ulgor, that employed 24 and produced kerosene stoves. Over the following 50-plus years, Mondragón has grown to become a worker-cooperative controlled holding company consisting of roughly 260 businesses and over 100,000 employees. In 2007, Mondragón reported 16.7 billion Euros in sales (which, depending on the Euro exchange rate, is roughly $US 22-24 billion).

By contrast, in the United States, worker cooperatives have been largely a niche movement. According to the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, “there are over 300 democratic workplaces in the United States, employing over 3,500 people and generating over $400 million in annual revenues.” Until now at least, the leading form of employee ownership has consisted of companies owned in whole or part by employee stock ownership plans or ESOPs. Here, the numbers are more impressive: the National Center for Employee Ownership reports that, as of 2006, 13.7 million workers in the United States had $928 billion in assets in these enterprises. In the wake of the current economic crisis, however, the worker cooperative model has become increasingly attractive, particularly, as notes blogger Bernard Marszalek here, in the Midwest.

New institute aims to develop CDC leaders

2009-07-06T14:06:00-08:00

Massachusetts groups establish Mel King Institute for Community Building

Since 2003, in the state of Massachusetts alone, community development corporations (CDCs) have help build or preserve 7,811 homes, created 11,609 job opportunities, supported 6,211 local businesses, served 123,556 families, and attracted $1.362 billion worth of investment to struggling neighborhoods, report Chuck Grigsby, former president of the Massachusetts Community Development Finance Corporation and Joe Kriesberg, president of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC), the leading trade association for Massachusetts-based CDCs. Yet as Grigsby and Kriesberg note in a Boston Globe op-ed, CDCs today face new challenges. “Demographic, social, economic, technological, and political changes require new, innovative solutions that build on the lessons we have learned but break free from old orthodoxies and stale strategies. The successful CDCs of the future will be those that most effectively adapt and respond to these changes,” write Grigsby and Kriesberg. The Mel King Institute for Community Building, which Grigsby and Kriesberg helped create, represents an important effort to create the educational infrastructure necessary to meet these challenges.

Book spurs dialogue on wealth

2009-04-30T17:47:00-08:00

Unjust Deserts highlights social nature of wealth

We call this website Community-Wealth.org, but we rarely discuss the nature of wealth on this site itself. An interesting paradox, however, of our age is revealed in a debate stirred by a recent book, featured on this website but until now not commented on by this blog, called Unjust Deserts. Co-authored by Lew Daly of Demos and Community-Wealth.org’s own Gar Alperovitz, the book is receiving increasing attention. Ezra Klein in American Prospect notes that typically the debate over the $1.57 trillion owned by the world’s 400 wealthiest individuals (as estimated by the 2008 Forbes 400 list) comes down to a single question: Is the wealth “earned” by these individuals a matter of “skill” or just “dumb luck”?

The argument of Daly and Alperovitz is different. As Klein notes in his review of the book, the argument goes beyond the question of “skill or luck” to look more fundamentally at how wealth is generated.

As Daly and Alperovitz highlight in their book, for decades leading economists have realized that most wealth is in fact socially generated. For example, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow calculated that 88 percent of output growth between 1909 and 1947 could not be explained by changes in land, capital, or labor. Rather, Solow found that it was technical change—which is to say, advances in knowledge and technique and capability—that powered growth. In other words, it is society — from the literal contribution to knowledge of those who came before we were born — that is responsible for most of our wealth. This finding makes current trends of growing inequality—the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently reported that 2006 was marked by “greater income concentration at the top [in the United States] than at any time since 1929"—very hard to justify.

Social enterprise summit takes policy turn

2009-04-28T17:04:00-08:00

Highlights include new policy track, L3C forum

More than 350 people from social enterprises across the United States and beyond came to the tenth Summit of the Social Enterprise Alliance, held in New Orleans earlier this month. This year’s Summit featured a new policy track that explored federal, state, and local policy options. Organized by Public Innovators, a project of the Massachusetts-based nonprofit Root Cause, the policy track aimed to encourage exploration of ways government can work with the p expand the power and impact of social enterprise. In particular, four areas that were featured at the conference was the creation of a state Office of Social Entrepreneurship in Louisiana, the expansion of the Corporation for National and Community Service through the Serve America Act (signed into law by President Obama last week), the formation of a White House Office of Social Innovation, and the growing number of state efforts to create a new corporate category, the L3C or Low-Profit Limited Liability Company, a legal entity in which the company through its articles of incorporation may earn profits, but subject to meeting its charitable mission constraint, as stated in its articles of incorporation. A year ago, as profiled in this blog, Vermont became the first state in the nation to pass such legislation. Other states have now followed suit, including Michigan, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah. The nonprofit Americans for Community Development maintains a listing of these and other state legislative efforts here.

California microenterprise conference nears

2009-04-20T16:18:01-08:00

Statewide event to take place May 28th

Two months ago, this blog profiled the upcoming Microfinance California 2009 conference, California’s first statewide conference on domestic micro-finance. Held at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA, the May 28th event aims to:
• Introduce participants to the nuts and bolts of domestic microfinance
• Provide small group tours of Bay Area microfinance borrowers
• Explore the impact and future of microfinance in California
• Facilitate small group dinners with practitioners, leaders, and investors

Report outlines new vision for HUD

2009-04-11T17:47:00-08:00

Anchor institutions seen as key partners in community development

Published by the Penn Institute for Urban Research, Retooling HUD for a Catalytic Federal Government: A Report to Secretary Shaun Donovan—a collective effort of over 100 urban policy practitioners and academic researchers—develops in ten chapters a new vision of urban development that seeks to put the “UD back in HUD” (that is Urban Development back in “Housing & Urban Development").

C-W.org’s Steve Dubb, Ted Howard, and Gar Alperovitz participated in the anchor institution task force, led by Ira Harkavy of the University of Pennsylvania’s Barbara and Edward Netter Center for Community Partnerships. The anchor institution task force was one of ten that compiled the overall report, with each task force responsible for one chapter. The anchor institution task force’s chapter, titled Anchor Institutions as Partners in Building Successful Communities and Local Economies, outlines a program for HUD to leverage the considerable human, economic, cultural, and intellectual resources of nonprofit universities and hospitals to support economic development in their home communities. Key recommendations include:

1) Creating a new position of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Higher Education & Anchor Institutions to work in concert with an academic director counterpart

2) Charging the Deputy Assistant Secretary to:
a) Redesign and expand Office of University Partnership (OUP) programs (Community Outreach Partnership Centers, etc.)
b) Develop an Anchor Institutions Program Division to leverage anchor purchasing, employment, investment, and real estate for community & economic development
c) Organize a White House Summit on Eds & Meds and Civic Responsibility

3) Develop an Urban Grant University program to support universities and community colleges that make a long-term commitment to real-world urban problem solving

4) Support the expansion of University-Assisted Community Schools & School-Centered Community Development

5) Staff HUD’s Office of University Partnerships programs at regional and local offices

6) Create an Independent Advisory Council and a Consultation Team for the Office of University Partnerships

7) Institute Secretary’s Awards to recognize outstanding partnerships as well as urban problem-solving research

ESOPs Prominent In “Best Companies to Work For” List

2009-04-09T15:43:01-08:00

14 of 100 companies listed are employee owned

Annually, the Great Place to Work Institute releases its list of top 100 companies to work. The 2009 list, which is published by Fortune magazine, shows that employee owned companies in the U.S. are becoming more prominent, with 14 of the 100 companies being employee owned.

Howard U. launches summer institute on race & wealth

2009-04-08T19:02:00-08:00

Applications for 4-week session due May 1st

The Howard University Center on Race and Wealth has announced that it is hosting a Summer Institute. The 4-week program aims to provide an opportunity for students (undergraduate or graduate) who have completed a paper on a topic related to asset building, wealth accumulation and/or wealth and racial economic inequality, particularly in communities of color and low-income populations, to refine their research and convert their papers into work of publishable quality. (The paper being refined can be a senior thesis, honors paper, graduate course paper or a master’s thesis.)

Successful applicants will have an uninterrupted period in which to further explore their topic, revise their original research and rewrite their paper to scholarly journal standards. In addition, participants will benefit from the opportunity to discuss ideas with other students and the program director in a formal seminar setting, to be mentored by the master teacher and receive feedback on their research from the Center’s resident scholars. Participants will visit government agencies that collect and analyze wealth data, attend policy forums on Capitol Hill, and participate in workshops with and have access to the Center’s resident scholars as well as researchers from policy-related organizations in the Washington, DC area.

National CDC group seeks policy director

2009-03-20T15:49:00-08:00

Position aims to bolster CDC advocacy on Capitol Hill

The National Alliance of Community Economic Development Associations (NACEDA) is a national organization created to support the work of community economic development (CED) associations, local community development corporations (CDCs) and practitioners nationwide. NACEDA is seeking a Director of Policy to assist the association to analyze legislation and advocate to Congress on behalf of its members on a broad range of issues including: housing, community development, social services, and financial literacy. The position also requires writing and editing press releases and editing a biweekly policy newsletter.

A successful candidate must be able to work with policymakers and federal departments whose programs affect CDCs’ work, including: Housing & Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Economic Development Administration in the Department of Commerce, the Office of Community Services (OCS) in the Department of Health & Human Services, and financial regulators.

The Director of Policy will also be expected to assist the Executive Director in developing/managing all aspects of government affairs program. Background in housing, community development, tax, and/or appropriations required. Must know how to frame issues and support advocacy with research. Minimum five years of Hill, trade association or comparable experience necessary. This position requires a self-starter who needs minimal supervision. Attractive salary/benefits package. Located Close to Washington, DC (office has an Arlington location near Court House Metro). Position open immediately. To apply for the position, please send a cover letter with salary requirements and résumé to: info@naceda.org.