The President’s platform

In 2008, just prior to the US presidential election, a movement of community representatives sought a radical commitment: a pledge of a US$100 million of public money from John McCain and Barack Obama, the Republican and Democrat candidates respectively. It was a big ask but then they had big ideas. They wanted this money to seed a new generation of socially enterprising grass-roots movements.

They wanted a war-chest to help grass-roots organisations become more sustainable; to foster new kinds of data-driven analysis of their interventions. They wanted to enable social enterprises and charities to become ready for social impact investment; to collect evidence of impact that might help these organisations thrive and grow from the grass-roots to the local; from the local to the national.

The candidates got the message. In one of the most successful lobbying outcomes for infrastructure ever procured by the US non-profit sector, a promise from both major presidential candidates was secured that a social innovation fund (SIF) would be created by a future Obama or McCain administration.

Paul Carttar was part of the influential group behind the effort. Carttar is a non-profit veteran with a host of initiatives behind him, who was tasked with leading this work from the Office of the US President. I spoke with him towards the end of President Obama’s first term about how the SIF came to be and how it was getting along.

Carttar’s manner is deliberate and methodical. Straight away, he eased into the detail with barely a pause. “The theme of the initial effort was about being more proactive about society and having an alternative strategy to tackle social problems with federal money,” he told me. “There were three streams to begin with: health, youth development, economic opportunity – as well as a fourth, multi-issue pot.”

Carttar described the fund as having three further ‘layers’ that comprised the delivery mechanism of the fund. The first was the grant programme itself, comprising US$150 million distributed through an open public competition. The administrators of the SIF were clear that the programmes funded by their intermediaries should contribute to the administration’s strategic priorities. “This,” said Carttar, was a “programme for impact”.