Government's Role: Show Me The Money!

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to speak with one of the editors of American Progress. I had ran into him at the lobby of its building where my cousin worked as a security guard. I joked with him about the number of emails they send on a weekly basis, and he told me that if I had any article ideas to send them to him for a possible freelance gig. After our quaint introductions, the conversation took a more serious tone, "What is the role of government and its responsibility to the people?" We both wrestled with the idea, but figured out that we both agree that government, being comprised of thought leaders and elected officials should have the obligation of taking care of its citizens.

When I saw American Progress had published a report I wondered if it could include more insight and substance than the 10-minute conversation I had with an American Progress editor. According to the report, which was published in 2007, there were 200,000 non-profits founded in the United States since 1970, but only 144 had annual revenues of over $50 million. The paper reports that some social ventures and enterprises are not designed to be wide scale, as they address smaller problems, but the imbalance that exists between successful non-profit ventures that have truly scalable models and those that do not are daunting.

The report suggests the government fund social ventures. The practice has long been to have foundations and philanthropic organizations fund social ventures, but if the government played a role in helping organizations expand and become scalable, wouldn't that be better for everyone?

The report suggests that the next president create a "White House Office of Social Innovation & Impact." This office would presumably do a few things, including: direct funds to nonprofits that have demonstrated results, be a catalyst for cross-sector partnerships, and create a beneficial tax status for social innovation.

This is where the report lost me. It focused primarily on the government's role, but not on the role of the social innovators. The government has a role to provide for its social innovators, as we all know from economics class, innovation is one of the factors to spur economic growth, but how much reliance do we want in the government?

Throughout history, governments have been dictating the roles of innovators and have actually hindered innovation (remember the British government's role with the cure of scurvy?). I believe that there needs to be a two-way action plan between innovators and governments for success of social innovators. There needs to be a more comprehensive plan based on the needs of innovators (funding) and the government (cutting deficit) and see if there can be some common ground between the two entities.

The role of social innovation depends on the innovator, not the government, and the reliance on funding should not be one of them. What do you think?