The government’s role in supporting social entrepreneur or social innovations comes with caveats. Yes, the potential is great: the government has ample funds and power to elevate great social innovations. The government can lend credibility to organizations. The government could also aid in scaling successful projects to other nations, making ideas for social change “one of the most powerful American exports over the next decade”[1]. The US government already spends billions of dollars annually in the social sector, making it the major player in funding social ventures. However, government assistance comes with the baggage of dissatisfied taxpayers who tend to focus on goal-oriented projects and success stories.
Since the Obama administration began the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in 2009, we have yet to see these benefits take root. As Michelle Malkin dramatically writes, Obama simply "created a permanent taxpayer-backed pipeline to Democratic partisan outfits masquerading as public-interest do-gooders” [2]. Her criticism, though heavily biased by her own expectations of the Obama administration, rings a note of truth. The impact of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation’s funds are not obvious yet to the taxpayers who back the initiative. How then can the government more effectively target specific problems and the best ideas?
The plan to invest in "range of solutions designed to meet national societal goals” fails to be a convincing use of public funds [1]. Investing in a range of innovations promotes governmental dependency and a very thin spread of capital to the solutions that need the most support. Instead of casting a broad net for potential winners among the social entrepreneurs, the government should hone in on specific problems and grant the most convincing, impactful solution funding as a prize. Besides being cost-effective, prizes engage the public through spectacle and sensation. Often a solution is found in unlikely sources, gaining the benefit of crowdsourcing the problem. A prize system actually already exists at https://www.challenge.gov/ where government agencies like NASA or the Center for Disease Control pose questions and problems, offering substantial prize money for solutions.
The paradigm of collaborative, large scale problem solving is well established in the tech world, with universities and companies frequently hosting “hackathons”, which are large gatherings of teams who have a set time limit to quickly ideate and iterate through solutions to a particular problem. The problems tend to be corporately motivated (i.e. "how can we have a more effective online banking app?”). Hackathons have the side effect of creating a sense of community among the people gathered for the event, inspiring quick, inventive solutions for the promise of prizes or recognition. By hosting similar design events, the government would be able to more effectively capitalize on the power of open innovation. The idea of open innovation or crowdsourcing solutions is also cost effective, allowing the government to only pay for what works. If the government were to redo their method of distributing funds to many social innovators and instead implement a regular schedule of hackathons each centered on different social issues, the impact would be more evident and the solution would pinpoint an exact need.
[1] http://ssir.org/articles/entry/innovating_the_white_house#sthash.QW02p9kl.dpuf
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