I like many others have been closely following the unveiling of the Social Innovation Fund under Obama’s Administration, not only watching ‘who’ is advocating and supporting this Fund, but also what the process will be like. As someone who is especially interested in better understanding how supply side aspects of grantmakers impact both intended and actual outcomes of grantmaking there are so many reasons that I’m excited about this fund but also extremely cautious. Since many bloggers, practitioners, and academics are writing about this I would love to get some general feedback on perspectives about the process as perhaps this advice could be taken into account in the actual distribution and administration of funds. So please feel free to leave comments or contact me offline.

I’ll start with the positive and really what I’m excited about. . .

1. The explicit recognition by government that real, long term solutions to complex social problems in the United States require collaboration between ALL sectors. This in itself is tremendous and an acknowledgment linking back to Salamon’s theory of nonprofit and government as complementary partners

2. A focus on evaluation (I’ll discuss my extreme hesitation about why I’m cautious about getting excited about this below). However, the fact that this fund will provide monies for nonprofits beyond operations while also having nonprofits COMMIT to data collection and evaluation is HUGE. I hope this  has a signaling effect to ALL nonprofits that evaluation is a necessary component of doing ‘good’ work

3. It’s use of intermediary grantmakers instead of using the government to distribute these funds. Not only is there an American distaste for more government involvement in any sort of decisions, but truthfully if these funds were solely distributed by the government, we can all imagine the bureaucratic red tape that would exist. Additionally, it is likely that the intermediary grantmakers who specialize in particular focus areas while also having overall expertise in grant making provide a better conduit to distribute these funds

Everything so far sounds good, but again I’m most excited about the overall signals the social innovation fund creates but extremely concerned about  the actual process.

Here are my initial concerns

1. A focus on evaluation =) Yes, I know I mentioned I was excited about this above but when it really comes down to it, several of my favorite evaluation questions emerge. What are you measuring? How? With what resources? Will this fund taken into account already established metrics like The Urban Institute’s Outcome Indicators Project or The United Way’s outcome metrics? Will it consult academics or experts in evaluation about how, why and what to measure within these nonprofit organizations?

2. This idea of growth capital. Plainly stated – I’m confused. I keep reading it but can’t figure out why the Social Innovation Fund is considered growth capital? The fund almost seems like a recognition by government that what most nonprofits need to grow is access to equity capital so they can scale up to size, but still not allowing a legal form that accommodates this within the U.S.  (see literature on social enterprise for more info. on this and how successful these legal forms have been internationally, particularly in the U.K.)

Scholars have found that many of the difficulties associated with nonprofit organizations scaling up to size is a lack of access to capital. In fact, many social enterprises and innovative nonprofits are funded by foundation grants, which ultimately ‘expire’ after 3 years of funding. So how is this fund any different?

Why do we continue to think that innovative organizations need more grants, more evaluation, more data? What exactly is innovative about this fund? Is it government working explicitly with philanthropists, because that has been occurring since the beginning of American philanthropy and still occurs to date.

3. Finally, how can we ensure that local, community based organizations who are doing great work CAN actually scale up without risking their mission. Scholars have found that some of the reasons nonprofit organizations work, and work well,  is because they are local and community based.

More importantly, for those nonprofit organizations who do receive funds won’t they be the larger, more established, more professionalized nonprofits? These organizations will likely  have the capacity to not only go through the administrative process of applying for grants, but also the financial and operational capacity to accept a large grant.

Overall, I fear that without changing the process of awarding these funds to innovative nonprofits, the Social Innovation Fund risks falling into a trap of being just another organization that provides grants – and that my friends,  is simply not that innovative after all.

This has led me to several questions (particularly as I think back to my former life as a fundraiser in the nonprofit sector). If (as network theory and a good deal of anctedotal evidence would suggest, ) getting grants from foundations is truly about “who you know” and what “social circles” you’re a part of – how does that impact nonprofits who are likely “outsiders”, like social justice or advocacy organizations?

There’s almost a chicken and egg question that results from this train of thinking.  Many scholars and funders are trying to understand what a ‘better performing’ nonprofit looks like. But the subsuequent question this leads me to ask are if nonprofits thought of as ‘better performing’ are really just those organizations with better reputations.

In the economist tradition of studying nonprofits, performance would be a measure of the”efficient production” of goods/services. So how does reputation impact a nonprofits production? Are funders associating reputation with high performance or are they truly using some of their own measures to construct their image of a ‘better performing’ nonprofit.

In my own work I hope to “answer” some of these questions by conducting a survey or an experiment with foundation board members (at least these are my hopes!) to better understand how and why funders make their decisions.

I also hope to advance our understanding of terms in the sector that are constantly used, but always misunderstand. Supposedly financial health, collaboration, and organizational performance are the ways that funders make grant decisions but empirically we really don’t know a good deal about these decisions. In fact, we don’t really understand how funders view these concepts. Again thinking back to my work experience there is likely a gap that exists between the way funders view collaboration and the way nonprofit managers and staff view these terms.

I hope this provides everyone some food for thought and would love to hear feedback from anyone who has any thoughts on this!

Welcome to my first official blog post! My name is Jasmine McGinnis and I am a second year Ph.D. student in a joint public policy program through the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University and the Ivan Allen College of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology.

I have a rather interesting career trajectory that has led me to have two areas of interest in research. In my “first life” I was privileged to work for several years at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. I began working there as an undergrad as a transcriber and eventually became a Research Project Coordinator for an NIH study examining cocaine/crack use in 18-25 year old drug users living in Metro Atlanta within the context of the family unit. It was truly incredible to be a part of this project where the ultimate goal was to develop culturally relevant and appropriate treatments in order to respond to the rising needs of Atlanta’s drug using population.

It was this initial experience, coupled with a strong desire to serve others that provided the drive to pursue further studies in public service. I was specifically becoming interested in the tremendous ability to transform lives that the public sector has. I received my MPA from the University of Georgia and engrossed myself in examining human resource issues. This led me to a body of work around the impact of diversity on client and organizational performance and representative bureaucracy. I loved this research area and thought that perhaps one day I would get my Ph.D.

I ended up spending several years working in the nonprofit sector before going back to school and ended up in fundraising. I knew that my strengths in an organization would be in administrative and fundraising capacities–which was a great fit for my personality. I worked for small grassroots organizations and large prestigious organizations within the Atlanta area.  My last place of employment was at Special Olympics Georgia where I was a Senior Development Manager. Working in the nonprofit sector as a fundraiser led me to develop a strong desire to research “giving” at the Ph.D. level.

Last year, under the guidance of my major professors I became engrossed in an analysis of foundation grant making with a unique dataset of a sample of foundations within Georgia.  With this data, I conducted research understanding foundation grant making within Boulding’s (1973) concept of a grants economy. This research has led to several conference presentations and proposals. The results of one study used principal agent theory to understand how different “types” of foundations (i.e. family vs. independent foundations) prefer certain nonprofit characteristics (size, sector, financial health/efficiency characteristics). Additionally, I’ve conducted research using elite network theory to understand grant making preferences of elite foundations in Georgia (those foundations who are the largest by both total assets and total giving).

I have another stream of research where I examine wage differentials within specific demographics of the workforce (i.e. Generation Y). I also have a paper in the works looking to use public and private sector methods to evaluate the impact of workforce diversity on client outcomes in the nonprofit sector.

My goal is to not only earn my Ph.D. and join the ranks of academia where I can contribute to scholarship in this field but also to become a professor who serves as a role model inspiring students to pursue careers in the public sector.